Will this be the kiss that would end Yuri’s childhood dreams to marry his sister? This episode covers chapters 13 & 14 of the manga.

Recap & Reaction

The episode leaves off of a very crucial point as Yuri suspects and demands Yor and Loid to outwardly show their love by kissing; tickling every fan’s wet dreams to finally see these 2 characters shipped as their happily ever couple. Yor panics as she downs a bottle of wine to get over the stress of the attempt to lock lips with Loid. Yuri, seeing his “mommy-sister” issues come to a potentially traumatizing halt by another man, leaps his way to prevent them from smooching.

Even a boozed up Yor couldn’t handle the pressure of her very first kiss with a man and panics again. This time, she winds of a 5 fingers-to-face to smack Loid, which ends up whirlwind smacking her beloved brother—leaving the anime fans with blue balls. The significance of Loid & Yor kissing has the Spy x Family fandom in a social media ruckus with an endless amount of memes uploaded to the “interweebs”.

After some Briar sibling nonsense, Loid concludes the meeting with some heartfelt dialogue, showing his envy of the two sibling’s close relationship. Yuri runs off drunk, bloodied and in distress.

A Very Good Adaptation

To this point, every scene landed the way it would supposed to. If you compare the manga panels to the anime, it was really good adaptation that would give the audience the same type of reaction. The music, the climatic buildup and the over-the-top reactions of Yuri & Yor, might be the highlights of these 2 characters to this point.

Yuri Brings His Antagonist Buddies to the Plot

I have to admit again and piggybacking off the last review, Yuri’s inclusion in this story, suddenly makes the show more open ended. Until the introduction of Yuri, this world that is supposed to consist of these 2 huge covertly “at odds” nations, felt really small. The show still lacks a true villain. With Yuri, he invites all the potential pitfalls that could ruin the “Spy x Family” family, while simultaneously adding multiple ways to exploit another comedic dynamic between Yuri and the Forger family. Adding the State Security Service (SSS) to the story immerses the audience into the realm of Ostania’s point-of-view. After all, are we really sure Westphalia sending Loid on this top mission really the best for peace?

Loid Suspects Yor

The back half of the episode covers Loid’s suspicions of Yor. He had to find out whether or not, Yor knows that Yuri is working with the “secret police.” After Loid concocts a plan to confront Yor with an undercover Franky, it results with the building trust that Loid has with Yor, as they find out that Yor is completely ignorant of Yuri’s secret double life.

Twilight’s Growing Weakness

It was mentioned earlier in the episode that Loid was envious of Yuri & Yor’s loving sibling relationship. Later, it was hinted by Franky that Loid feels bad for not trusting Yor. Further explaining that “in their line of work, you can’t trust anyone.” This may be some foreshadowing for what’s to come with Loid’s growing connection to his “Forger” family. We get some inner dialogue with him throwing away the “bug” that was secretly attached to Yor’s collar, hinting again at Loid’s building relationship and trust of Yor.

This dynamic of Loid becoming more trusting of Yor has to be one of the more fascinating character developments of the season. With the accumulation of trust and love, there lies tons of openings to exploit Loid’s growing weakness. Who knows, even Franky’s relationship with Loid could become a potential disaster; coming from the guy says “not to trust anyone.” When you have real connections with people and it gets severed, there can be some serious psychological consequences that may result in irrational behavior. Acting irrationally out of love would be the least spy thing Loid could do.

It has slowly been hinted, since the first episode of the season that Loid lacked any real love and connection in his life. This episode reiterates again his envy for the relationship Yor & Yuri has. So, Franky truly has a point regarding his true duties as a spy. Later down the line, Loid might have to choose saving his daughter and wife over his responsibilities as a spy. We’ve already seen Loid blur the lines between his job and his “Forger” family—with him playing along with Anya’s “make-believe” and by sacrificing a large part of his agency’s budget to do so. There’s so many different ways to speculate about where Loid’s character is going. To be entirely honest, every possible scenario sounds intriguing. That’s all we can truly hope for and the best position the viewer can be in.

Last Thoughts

There are 2 things to take away from this episode: Loid & Yor will never kiss and we can finally put some faces to the word “antagonist.” Scratch that. Make that 3 major points to take away from this episode with Loid increasing his trust for Yor. Nine episodes into the season and Loid has turned into one of the most complex characters, in an otherwise satirical comedy. “Complex,” meaning the potential for multiple entertaining scenarios. Love, relationships, trust, ethics, morality, and more are all encompassing the complexity of Loid’s character. With the addition of Yuri, there’s now a potential direct character conflict that can cause so many major events to take place.

In terms of the execution of the episode itself, every scene landed as well you’d want. There wasn’t any music or scenes that felt contradictory to at least my personal imagined portrayal of the scenes (from the manga). With the beginning half of the episode being so important and significant, the climatic crescendo of the compilation of scenes between Yor’s and Yuri’s inner dialogue had to land and it did with a hysterical payoff. You can’t really ask anymore than what the anime did in this episode. For that, I give this episode a…?

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