Nothing completes a family more than a dog! This episode covers manga chapters 22 & 23.

Recap & Reaction

Coming off a cliffhanger where it looked like Loid was about to create a Reddit horde of anti-animated animal abuse hate group, Twilight ends up shooting the bomb attachments off of the dog. While the dog latched on to his arm, he was able to toss the bomb into the ocean before Keith was able to detonate it. We can all breathe a sigh of a relief as Loid stuffs the dog into a dumpster(to be saved later). Keith figures he botched his whole operation and drives off with a shadowy figure of Twilight in the smoke, looking on.

Yor is still frantically running out in the streets looking for Anya until she sees Keith driving from below the bridge. Like any normal person would, she hops off of the bridge to land right in front of Keith. Keith lashes out as he tries to swerve away from Yor, but gets “t-boned” by the Thorn Princess’s kick.

Can we get some cool names for Yor’s techniques? Or is that looked down upon for this series? For someone called the “Thorn Princess,” you got to have some cool names for your movies, right?!

Yor calls the authorities through a pay phone and all three of the Forger family ended up reconvening.

One slight plot hole I have here is the fact that Yor is calling the police through a payphone. Wouldn’t that be Ostania’s police and not Loid’s Westalis’s country. Maybe they hacked all the payphones?

All three: Yor, Anya and Loid give their own little fibs as to why they went missing. Lois scolds Anya, but was happy to know that she ended up being safe. An undercover Sylvia drops by the family to try to take into custody the fluffy white derpy dog. Anya remembering what future the dog saw, stops everyone in their tracks by relentlessly advocating to keep the dog. Even going further as to willfully failing out of school, putting Operation Strix at risk. Eventually, Sylvia comes to terms that Anya must keep the dog with the watchful eye of Loid taking care of it; putting even more responsibilities on the shoulder of Twilight.

The Importance of Sylvia Sherwood’s Character

Like the previous episode with Sylvia Sherwood dropping gems on those young radical college students, she continues playing that character that is wiser than anyone (even more so than Loid). She seemingly does the right thing by having the dog stay with the Forger family. It’s these kinds of characters that can easily convey teachable moments to everyone.

Recap Continues

The scene shifts to Yor, Anya and Lois walking home. Yor is blushingly happy that she foiled some bad guys’ plans. Anya is secretly just as ecstatic, knowing that she helped stop the bad guys and saved Loid from dying.

Then, it transitions to the scene where the fluffy white derpy dog arrives to the home of the Forger family, playing out the future that it saw.

At the half-way point of the episode, the episode covers chapter 23 of the manga where Anya struggles to find a name for the fluffy white derpy dog. Anya heads to school to work on her “plan b” to get Damian to mingle with her through the fact that she has a dog now. Very intently smug, she chases down Damian to tell him that she has a dog. Damian’s response was basically, “who care?” That’s when we get another meme-able reaction moment out of Anya.

Anya’s Memeable Moment

Not that it wasn’t already established that Anya’s reactions create peak moments in Spy x Family; this time, along with the animated facial reaction—we get a hilarious unexpected gasp out of Anya. It’s these kind of moments between Anya, Damian, Emile and Ewen that brings back fond memories of Rugrats and a bunch shows from that generation. Having that dynamic in this show just creates a wonderful blend of slice-of-life, action and mystery. This might be the only anime that can give us all of these qualities within one show.

Recap Continues..

Damian tries to give Anya a chance to explain her excitement over Anya by asking for its name, but Anya goes completely blank. Flabbergasted by Anya not having one to give, they walk away while Anya stands in humiliated shame.

Anya arrives home and Loid decides to take the family out to the dog park. Loid gives Anya the low down on the importance of training her dog and discusses what names they should give it. While Anya and her dog have the most enjoyable time of her life, Loid self-reflects on his hypocrisy of telling Anya to “take care of him until the very end.”

One of Loid’s Most Relatable Dilemmas

It’s one of the biggest dilemmas that we all face in realty, making decisions for the greater good. Knowing that whatever decision you make, not everyone wins. Sometimes, the best you can do is to include as much people as you can that can benefit from that decision. In this case of Loid disappointing Anya and Yor in the end, if it means peace for the world, it’s a decision that he must absolutely make. That is why politics and war are great examples to display this dilemma because the crux of humanity’s problems lie within these unsolvable issues. In politics and war, not everyone can win.

If you guys watch Fate/Zero, Emiya Kiritsugu is the perfect representation of this dilemma.

Recap Continues…

When the Forger family gets ready to head home from the dog park, she realizes that her gloves are missing. Searching a round the dog park, she finds a rough looking bulldog carrying her gloves. She approaches it, but terrifies the crap out of Anya. As the fluffy white derpy dog has been doing the entire time since they met, he comes to her rescue by bullying the dog to get back Anya’s gloves. In that moment, Anya is reminded of a scene when Bondman returned an important gift to the princess.

From this moment on, I will no longer refer to him as the fluffy white derpy dog, he is now Derpy Bond!

Just kidding..

The scene shifts back to the Forger family home and Anya presents Bond with a nice little black bow to the family. Anya proceeds to feed Bond, comically trying a piece of the dog food herself (I think every dog owner does this). Next, she takes poor Bond to go potty on this small tray where he ends up pooping.

Loid continues acting as the scolding father of Anya, as he attempts to get Anya to study after watching her favorite show with Bond. When Yor finishes washing the dishes and Loid tidies himself up, Yor quietly invites Loid over to watch Anya sleeping with Bond in the living room. In the most family friendly-heartwarming moment, they decided to not punish Anya.

There’s really not that much to say for the last parts of this episode. It’s as straight forward and incredibly family friendly as can be. The slice-of-life aspects of just watching another family with her kid and dog is as basic sounding as it can get, but it just melts the soul. When you have lovable and likeable characters like in Spy x Family, you don’t need big plots to make it enjoyable.

Last Thoughts

This episode turned out to be a great closer for this little adventure of the Forger family. We got to see the Forger family add another element in a dog that further rounds out this fun makeshift dynamic of a family. Focusing heavily on the slice-of-life aspects for this episode, we are left feeling better than ever about the next adventure this family ends up mistakenly embarking on.

You can’t get anymore perfect as an anime adaptation than this episode did for manga chapters 22 & 23. If you’re looking for an anime that isn’t shonen or an isekai, then Spy x Family is near the top of that list. Sometimes you don’t need to get cute in explaining how good something is—that is Spy x Family. Just go watch it.