Spy x Family has the perfect narrative device (and meme queen) in Anya

The anime adaptation of Tatsuya Endo’s Spy x FamilyThe season started strong. It showed both its ability to use the talents of its production personnel and its willingness to explore the source material. This allowed it to expand on its original spirit without losing its essence. It’s a pleasure to watch on many levels, from the slickly choreographed action to the genuinely sweet domestic drama and even just the swinging big band numbers of (K)now_Name’s score (especially the hilarious parody of its own theme that uses recorders to replace the string section).

The pilot episode also very clearly laid out a recurring theme for the season — that, for all of the show’s outlandishness, much of its emotional through line lies in Loid’s early discovery that parenting is hard, and requires more vulnerability than he’s accustomed to. The show continued to home in on Loid’s insecurities throughout the season, all while his save-the-world mission slid more and more into (somewhat) regular parental anxiety as he flapped about his daughter’s failing grades and more, keeping her happy and maintaining the image of a good parent.

Not long after, in Spy x Family’s second episode, its pretend family unit was completed by the arrival of the assassin Yor (aka “The Thorn Princess”), a delightful combo of genuinely terrifying lethality as well as something of a klutz, who guzzles wine by the bottle and breaks heels mid-drunken brawl, frequently failing to recognize her own ungodly strength, not to mention hilariously daydreaming about solving menial problems through murder. It’s funny that Yor’s often bizarre support only stresses Loid out even more, though her displays of inhuman strength barely raise an eyebrow. The show’s one-line sell — in my mind anyway — is that it’s a comedy that riffs on the mix of espionage and domestic drama of works like Americans Mr. & Mrs. SmithA spy and assassin make a pretend domestic life while hiding their identities. The key to making the story work, however, isn’t just the tension of the parents’ mutual deception, but that of their adopted child Anya.

Image: Wit Studio/CloverWorks

Some of the best comedy around Anya, who’s secretly a telepath and the only person fully in the know for the course of the series, comes purely from her reactions; the show’s goofiest expressions are reserved for her. As well as being plain adorable, Anya’s attempts to intervene often lead to a wonderful comedy of errors and other absurd moments in the context of her extremely fancy private school, an analogue of the Eton Colleges of the world in its sole purpose seeming to be the manufacturing of a new generation of the elite.

One of the show’s most straightforward pleasures can be found in the creative translations of Endo’s visual style, comic timing and ridiculous expressions into motion, which are paired with some excellent voice work, such as in an encounter between Anya and her target Damian and his sycophantic cronies. The season’s most predictable episode is the one in which her attempts at defusing hostilities fail. Better yet, the dodgeball sequence features a six-year old with the body of a JoJo protagonist. His bizarre stature is an exaggeration on what it must feel like to play sport against other kids who experienced that same growth spurt. The anime doubles down on the manga’s absurdity through its voice casting as well as its emphatic, maximalist animation and fun, frivolous reference jokes.

This is in addition to Anya’s ridiculousness. Anya also provides a wealth of reaction imagery. Having a character who has the same drama ironies as the audience adds momentum, even when the episodes are quieter. The premise of three individuals and the people they meet keeping secrets is hard to sustain without lots of inner monologue and strong visual storytelling. But Spy x Family — the comic too — avoids becoming didactic or stolid simply through how it utilizes Anya. Every idle thought becomes potential for the plot to go off the rails in some way, or for the young girl to aggressively, comically take action to help Loid accomplish the objectives of his “Operation Strix.”

Arya’s charm lies in her ability to act from the same information that the audience. She can often quiet maneuver her parents into making a change, and she is just as entertained as we are. Such access to people’s inner lives is not unlike Saiki K’s Disastrous LiveThe central character, Anya (who prefers to take care of his business), also has telepathy. However, Anya is still a child and cannot use the knowledge in any way that is proficient or even real understanding.

Image: Wit Studio/CloverWorks

Anya might be one of the best audience surrogates in recent memory, as Endo’s story (and by extension the show’s) is able to preserve dramatic tension and the potential for farce simply through the fact that Anya is a very young child. Knowing things doesn’t necessarily mean the ability to act on that knowledge, nor even understand it. Like the viewer, Anya sees the innermost thoughts of the characters and the arc through which the events of the episode are supposed to proceed — only, in her attempts to anticipate this, she often makes things spin out of control a little.

There’s a fun tension between Anya being the most knowledgeable character as well as the clumsiest, especially in a setting where intelligence is power. It’s also simply really funny to see her, a 4- or 5-year-old (her age is so far unconfirmed but she’s younger than her classmates), try and enact change on the world stage by knowingly and readily taking part in her adoptive father’s mission of espionage. Sometimes this just manifests in amusing incidents of copied language from either her peers or her parents, sometimes it results in actual heroism; the penultimate episode of the season’s first half sees her save a peer from drowning. She is able to use her good instincts and has become proficient enough at making things happen by the end. During an outing to an aquarium, she quietly assists Loid on a mission she knows is happening parallel to their trip, by acting like she’s been kidnapped by his target in order to provoke a comically violent intervention from Yor.

While in that regard Anya’s telepathy has become a benefit to her and those around her, the series’ writers rightly explore it as a crutch, a way for her to avoid working. She doesn’t have a natural aptitude for anything in particular, used to copying answers and the language of everyone around her. Add to that the fact she is only five years old and has a short attention span. Things can quickly get confusing and lead to different goals. Children in Spy x Family don’t always talk like children, because this is a comedy, so it’s striking when the show leans into Anya’s most childlike qualities in that way.

Image: Wit Studio/CloverWorks

As an extension of this, Anya’s telepathy sometimes simply feels like an allegory for the eerie emotional sensitivity of children. In the ninth episode, “Show Me How in Love You Are,” Loid passes off one of Anya’s observations as such. But, she has much more insight into her adoptive parents’ ludicrous, hilarious flights of fancy, as even the most normal parent-child conversations can lead to fantastical thoughts like Yor imagining a handbag dog wielding a combat knife against her child. It also works on this level with her peers, wealthy snobs who mock Anya’s (fake) upbringing. Her knowledge doesn’t always give her an advantage — sometimes it only provokes anxiety, and that allows her room to grow as an actual character rather than serve as a narrative device alone.

Because of her telepathy, Anya’s the only person who knows (but maybe doesn’t fully grasp) the scope of what’s happening and its importance, and her makeshift family’s part in it. Seeing her catalyze some kind of change in these people is also one of the show’s greatest charms. Anya may not be able to fully change the course of things in her parents’ place of work, but she can confront them with those buried feelings, in that clumsy way of hers. Even in the episodes that take the focus off of her attempts to save the world on her father’s behalf, her observations drive the other characters to look inward. Her observations often provoke something in Loid and Yor that they’re unsure they’re able to talk about with anyone else, given the solitary nature of their professions and the need to focus only on the mission at hand. Their bosses require that they only use their domestic responsibilities as weapons. They are unable to share their affection for this quieter, more intimate life. Anya is by default their closest and most sincere confidante.

It’s but one of many layers of Spy x Family’s delights — I haven’t even brought up the family dog named Bond — and the second half of this first season is sure to bring many more treats that play with what a typical outing can turn into when this family is involved, whether that’s extreme tennis matches or doomed holiday cruises. When the new episodes do arrive, we’ll be right there with Anya, reveling in seeing both sides of these stories.