Mission: Yozakura Family

Episode 6

Ayaka Kirisaki is, in many ways, the perfect ingredient to add to the already eclectic stew of the cast of Mission: Yozakura Family. She is equal parts loveable goofball, manic idiot, and superhuman killing machine—which is what makes her feel like such a natural fit to the dynamic of Taiyo and Mutsumi's day-to-day life. Sure, she's constantly attempting to murder Taiyo with her infinite supply of poisonous throwing needles, but that sort of scenario has become utterly blasé to our heroes, at this point. If anything, the most galling element of Ayaka's intrusion into Taiyo and Mutsumi's lives is the fact that Kyoichiro so casually sicced this rabid fangirl of an assassin on Taiyo in the first place. It's not the least bit surprising, mind you, but the two are still understandably pissed.

Thus, Ayaka becomes more of an enjoyably zany thorn in the kids' sides than anything else, functioning with all of the genuine threats that Wile E. Coyote poses against the Roadrunner. This makes it very easy to laugh at the many ways she tries to kill poor Taiyo in this episode—though none of those gags are as funny as the one where Ayaka ends up falling in love with Mutsumi as well. The best joke in the whole episode comes when Ayaka's brain short-circuits as she tries to reconcile her opposing murder-love drives while simultaneously eating ice cream straight from Mutsumi's hands. This family, I tell ya.

The second half of the episode switches gears by picking back up with Big Sis Shion, whose 80-hour gaming marathon kicked off Ayaka's introduction. This week, Taiyo discovers Shion's video game obsession serves a very practical purpose—as the woman has somehow created a system where her games serve as bespoke digital interfaces through which to channel her very real hacking missions. For instance, a co-op Mario ripoff that ends with Taiyo QTE-ing a Kyoichiro-Train to death ends up with a real runaway subway train being stopped before injuring anyone. Likewise, a convoluted multi-player beat 'em up somehow leads to Taiyo and Shion stopping the oncoming assault of an Apache helicopter.

No, it doesn't make a single goddamned lick of sense but that's hardly a problem when the adventure still ends up being this fun. Shion has quickly solidified herself as one of my favorite of the Yozakura siblings and I'm excited to see what other wacky quests she will drag Taiyo and her sister into next. With any luck, they'll get to murder even more Mini-Kyoichiros. Everybody wins!

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Mission: Yozakura Family is currently streaming on Hulu in the United States and on Disney+ in other regions.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.