Spy×Family

Episode 8

For those of you keeping track at home, we now have a spy pretending to be a psychiatrist, an assassin pretending to be an office worker, a psychic pretending she's not, and a secret police counterintelligence agent pretending to be a civil servant. Yes, Yor's younger brother Yuri is yet another character who is not what he seems – unless you're thinking he's a guy who loves his big sister way too much, because he absolutely is that – and at this point we probably shouldn't be surprised if Becky really is out to sabotage Loid's mission or that the spider in the corner is actually a spybot. (Please note: just because we haven't seen a spider doesn't mean one isn't there. You never know with spiders.) In a lesser show, this would start to feel like way too much, but in SPY x FAMILY it's just a perfectly acceptable level of escalation of the premise. In fact, I'd say it'd be disappointing if Yuri wasn't also hiding something from someone.

And we must admit that he's surprisingly good at being sneaky for a guy so unobservant and trusting that he never once questioned why his beloved big sister was coming home from work covered in someone else's blood. Yor does seem to be his one blind spot, though, and given that she raised him for most of his life, it feels like he's allowed to see her as something more than human – it looks more like she was basically his whole world for most of his childhood. That does make it sting more that she forgot to tell him about a marriage that purportedly happened a year ago, but he's so gullible where she's concerned that he's willing to buy that she just…forgot. It's presented as kind of suspect and Yuri's one weakness in the episode, but honestly, when my middle sister is busy with her kids she does the same thing, so I'm surprisingly willing to accept his understanding. (Mind you, she forgot to tell me they got a new duck, but you get the idea.) For Loid, however, it's utterly mind-blowing that Yuri would just take Yor's pitiful excuse and run with it, which brings us to the best part of the episode: Loid and Yuri trying to outthink each other.

I'd say Loid is winning the game thus far. He's far more suspicious than Yuri will ever be, immediately questioning where Yuri works and his story about going to not-Hungary (Hugaria), while Yuri doesn't appear to notice that Loid is agreeing with a cover story out of the government's handbook on cover stories. Yes, Yuri is a bit the worse for his glass of wine, but we could argue that as a secret police member, he shouldn't have let his guard down even that little bit. Plus he's clearly not keeping up with the latest changes to the book, as opposed to Loid, which makes him vulnerable to a spy of Twilight's caliber. He's also perhaps not great at thinking on his feet, since I'm sure we can all see how his demand for Loid and Yor to kiss in front of him is going to backfire. Think about it – does he really want to see the sister he idolizes smooch the man he already resents and hates?

Fortunately, it looks like the laws of small children will kick in next week, so Anya may save us all from that scenario by wandering in at the exact worst time. And Yuri's lack of forethought may be more of an indication of how crazed he gets when Yor is involved rather than an appraisal of his skills; we did see him wield those skills quite effectively earlier in the episode, after all. This isn't quite on the level of the previous episodes simply because we've seen the “jealous sibling meets sibling's purported lover” storyline a lot before, but between Yor somehow cramming three dozen roses into a tiny bud vase and Anya learning fractions by applying theory to her spy cartoon, it's still pretty great…and we can only imagine how Yuri will react when he realizes that his sister married a guy who has a child.

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Spy×Family is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.