Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Her code name is “Nightfall.” Alias Fiona Frost. Real name unknown, and unknowable. She is a spy; an international woman of mystery; a phantom in the night. A cloak, a dagger, a whisper on the wind.
She has a huge crush on her coworker, and she’s dealing with it really, really badly.
Fiona Frost (Ayane Sakura), is the first major new character to be introduced to Spy x Family since Bond near the start of this season. On the one hand, she plays into a pretty disappointing pattern of SpyFam not giving its female characters much depth outside of their relationship to Loid. (Other than Anya, who, as a girl rather than an adult woman, occupies a very different place in the narrative just inherently.)
On the other hand; this is still a romcom at the end of the day. While the aforementioned self-imposed narrative constraint remains a handicap, it is at least possible for Spy x Family to pull off some interesting tricks from within that framework. Those tricks are enough for Spy x Family‘s better episodes in this vein; it can leverage them, both for laughs and into actual character development.
We’re introduced to Fiona in a formal context. Her handler informs her that she’ll be working with Twilight for their next mission. Immediately, we get a sense for her character in that her mind begins to race with ways by which she might replace Yor—who she has not even met yet, at this point—as Loid’s “fake” wife. The message is clear from the episode’s opening shots; Fiona is catastrophically down bad, and it’s not going to get better any time soon.
Posing as one of Loid’s hospital colleagues, she shows up unannounced to the Forger household. There, she plans to try to convince Loid to abandon Yor, and take her as a wife instead. The fact that this will be a huge problem toward Operation Strix itself (which she’s fully aware of) does not seem to much bother her. In any case, it’s a doomed cause from the start simply because Loid isn’t actually there when she arrives. Instead, she spends the episode’s first few minutes trying to psyche out Yor, only for her verbal ace in the hole—some unkind comment that starts with “Dr. Forger is always saying his wife is–“—to be interrupted by Loid, Anya, and Bond arriving home from their walk.
Thus, the game changes; she switches to talking with Twilight in code (a very stupid-funny sequence where we learn that WISE agents know how to “make their mouth movements not match what they’re actually saying”, so they can communicate via lip-reading), and directly tries to get him to break it off with Yor.
All the while, Anya uses her mind-reading powers to instantly discern Fiona’s true motive, and is more than a little disturbed by what she sees.
Obviously, Fiona’s attempt to break up the Forger family does not work, and the fact that there’s a fake smile plastered across Loid’s face is cold comfort; she knows Twilight well enough to know that the “subtle body language” she can pick up on as a fellow agent means that he truly is happy with Yor and Anya. Of course, that does not necessarily mean she’s willing to accept it.
Fiona, thus, is something of a minorly tragic figure despite the silly manner in which the episode presents her woes. She’s shackled to the idea of loving a man who, in all senses, “belongs” to someone else. (There are solutions to this problem, but, well, I doubt polygamy is legal is Ostenia.) When she figures out that she has no immediate way to win, she immediately leaves, walking into a rainy afternoon, and into a downpour that looks positively freezing. Loid brings her an umbrella at the end of the episode, and she takes the opportunity to change tactics; she tells Twilight not to hold her down, and says that she thinks “playing house” has made him soft.
Of course, we all know that’s just her changing her angle. Which brings us to episode 22.
Fiona persisting in her pursuit of Twilight is not unexpected. What might be, though, is episode 22’s headlong dive into the world of illegal underground gambling tennis.
Yes, you read that correctly. In its twenty-second episode, Spy x Family effectively embeds an entire other anime inside it; something in the vain of Kaiji or Kakegurui crossed with a sports anime. Loid and Fiona’s mission is to play in an underground tennis tournament in order to gain access to the mansion of the man hosting it, an energy company heir and antiquities collector named Cavi Campbell. There, they’re to retrieve a rare painting. Why? Because the painting is related to a secret document known as the Zacharis Dossier, which contains such high-demand intel as “records of the East’s human experiments” and “the truth behind the West’s massacre of POWs”.
Pretty heavy stuff! Especially considering the remainder of this episode, which, other than a brief flash over to Anya and Yor, is a totally bonkers take on sports anime. If anything else within Spy x Family itself, it resembles that unhinged dodgeball episode from part one. But this is a significantly stronger commitment to the bit; the animation is wilder, the comedy a bit more dialed-in. This may, in fact, be the best episode of the second cour so far. Not in spite of its differences from the rest of the cour, but because of them. Even as details like Fiona’s motivation remain unchanged.
Things begin in relative simplicity, with Loid, who claims to merely “dabble” in tennis, laying a total shotgun smackdown against their first opponents in the tournament, despite those opponents being hardened warriors of the racket.
Things escalate from here; their second opponents are completely roided out on a mix of illegal steroids that makes them look like tennis-playing cousins of the Incredible Hulk.
By the episode’s halfway point, Loid and Fiona are subjected to some sort of weakening gas while locked in a room awaiting their final match. Their opponents, Cavi Campbell’s own kids, wield jet-powered rackets with extending whip handles and play on a court booby trapped in their favor. The entire thing is just wonderfully ridiculous, and the fact that we don’t see the conclusion of this arc here means that we’re probably in for another episode of tennis-themed madness when next episode rolls around.
Most importantly, this episode is fun the entire way through, in a way that it’s really felt like Spy x Family has lacked for a decent chunk of its second cour. If it takes a bizarre turn into sports anime weirdness to get SpyFam back in proper form, I’m all for it.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
The Magic Planet 