June 26th, 2022 
AstroNerdBoy Spy×Family 12
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis
Twilight visits the Subway Store (kiosk), run by an elderly operative of WISE. She gives him a new, side mission. After successfully completing the mission, an exhausted Twilight returns home. He discovers his female neighbors negatively gossiping about him and his frequent late nights or absences. As such, he decides to help his main mission by having a weekend, family outing to an aquarium.
The weekend arrives, but unfortunately, Twilight sees small symbol on the Subway Store, indicating they have a mission for him. He attempts to decline it, but gets pressured into accepting since the mission is at Berlint Aquarium. At the aquarium, Anya is very excited and happy. Unfortunately for Twilight, some of their gossipy neighbors are there and Yor invites them to hang out together.
Twilight’s mission is to recover chemical warfare plans on film, force-fed to a penguin for an enemy operative to recover. However, there at least 200 penguins in the exhibit. Anya uses her powers to detect the penguin having trouble drinking. Twilight assumes the ID of a new hire to feed the penguins. He amazes the other two workers with his skills as he locates the penguin with the film in its throat.
Twilight takes the penguin to a back area to retrieve the film. The enemy agent arrives, pretending to be a marine biologist. Twilight detects forged credentials and prevents the agent from getting the film. The agent flees, but Anya grabs him and screams for Yor. As such, Yor arrives and knocks the man out, allowing the mission to be a success.
Thoughts/Review
If you are wondering why Spy×Family 12 seems kind of out of place and a re-introduction to the series, that’s because it is. The story is from volume 2’s omake chapter. But while the story would have been better suited as the start of the next cour of the anime series, it is still good stuff.
Differences from the Source Manga
I had just read volume 2 of the Spy×Family manga prior to watching Spy×Family 12. As such, I can report on the differences between the anime and manga.
- The manga starts with Twilight heading to work and his side mission of the day. The anime replaces this with Twilight meeting with the old woman to receive his side mission objectives. I don’t have a problem with this change.
- The whole “Agent Anya” stuff at the end of the episode is anime-only. In an of itself, I didn’t have a problem. However, having Anya threaten to run away after getting into trouble for attempting to entire Twilight’s room didn’t seem right to me. I can’t imagine Anya actually threatening that, especially since she’s been so desperate to have a proper (and exciting) home.
Considering how this omake story from the manga reintroduced all of the characters and such, as I said earlier, I think this story should have been saved for the next cour of the series.
Family Teamwork
One of the things I enjoyed about Spy×Family 12 is that we get to see the Forger family acting as a team, even if unbeknownst by Yor and Twilight. As such, Anya becomes the defacto, covert leader of the family, thanks to her telepathy. As such, she’s once again able to point Twilight to the right path and let him do his thing.
While it is massively over the top, I have to admit that I enjoyed seeing Twilight instantly become knowledgeable about penguins. Not only that, but he has Lupin III disguise skills. So much as I often do with the Lupin III series, I just went with the flow and enjoyed the ride for what it was. It is thanks to the good writing, good characters, and excellent execution of the production team that makes this possible.
Of course Anya is keeping tabs on things with her telepathy. And even though Anya has no chance to stop an adult, male, enemy agent, she does the only thing she can do. Anya grabs the man, then screams for Yor. And as expected, Yor goes into mama bear mode and knocks out the enemy agent.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
I’ll write up a series review in the near future. In the meantime, I really enjoyed Spy×Family 12. I like that it was a family story, even if the final bit of the episode was a little off. Can’t wait for the next cour to drop this fall.
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Absolutely right that this belongs as the intro to a second cour… I hope my cynical fear is as groundless as I suspect, that they ran out of animation budget and weren’t sure if it would be renewed so they just repurposed it.
Thought it was funny and cute that Anya “pretends” to be the leader of her toys at the end, without noticing what you did – that she actually was the leader in this episode, even if no one but her knew it. But to me, that makes “Anya threatens to run away to get her way” even more disappointing… she was just the real leader moments ago, and now she’s being more of a US-boss-style leader (do as I say or else).
But regardless, her leadership gave us the amusing “Oh hell, that poor guy” moment* (when the enemy spy grabs Anya to shake her loose and you can see what’s about to happen), so all good. (^_~)b
(*) – I recently wanted to link Paul Reubens’ famous death scene as the vampire flunky in the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie (as part of a joke), and was lucky that instead I found a compilation of his scenes. Thinking back on the Yor-mama-bear scene, I could see a little Paul Reubens in her head, at the moment he catches up to Luke Perry: “Kill him a LOT.” (Hopefully link will jump to 1:30-1:56.)
In Anya’s mind, I don’t think she saw herself as the leader, even though she was. She wants to help her papa, but do so in a way so that her telepathy isn’t used. Anya has good instincts and is pretty smart, which makes her poor academic showing pretty amusing.
Hahaha! I remember that.
The second part of the episode is also a (pretty faithful) adaptation of an omake chapter, although a later one.
I hadn’t realized at the time that omake chapters were such an important part of the manga volumes. Considering how short they are, it makes sense that they’d have to attach them where it makes most sense.
So glad we are getting more episode.