Spy×Family 14

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis

Yor knocks out one terrorists and sends Kieth and his dog fleeing. Anya apologizes to her adoptive mother for leaving her. However, when Anya sees the future though the big white dog who saved her, she realizes her papa, Twilight, is going to die in a bombing unless she does something. As such, she tells Yor that she’s going for toilet paper for Twilight and flees on the dog.

Meanwhile, WISE gets more information to stop Kieth. The dog takes Anya to where the bombing is to take place. Anya laments she can’t tell time. She and the dog find the apartment. Anya discovers a tiny “window” in the wall with a trap door to get in. On the inside, Anya realizes she cannot disarm the bomb on the door. As such, she uses ketchup to leave a cryptic message on the door for Twilight.

Anya and the dog retreat to a safe distance. WISE comes to the apartment, but don’t understand Anya’s message. Nevertheless, Twilight urges caution and peeks through the “window” and sees the bomb. WISE leaves the area for the Secret Police. Twilight takes on the identity of the minister Kieth’s organization wanted to kill to start a war. Kieth takes the bait and pursues the disguised Twilight, sicking his dog on Twilight.

Thoughts/Review

Adapted from manga chapters 20 and 21, Anya gets into more adventures in Spy×Family 14. Now, she’s even deeper in the terrorist muck.

Anya the Hero

I really enjoyed how Anya got to be the hero in Spy×Family 14. But what’s more, I love that Anya isn’t made into more than she is. For a start, she doesn’t know how to tell time. So she doesn’t know how much longer she has before the bomb goes off. That sets up a tense situation for her where she wants to do something, but doesn’t know what to do.

Then there’s the apartment. She almost set off the bomb, had it not been for the dog. Her near mistake felt very natural. Then on the inside of the apartment, she plans on cutting the bomb’s wires, like she’s seen on TV. But as she learns, reality and TV aren’t the same.

Further, she doesn’t know how to disarm a bomb. So she does what she can — leave a message in ketchup. And then she and the dog get out of the potential blast zone.

I don’t think I mentioned this in my review of volume 4 of the manga, but my only problem was the convenient, tiny window with no glass, with only a trap door (or maybe small, wooden shutter) to close it. This window opens to an interior hallway. The manga did show that the next apartment had a full-sized window to that same hallway. However, there’s no mistaking plot convenience at work with the tiny window.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

I’m super behind, so let me wrap up my review of Spy×Family 14 with some final thoughts.

• The scene with Handler talking with the terrorists had more impact in the anime than the manga. A good anime adaptation should do things like that.
• Twilight does his usual thing here in terms of his role in the story.
• Yor has some lovely moments with Anya, which I liked.
• Yuri had an interesting cameo in the episode that didn’t go anywhere.
• While I had some words for the English adaptation of the previous episode, I didn’t really have any issues with this episode. Yeah, they used “shit” again in the subtitles. “Kuso” in Japanese can be translated as “crap” or “shit”. Considering it was used in the Japanese in a profane way, it made sense considering whom it was coming from.

In the end, Spy×Family 14 is another, lovely episode where Anya gets to be the hero in a realistic way. And she managed to keep her esper powers a secret.