Spy×Family 26

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis

Yor reports in from an assassination mission, only to have one of the injured goons shoot her in the butt. As such, she comes home in great pain, but can’t reveal her injury. Twilight (Loid) assumes Yor is unhappy and decides to ask her on a date. Yor agrees for the training. Twilight hires Franky to be Anya’s babysitter. However, Yor’s mood has not improved with the passage of the night, leaving Twilight scrambling. Anya worries about her parents, so she convinces Frankie that they should tail them.

Twilight immediately detects Anya and Frankie, but decides to ignore it. Of more immediate concern is how Yor’s mood isn’t getting better. Further, she refuses to sit, even at the theater or for a boat ride. Eventually, the date ends up at a fancy restaurant, where Yor “hover sits”. The restaurant refuse to let Frankie in due to the dress code and Anya’s age. Anya refuses to leave after telepathically detecting someone recognizing Yor as an assassin who needs to be killed.

The waiter, a survivor from Yor’s earlier mission, tries to kill her with a puffer fish cocktail. However, Yor’s tolerance for poison is so high, all it does is numb her pain, allowing her to enjoy her evening with Loid. The assassin waiter decides to make a second attempt. However, Anya’s telepathy allows her to thwart him. He decides to give up on a life of crime. Meanwhile, Yor and Loid’s date ends. However, the next day, Yor’s pain is back, as are Twilight’s worries.

Thoughts/Review

Man, even though I’m mostly current on the manga, I still loved seeing this story in animated form in Spy×Family 26.

Modifications to the Source Material

Since I’m current with the volumes of the manga that Viz has released to date, I decided I’d check to see how the adaptation of Spy×Family 26 was to the source manga. This story was taken from Volume 3’s Extra Mission 2 omake chapter. The adaptation is pretty much spot-on accurate. There is a tiny bit of padding done during Loid’s (Twilight) and Yor’s date to remind us that Frankie and Anya are tailing them. In the manga, these date moments were just tiny, single frame elements. As such, I had zero problems with this padding for time.

I did have one minor quibble though. When Anya confronts the defeated, assassin-waiter at the end, she starts to say her own name as the person the guy should leave alone. In the manga, Anya references Yor, which does make more sense. However, maybe the manga originally said the same thing as the anime, but Viz changed it. I don’t know. Assuming Viz’s adaptation of the manga was correct, I don’t know why the anime would change whom Anya referenced. That aside, it is a very minor quibble.

Painful Date

I’ve had several, stupid injuries of various types over the last couple of months. Some of them have been re-injured and are pretty painful. As such, I couldn’t help but feel Yor’s pain in Spy×Family 26. When I wrote my review of Volume 3, I noted that Yor must have treated her injury. Now she has to live with the pain of it. I get the humor of the moment, and I certainly don’t object to it. However, I couldn’t laugh, thanks to the aforementioned injuries of mine. 😅

Still, I did enjoy how this moment kept Twilight off balance. Obviously, there’s no way he would have thought of a scenario in which Yor was shot. So watching Loid flail amused me a great deal.

As to Anya, she does her usual thing. I do like how she uses her telepathy to her advantage. As such, the way she defeats an assassin works for me. I’ve heard it said that kids can be little terrors. And here, Anya literally became the bane of the assassin’s existence. 😂

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In the end, Spy×Family 26 does a great job of picking up things right where Season 1 ended. (You can catch my video review of Season 1 HERE!) I really enjoyed this episode, even if I couldn’t laugh at Yor’s pain. I’m so thankful for a faithful adaptation and am looking forward to the next episode.