Spy×Family 27

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis

The dog Bond has a premonition-imagination that the power will go out and Yor will turn him over to the scientist who originally worked on him, where he will die. In reality, Yor apologizes for not having dog food, but decides to make something for him. Bond imagines this to be the cause of his death. His only way to escape this future is to find Loid (Twilight), who’s at work. As such, Bond escapes the house to find him.

After searching all day, Bond finds Twilight on a mission at the facility that experimented on Bond. Twilight decides to allow Bond to stay after the dog finds a better path in. The two complete the mission without much issue, thanks to Bond’s intuition. As such, Loid takes Bond to the store to buy stuff for Bond’s dinner. Now Bond sees a happy ending for his day.

At Eden, Damian gets up late on their day off and gets into trouble. His lackey friends, Emile and Ewen decide to spend the day with Damian by purposefully getting into trouble themselves. Housemaster Henderson observes this and has fellow teacher, Mr. Green, take the boys on a picnic. The formal naval officer takes them on a canoe and rapidly paddles them downriver to a lake, where the boys get soaked. He has them gather wood for a fire and teaches them how to make fishing poles and fish.

That night around the fire, the boys enjoy the fruits of their labors. Damian worries that he’s wasting time doing this and not studying. Green reminds him that sometimes you need to take a break. To that end, he takes them to a special part of the lake, where the stars are reflected in the water. Seeing this, Damian finally relaxes and even laughs.

Thoughts/Review

Some light, fluff material in Spy×Family 27. But it does give some character work.

Modifications to the Source Material

The story for Spy×Family 27 came from chapters 40 and 39 of the source manga. I’m not sure why the anime decided to flip the stories, but since they are solo, fluff chapters with some character work only, it doesn’t matter. Outside of that, the only noticeable changes were some padding of tiny, single panel moments in the manga. Since that had to be done for time, and the padding didn’t change anything, it isn’t an issue with me.

Bond’s Tale

In the manga, Bond’s story was fine. In Spy×Family 27, I felt the story suffers because they needed to pad things out for time. So while I understand why the anime production team added this padding, it does make for a slow craw in pacing.

The other problem with Bond’s story is that it is one of plot convenience. In such a large city, the chances of Bond finding Twilight are very small. And yes, the anime slowly depicts Bond’s search. But he does find Twilight. Further, Twilight’s mission is one to the place Bond was experimented on. Not only that, but WISE didn’t provide Twilight much information on the mission, thus giving Twilight a reason to allow Bond to help him. So while cute, everything happens because the plot demands it.

Finally, we see that Bond’s precognition powers are filled with his imagination. Yes, this is done for comedy purposes as there’s no way that Yor would ever slaughter Bond. But the dog believes this could happen, so he imagines it to be true. That’s not precognition. When the story needed comedy, we saw Bond imagining stuff. When the story needed Bond to be heroic, his powers were true. I’m not a big fan of this, though I understand why it was done.

Damian’s Tale

Thankfully, Damian’s story in Spy×Family 27 was more organic feeling. All along, Damian has desired the praise and attention of his father. To that end, becoming an Imperial Scholar is the path he feels will achieve this goal. As such, one understands Damian’s exhaustion and tardiness. He’s willing to accept punishment in order to get out of activities like going to a movie or the like. That way, he can study more.

I really liked this story because it really fleshes out Damian’s character more. We see his weaknesses and his strengths. Further, it helped me see that while Emile and Ewen are toady characters, there is a genuine friendship between the three. It is just a shame that “Damian-sama” has nothing in English to equate that isn’t cringe or wrong. I think the manga has Emile and Ewen call Damian “Boss Man” to emphasize the lackey aspect. In the anime, it is “Lord Damian”, which is terrible as Damian isn’t nobility and isn’t a titled figure.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In the end, Spy×Family 27 is a couple of stand alone stories. Bond’s story drags at times, but I really liked Damian’s story.