Spy×Family 29

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis

While in the cafeteria, Becky informs Anya that if Anya does poorly in the upcoming tests, Anya could be sent to a different class with students who underperform. They overhear two students talk about a legendary chef making an infamous dessert called the Pastry of Knowledge. It can apparently make the consumer an Imperial Scholar. Becky and Anya race to the school’s other cafeteria to buy these macrons. Damian, Emile, and Ewen join the race, only to learn they are too late. George bought the last macron set.

The group guilt George into sharing, but there are five of them and only four macarons. As such, they play Trump (Old Maid) to see which of the five will get to eat a macaron. Anya uses her telepathy to insure she never gets the Joker card, meaning Damian loses. When Anya hears him thinking that she must be a mind reader, she decides to let him have another go. This time, Anya takes the Joker on purpose, but has a terrible poker face. To that end, Damian has pity on her and loses on purpose. The kids eat the macarons, but they have no effect.

Elsewhere, Franky gives Twilight info. Twilight passes on helping Franky find a woman’s (Kacey) cat. As such, Franky decides to do it himself with different gadgets he’s made. Yor runs into him on her lunch break and decides to help. In the end, it is Yor’s assassin skills that get the Kacey’s cat. Franky returns the cat, only to discover Kacey is in a relationship with another man.

Meanwhile, the girls at City Hall notice how cheerful Yor is. Their manager summons Yor to his office to take a call from her boss in the Garden assassin organization.

Thoughts/Review

Another lovely episode in Spy×Family 29, though the subtitle adaptations were trash in spots.

Modifications to the Source Material

Source manga chapters 42 and 43 were used to make Spy×Family 29. As is normal for this series, the anime adaptation was pretty much spot on to the manga. And that’s how it should be.

Because there are no significant differences on the anime side, I would like to complain about the subtitles. One of the things I despise about “localizers” is how they will change things just because they can. For example, when Franky returns the cat to Kacey, her boyfriend addresses her by name. Yet in the subtitles, it seems like the localizer went, “Yeah, this looks like some toxic, white male. As such, he wouldn’t address his girlfriend by name. No, he’d call her babe!” And thus it was in the subtitles. Why can’t adapters just be accurate but readable? There were other examples I could use, but I’m pressed for time.

To be fair, the Viz adapter for the manga did the same bloody thing. I don’t have a copy of the Japanese to verify the text, but I suspect that even there, the guy called his girl “Kacey” not “babe”. This kind of trash adaptation really pisses me off.

Magical Macarons

Because macarons often come up in anime and manga, I went to a cake shop and bought some once. Can’t say I was impressed. Nevertheless, macarons are the target of the first story in Spy×Family 29. And it made for a cute story where Anya and Damian are pitted against each other while playing Old Maid. Anya’s use of telepathy to get a win made me laugh. But her fear of her ability becoming known caused her to allow for a do-over. I appreciate that her thinking is all done at the kid logic level, as it should be.

On the other side, Damian again shows that he’s got a huge soft spot for Anya. So while he may have been angry over his first loss, he took pity on Anya in the rematch and purposefully took the L. I appreciated Anya realizing this and offering to share her macaron with him, even though as they found out later, these cookies had no magical affect on intelligence.

Failed Romance Attempt

Not going to lie, but I’m already weary of the “Franky sucks with woman” trope shown in Spy×Family 29. Granted, I already knew this story from the manga, but I REALLY hope this story aspect gets dropped. I’d like for Franky to meet someone good, even if at first, he doesn’t realize it.

That aside, the interesting part of this second story deals with the Garden organization. I had forgotten that Franky mentioned to Twilight that one of Franky’s sources apparently died at the hands of a Garden assassin. (I wonder if it was Yor.) What was really interesting was that Twilight (and subsequently WISE) don’t view Garden as anything more than a rumor. That means that Garden is REALLY good and keeping off everyone’s radar. No wonder Yor didn’t trigger any flags when Twilight pulled all of the info on her.

Speaking of Yor, she comes across as clumsy in the episode, but then the assassin in her comes out when she helps Franky catch Kacey’s cat. And then she gets the call for a mission. Can’t wait to see that animated!

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In the end, Spy×Family 29 was a fun episode, telling two, separate stories. While the macaron story with its Old Maid battle was the funner episode, the second story setting up Yor’s mission was the more interesting one for that alone. The stuff with Franky was just “meh.”