Spy x Family got the perfect narrative device (and meme queen) with Anya

polygon.com:

The anime adaptation of Tatsuya Endo’s Spy x Family started out its season strong, showing both the ability to flex the talents of its production staff and willingness to play around with the source material, expanding on it without losing its spirit. It’s a pleasure to watch on many levels, from the slickly choreographed action to the genuinely sweet domestic drama and even just the swinging big band numbers of (K)now_Name’s score (especially the hilarious parody of its own theme that uses recorders to replace the string section).

The pilot episode also very clearly laid out a recurring theme for the season — that, for all of the show’s outlandishness, much of its emotional through line lies in Loid’s early discovery that parenting is hard, and requires more vulnerability than he’s accustomed to. The show continued to home in on Loid’s insecurities throughout the season, all while his save-the-world mission slid more and more into (somewhat) regular parental anxiety as he flapped about his daughter’s failing grades and more, keeping her happy and maintaining the image of a good parent.

Not long after, in Spy x Family’s second episode, its pretend family unit was completed by the arrival of the assassin Yor (aka “The Thorn Princess”), a delightful combo of genuinely terrifying lethality as well as something of a klutz, who guzzles wine by the bottle and breaks heels mid-drunken brawl, frequently failing to recognize her own ungodly strength, not to mention hilariously daydreaming about solving menial problems through murder. It’s funny that Yor’s often bizarre support only stresses Loid out even more, though her displays of inhuman strength barely raise an eyebrow. The show’s one-line sell — in my mind anyway — is that