SMASH NOTES // Spy x Family ABRIDGED 11

EPISODE RECAP:

• OPENING SKETCH: Anya watches the Bondman vs. Thiefguy crossover special:

  • Not only do these two intellectual property powerhouses have an uncanny resemblance to Agent Twilight and Lupin III (in Persona 5 Arsene costume, no less!); their hostility toward each other is quelled upon the revelation that their mother has the same name (can somebody say… foreshadowing!)

    • Gorgana also shares an uncanny resemblance to Morgana…….hmmm……….

  • Loid tells Anya that multiverse stories are now stale and oversaturated (worst of all… cringe!!!) and storytellers should just give up on them

  • Deku dies AGAIN….but it’s not canon

• MISSION: Loid attempts to break into Eden College’s archives in order to give Anya access to their alumni healthcare plan and steal the answer sheet for her upcoming exams

  • He encounters the notorious thief, Arsene Lupin III, who is on his own mission to apprehend Agent Twilight. Loid allows this indiscrete conman to tag along as to not draw further attention to themselves

  • The archive heist goes wrong and Lupin knocks out Loid

    • Loid wakes up in a field, far outside the city and is confronted by Lupin, who is eager to rip the expositional bandage and reveal that their world is an idealized recreation of the past 

    •  The biggest revelation, however, is Lupin implying that he and Loid have the same mother and needs his help to kill her

• B-PLOT: Yuri attempts to tutor Anya as a means to further undermine Loid’s credibility as a father

  • Anya proves to be a difficult student, but the two begin to form a bond over their mutual interest of Bondman and doing their best to create a happy and comfortable life for Yor (whom Yuri expresses his “mission” to repay a debt for sacrificing her childhood over his)

  • Anya begins to show progress in her literacy skills (albeit small) and eagerness to study. She calls Yuri “Uncle” and he LOVES this, using it as an opportunity to recruit her over to his side against Loid

  • Yuri also shows progress (albeit MICROSCOPIC) in pushing back against his dependency on Yor; asserting himself as a dependable Uncle to Anya rather than a creepy surrogate husband to Yor

• STINGER: Lupin and Yuri appear to have an ongoing transactional relationship

  • Lupin teases that he has seen Agent Twilight’s “true face” and describes it as identical to Yuri’s: contorting itself helplessly in order to fit into a system that is clearly wrong. Lupin leaves Yuri with a warning that someday he will no longer be able to afford the price of doing this

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE MULTIVERSE:

• Loid and Lupin are brothers?!?!!! Well… Lupin is a notorious liar, but let’s lay out the evidence we have so far:

  • Loid remarks in SxFA - Episode 01 that his parents abandoned him. It has yet to be revealed why, but it stands to reason that if they lived longer than in the original manga, they may have started a new life elsewhere and gave birth to Lupin

  • Yomama is introduced in MHAbridged 06 as “Mother of Creation.” This presents 2 theories:

    • Lupin is making a cheeky reference to this, OR…

    • Given that Yomama is a homunculus, was Ms. [REDACTED] Loid and Lupin’s biological mother?

• If Captain Pikachu is the Nick Fury of the JoyRide Abridged Multiverse, then Lupin (in his own words) is it’s Deadpool; with a knack for destroying the fourth wall worse than AFO could 

  • Why is Lupin so “critically ignored?” Is he a victim of his own success and become a major target of New Order? That would explain why he needs Agent Twilight’s help…

• Yuri is a founding member of Hero Society, and he may have been inspired by Anya’s Bondman comics; particularly the mask system…

• Lupin and Yuri’s transactional relationship was first revealed in Erased ABRIDGED, where Lupin apparently found and delivered Ed’s Pocket Watch as a means to investigate alchemy (something Vasily a.k.a. Overhaul would go on to master in Yuri’s name…literally)

  • Lupin and Yuri seem to have a mutual interest in pursuing immortality, albeit by different means. And we have learned through various parodies that they were both very successful; though Lupin’s own son Touchstone claims to have eclipsed him as “biggest bastard in history”

    • If Touchstone had not clutch protected Shigaraki at the end of the Meta-Liberation War for the hell of it, would circumstances have lined up to where we are today? Lupin has a “critical” butterfly effect on EVERYTHING 

• Lupin claims to change personalities based on the color of his jacket

  • The only other Lupins we’ve encountered are Arsene and Blue Jacket

    • Ryuji remarks that Lupin grew old enough to be captured and resigned to a “retirement penitentiary,” while Arsene claims to have achieved the status of a zeitgeist (immortality achieved through an idea)

    • Blue Jacket Lupin appears to be the oldest version we’ve seen so far, claiming to have temporarily retired from crime after suffering a period of discouragement and living off life insurance policies as a black-widower

  • The stinger for MHAbridged: New Order shows Red Jacket, and the possibility that there are simply multiple Lupins who are not very friendly with each other

THEMES AND SUCH:

• This was a much more light-hearted episode compared to others, but the series’ principle themes on the pressures economic systems place on the family unit (and their incompatibility) continue:

  • Loid once again must ignore his family in order to improve their quality of life, giving Yuri an opening to displace him

  • However, Yuri’s commendation for “sacrifice” despite hating Loid is called out as hypocritical by Anna, who refuses to compare the contributions of either parent

  • Yor is saddened by the revelation that Yuri has misinterpreted her acts of love as transactional and debt incurring; now bearing some responsibility for his life choices she openly criticizes

TRIVIA:

• The Bondman vs. Thiefguy sketch was originally planned for an earlier episode to tease Lupin’s impending arrival in the series; but the “same name mommy” bit gave Episode 11’s reveal more impact

• Thiefguy and Gorgana are intentionally made to look like Arsene and Morgana from Persona 5; implying they are ideas first given life from this piece of in-universe fiction

  • Gorgana also looks like Dragon Ball’s Pwar as an homage to 70’s/80’s cartoon sidekicks

• LeRoy had to re-record Lupin’s lines several times before scrapping his end of the script and completely improvising against Valentine’s recordings for Loid

  • Green Jacket Lupin was intended to be a darker meta-character in similar vein to AFO, who expressed interest in robbing the audience of their “innocence,” but was scrapped for killing Spy x Family ABRIDGED’s relatively lighter, slap-sticky tone

  • This originally intended characterization is still present in the final scene with Yuri

• Lupin replaces Agent Daybreak in the original series, who was already compared by the audience to Agent Twilight’s characterization in the Abridged series