SPY x FAMILY: Mission 11 – Stella

Ladies and gentlemen, today I’d like to discuss SPY x FAMILY: Mission Eleven by author Tatsuya Endo and published by Shueisha.

The anime SPY x FAMILY is a slice of life, action-comedy centered around the Forger Family, which includes Loid, Anya, and Yor Forger.

It’s not only the most in-demand animation currently this season and fans are showing their appreciation of the show like crazy on social platforms such as Twitter, Meta, and Pinterest on a daily.

Loid Forger a.k.a Twilight voiced by (Takuya Eguchi) is the greatest spy for the nation of Westalis and has been given a mission Operation Strix to get close to a particular figure of the Nation Unity Party, Donovan Desmond.

To begin his mission, Loid needs to adopt a child and get married within a week, imagine lol… 

That is where we meet Anya Forger voiced by (Atsumi Tanezaki) a young girl who is also a telepath. Anya is certainly the life of the show however due to her powers, she’s been treated poorly and is misunderstood a lot of times because of this. 

She’s funny, adorable, honest, and lazy yet loves anything that has to do with spies as this gives her excitement. Keep in mind no one knows about her abilities.

Eventually, we meet Yor Briar voiced by (Saori Hayami) a government worker who secretly goes by the name of Thorn Princess, an assassin. As for which organization she works for we have yet to find out but she agrees to marry Loid without knowing that he’s a spy. Anya is excited.

Now that I’ve introduced everyone, let’s talk about mission eleven; Stella.

The episode starts with Loid reading the results from Anya’s class tests which she all failed due to her trying to cheat by using her telepath abilities but this isn’t helping at all.

Loid recalls the importance of Operation Strix and what the requirements are to make this mission a success, Anya needs to achieve eight Stella stars so Loid tries to find the easiest ways to make this a possibility. 

By finding what talents Anya has such as music and sports but quickly finds that his daughter has none of these. To make up for what she lacks, he intends to make her do community service.

At this point of the show it’s clear we are in for another episode full of laughter and tears of joy but the episode quickly takes a sharp turn when we meet a young boy named Ken, using crutches.

The young boy accidentally falls into the pool opposite the adults, so no one hears him and he can’t even swim by himself because he has injured one of his legs.

As the young boy is helplessly sinking to the bottom of the pool, Anya hears the boy’s desperate plea for help and unconsciously tells this to Loid hoping that would run to the rescue however, Loid is surprised to hear this and questions if this is one of her jokes.

Anya out of realization notices that she can’t tell Loid about her abilities and runs towards the pool making up whatever excuse.

Now, this is the scene that broke my heart at the same time, solidifying SPY x FAMILY as one of my favorite animations this season.

As Anya arrives at the pool, the expression on her face is telling. You can tell as the audience that Anya is acting as if she’s happy to be at the pool but is pretending whilst looking for the young boy.

The moment she figures out where he is my favorite moment even though my heart was close to breaking into two. She doesn’t even think about the consequences and immediately jumps in to save the young boy even though she cannot swim herself.

I can’t even begin to explain how I felt at the moment, I’m sure I watched that scene over ten times.

Production companies CloverWorks and Wit Studio did an incredible animation motion with the point of view and quality overall that blew my mind away.

Sure, SPY x FAMILY is best known for its great sense of humor and realistic characters but that one moment for me made all the difference. SPY x FAMILY has more to offer than a good laugh at the end of the day, it also has unbelievable humility, and ideal character growth which has had me looking forward to seeing more of the Forger Family and where they end up.

The smile that Anya gives to Loid and Yor after expressing how proud they are of her is worth every pixel. That smile brought me to tears because Anya herself was happy that her abilities saved someone.

She is eventually awarded a Stella star from Eden College for this courageous act, making the first in her class and grade.

Now that she’s received a Stella star Anya wants a dog for her gift and we are shown an interesting yet blurry scene where a dog gets a vision of the Forger family which is hard to see exactly.

One’s left to wonder, does this dog also possess some sort of ability and if so, how can it win over the Forger family as they are looking for a “tiny dog” in Anya’s words and that doggo is a massive butler lookalike lol…

Mission Eleven is for me bests of all previous episodes, even though it may not be as hilarious as the previous episode of dodge ball, the emotions invested in this episode are like a collective of everything she’s learned from Loid and Yor, to help other over herself. It only takes one moment.

I wanted to review the show after its complete season however when you feel it, and you know it: you just need to share it. A complete review will still be done, I hope you look forward to it.

Let me know what some of your favorite moments of SPY x FAMILY have been in the comments section below.

Thanks for reading…

Go SPY x FAMILY