Loid Forger’s luck with Operation Strix has been unclear as of late Spy x Family arcs, and I’ve been enjoying the story’s renewed focus. Although the series often devolves into a slice-of-life mix with a looming plot, I greatly appreciated Tatsuya Endo’s deliberate pacing. But with the focus returning to the Desmond family and their crucial connections to each of the Forgers, it’s fascinating to see how Endo teases out their dynamics with each other and with Ostanian society. While perhaps not as exciting as recent arcs, the Desmond family’s secrets are beginning to emerge in Spy x Family.
Operation Strix is ​​the Westalian intelligence mission to broker peace with Ostania, primarily through Donovan Desmond, president of his country’s National Unity Party. To emphasize the difficulty and rarity of encounters with Donovan and his clan, Tatsuya Endo carefully developed other story arcs in Spy x Family to build the manga world around the plot. But beyond simpler, crowd-pleasing moments like the Red Circus or the Mole Hunt Arcs, I like the complicated, smaller glimpses into the Desmond family and Ostania’s secrets in Spy x Family.
Secrets are the currency of the Desmond family in Spy x Family
Each chapter shows new tips
Since Spy x Family chapter #103, I saw Spy x Family introduce new twists on established characteristics about Ostania and the Desmonds to spice up the plot. This includes teases from Project Apple escape suspects, Desmond’s incredibly tense family dinners, Damian’s loving butler Jeeves, and even some interesting secrets like Melinda Desmond’s. I’m starting to see a collection of impressions left from previous Spy x Family arcs blend with the current graphwith uncertain terms as to the first major development.
We could all guess the tension in the Desmond family due to Donovan’s icy encounter in the Imperial Scholars Mixer Arc. Melinda’s complicated behavior after the Red Circus Arc adds a more anxious and complex impression, but there’s still more to see. With the most powerful family in Spy x Family conspire to have their hands in everything from the government to bankrupt pharmaceutical companies, It’s worth taking stock of everything they’ve been up to lately. To me, Tatsuya Endo seems to lock in the focus, bringing these elements together after the recent tragic arc of Henry and Martha’s love story.
Project Apple is a recurring fixture in the Spy x family
Belle the Seal could be the last new tip
Project Apple was touted as a top-secret military research project to produce highly intelligent animals, resulting in Bond Forger’s strange gift of precognition. In Spy x Family Chapter #78, Donovan and the Desmonds’ uncertain connection to Project Apple is teased when Sylvia Sherwood brings former test canine Aaron to meet with Loid. But in chapter #103, with Belle, a highly intelligent seal, escaping and beginning a suspicious and high-profile search, Loid is right to suspect that Project Apple may not be a finished Ostanian mission.
Project Apple may be officially closed, but it’s clear that parts of the operation are still ongoing.
With Project Apple’s previous glimpses into land and aquatic animals and teases of owls and eagles, a multifaceted intelligence-gathering unit comes to mind first for me. But with Belle’s gratitude to Yor for giving directions to the ocean in Spy x Family chapter #103 and Bond’s memories of cruel treatment in his time as Subject 8, still leaves new traumas in its subjects. Project Apple may be officially shut down, but it’s clear that parts of the operation are still ongoing, possibly at the secret request of Donovan Desmond.
But the revelations about Belle the Seal were three months ago, on August 18, 2024. There have been few additional revelations about the Project Apple connection since then. Spy x Familywith dozens of chapters between the substantive provocation of chapter 78 and the previous chapters in question. Instead, after this crucial moment, Spy x Family focuses on Damian Desmond and how the plot weighs on him.
Damian Desmond gets the attention he needs in recent chapters
Scion Boy and loving butler Jeeves
Although his family position effectively makes him a political prince in Ostania, Damian Desmond’s upbringing is a lonely one. His father, Donovan, is often absent, with few pleasant encounters, and Melinda, despite her internal monologue suggesting conflicting feelings, shows genuine care for the boy. Jeeves, Damian’s butler, gives the boy the chance to hang out with friends and even a confidant to whom he tells his secrets. Spy x Family chapter #104.
Despite these developments, Damian’s adventure in chapter 104 was essentially a side story, but with Crucial hints from her frayed relationship with the Desmonds. Despite Damian’s introduction as a pompous child idolized by his Eden Academy classmate, his feelings about everything, including dinners with Melinda and his possible childhood crush on Anya Forger, paint a more vulnerable picture. This vulnerability helped me sympathize with him, with more questions about whether he can repair his dynamic with the Desmonds, with a subsequent chapter addressing this directly.
Desmond’s family ties show tension in Spy x Family
Dinner with deafening silence
Although it took years of bi-weekly manga chapters to get a proper Desmond family reunion, Spy x Family chapter 106 showed the family having a surprise dinner together. Donovan spends his free time with his family, sharing one of the most tense dinner scenes I have ever observed. The table placement, with Donovan and Demetrius sharing a corner opposite Martha and Damian, suggests opposing points of view and an almost threatening dynamic. Donovan’s paranoia is on full display, with suspicious glances at Melinda hinting at, but never confirming, why their relationship is fractured. Spy x Family.
The Desmond family dinner scene is an easy target for fan theories that don’t seem far-fetched given the context of the series. With characters like Anya and Bond being test subjects with mental powers, it doesn’t seem unusual to suspect that Donovan and Demetrius could communicate telepathically. Given Donovan’s suspicious behavior towards Loid Forger in Chapter 37 on their first meeting, this only fuels the fire of speculation. But as for Melinda’s interest in the matter, things remain unclear about the depth of the Desmond family’s secrets. and how she feels about it in Spy x Family.
Melinda’s fortune-telling hobby on Spy x Family is fascinating
Glimpsing the Future of Friendship War Schemes
With Spy x Family chapter #107 featuring a crushing reunion of Ostanian’s top luminaries, Melinda Desmond’s surprise reveal as a fledgling psychic is especially strange. As the series brings the Forgers to Berlint’s annual Winter Sheep Festival, Loid meets with high-ranking Ostanian officials in their corporations, military institutions, and Berlint’s political apparatus. Although Loid primarily hopes to meet with Melinda to help Yor build bonds, he separates himself from the Forgers to spend more time with his new connections. Meanwhile, Anya and Yor opt for free fortune telling, discovering Melinda’s alter ego, Selena.
Tatsuya Endo’s answer to the previous chapter’s questions is a smoke bomb, change of scenery, and more questions.
Unlike all the others, this secret revelation seems especially disconcerting in Spy x Family. Each previous chapter, except Franky’s interlude in chapter 105, has introduced key elements of the Desmond family secrets into Spy x Family. Project Apple may be operating in secret. Damian and Melinda have a strained relationship with Donovan and Demetrius, but Melinda’s clandestine work as a psychic is a confusing surprise. Tatsuya Endo’s answer to the previous chapter’s questions is a smoke bomb, change of scenery, and more questions.
But it all reminds me why I love Spy x Family and what the series means to me. It confidently built a world around its plot, with moving parts in play using Endo’s wonderfully realized characters. The result is an action-comedy series with a cast reminiscent of a high-profile TV drama, where it can create multiple subplots in each chapter, meaning exciting revelations on the horizon. But it also means I can settle for exciting moments and devastating tragedies while waiting for other interesting developments in Spy x Family.