thoughts on the latest spy x family chapter?
i have A LOT of thoughts so if you’d like to hear them keep reading!
what i do find most interesting is franky’s commentary on the obscurity of war in the eyes of soldiers. it sets the framework for loid’s future as a spy. now, hear me out you might be thinking… what the hell do you mean? but his words are relevant.
franky recounts a study where people felt empathy after seeing a video of a man being slapped. however, once these people were told the man was slapped because he cheated on his girlfriend they felt pleasure upon watching the video. the point of franky bringing up the study was to show how the info we are given completely changes our attitudes and perceptions. differences in information are what ultimately drives people apart.
essentially the study was an analogy for the war between the east and west. soldiers fight based on what their respective countries have told them but in franky’s eyes it’s unfair and pointless that the east and west are at war because as he says in the panel below “they tell us to hate each other. so we fight. and then we die. it’s the most pointless thing in the world.”
loid’s response is that ostania started the war, franky says that in ostania they say westalis started the war. this angers loid because from his perspective everything that happened to his friends and family is the fault of ostania. franky notices his very obvious anger and clarifies that all he thinks is that war is pointless as no one really knows what the truth behind the war is. after all, he and loid are merely foot soldiers. how could they know why the war really started in the first place?
and you know what franky is right. it doesn’t matter if westalis or ostania started it because people on both sides die. innocent people die thinking they are fighting for a good cause all because of these differences in information. that is what franky is against, he could care less who actually started what because innocent people end up being used as chess pieces for those higher up in the food chain.
loid confronts franky and mentions his dead friends only for franky to say “well i’m in the same boat.” this links back to his previous statement “and then we die. it’s the most pointless thing in the world.” that statement already made it clear to me that franky himself must have experienced a similar loss to loid’s. once again backing up that civilians in both westalis and ostania have suffered because of the war and that loid is yet to realise that the people over the border share similar experiences to him.
and you know what franky’s response triggers in loid? even more rage. rage that the enemy would ever feel anything close to the pain he felt that day because again to loid the ostanians can’t feel what he felt because to him they started this. they are what caused that hardship. they are what caused his friend’s deaths.
so obviously from everything we’ve read so far, loid clearly doesn’t like ostanians very much because he perceives them to be the cause of everything that happened to the people he loved. that is until he reunites with his friends. his friends who are supposedly dead only… they aren’t dead and they’re standing there, living and breathing.
loid is surprised understandably, but reaches out to them and asks if they’d like to go to dinner in the town over. his friends refuse and say they can’t as they’re being deployed that night. this disappoints loid but he’s simply happy that they’re alive and well.
loid’s relief however doesn’t last long at all because his friends do die out in battle. the reason according to loid is westalis’ poor organisation of the operation and just like that as quickly as they came back into his life they leave. it is upon their loss, a confirmed loss, that he realises how the way he viewed the war was wrong. his final meeting with his friends paired with his conversation with franky make him realise his own ignorance.
franky’s words clearly get through to him and at this point he understands what he really meant to say in the forest. war won’t solve anything, it won’t bring back the people dearest to him. and so he stops seeking out the revenge he aimed for from the start. this part of the manga marks a change in loid, specifically a change in his motivations.
loid decides that he will stand for the people who have it the worst. he decides to stand for children because any war is a war against children, a war against their childhood. he understands that very well after experiencing it himself.
that’s why this chapter is so important, it helps us to see how exactly loid became twilight.
anyway i have SO MUCH more i could say about this chapter but,,, we would be here forever. i tried to summarise my thoughts i know it is very long 😭😭😭
