Name: Spy x Family season 1 episode 18
Director: Ryō Kodama
Released: 2022-11-05T21:00:00

The eighteenth episode of Spy x Family sees Twilight breaking into the Eden Academy to tamper with the test papers in order to make sure that Anya passes her exams. The episode is now streaming on Netflix.

Recap

The upcoming mid-term examinations are announced at the school, covering a total of four subjects. The top two performing students will be awarded Stellas, while the ones who fail will receive Tonitrus Bolts.

With that, the history quizzes from the other day are handed to the students. A confident Anya walks to receive her test paper, only to find out that she has failed.

She will be attending extra classes after school, whereas Desmond, on the other hand, has passed the quiz with a solid score.

Though Anya is a bit sad, she now finally knows whose mind she needs to read when it comes to passing the history quiz.

On her way back home, she notices the position of the moon, and upon asking her father, Loid/Twilight, she learns that it’ll be a new moon in two weeks. On nights like these, Anya loses her power to read minds.

So, Anya can’t rely on Desmond and the other students. She must work hard if she wants to score well in the coming mid-term examinations.

Even Loid is worried about the failure of Operation Strix, as everything depends on whether Anya passes the exams or not.

Yor remembers that she had asked Yuri if he could teach Anya. He was quite enthusiastic about it.

Yuri pays a visit only for his sister’s approval. He is not that excited to teach Anya, as she is not Yor’s biological daughter. Loid grabs the chance to leave them alone and pursue his other missions.

Initially, Anya opts to read minds and solve the difficult problems put forth by Yuri. She starts focusing once she recalls that she won’t be able to use her powers on the day of the exams.

Yuri soon acknowledges that Anya doesn’t really like studying, but his story of how knowledge has helped him today inspires Anya to work hard.

Despite Anya’s valiant efforts, she fails to understand what Yuri is teaching. Yuri gives up and leaves to focus on his own mission.

Loid comes back home to discover that Anya spent time studying ‘Foreign Language,’ a subject that is not part of the mid-term examination.

Two weeks later, the exams commenced, and Loid as Twilight decided to tamper with Anya’s papers in order to save Operation Strix from failing. He disguises himself as a school teacher in hopes of breaking into the highly secured Eden Academy.

Things go sideways when Twilight notices an amateur spy sneaking into the Eden Academy. Calling himself Daybreak, this new spy vows to be Twilight’s nemesis and someone who will beat him one day.

The overconfident Daybreak makes a number of mistakes while entering the school, and Twilight covers them up so that he can learn more about him and whose organization he belongs to.

Twilight even backs him up by offering him a fake ID that will give him access to the building. He later intentionally gets knocked out by Daybreak near the room where the exam papers are kept to observe what he is up to.

Twilight soon learns that Daybreak is here to forge the papers of Desmond’s kids. He intervenes when Daybreak thinks of making a mistake as stupid as signing his autograph on these papers.

Twilight claims that he won’t tell anyone about Daybreak and wonders if he should attack immediately. Daybreak though confesses that he wants him to let everyone know that he was the one who successfully forged these papers.

Daybreak is desperate to climb the ranks of his spy organization and rival Twilight. He leaves believing that this mission was successful.

Twilight goes back to focusing on his own task at hand and discovers that Daybreak came all the way to make sure that Desmond’s kids fail the exam. He assumes that Daybreak was hired by Donovan’s rival organization.

Twilight discovers that Desmond’s kids are quite good at studying. For the sake of Operation Strix, he changes the answers in their papers back to the original ones.

On the day of the result, Anya looks for her ranking confidently, knowing that her father must’ve tampered with the papers for her to pass.

She looks at the results and finds out that she barely passed all the examinations. Though she was happy, her father wasn’t, but in his mind, he was glad that at least Anya won’t get expelled.

Twilight didn’t change Anya’s answers. He thought that she is trying very hard, and he should show some gratitude.

Meanwhile, Daybreak gets fired for not completing the mission, unaware that Twilight changed the answers once he left.

Review

A way better episode than previous ones where the plots were poles apart from each other.
Though the story takes a long time to dive deep into Anya’s past, the viewers finally get some more out of it as the anime shows the weakness her powers possess.
Yuri and Twilight together are always a treat. Even Yuri alone, as his character takes the element of comedy to another level, though it’s over-the-top sometimes.
The character of Daybreak seems to be a one-off but was an entertaining addition as the viewers get to see what an amateur spy looks like in a show full of skilled combatants.
Daybreak’s presence also points out another faction in the play that is against WISE, Donovan Desmond, and the Secret Police. Thus, making the plot a lot more complicated, mysterious and interesting.