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「ぐりほんさくせんを決行せよ」 (Gurihon Sakusen o Kekkō Seyo)
“Carry Out the Griffin Plan” 「〈鋼鉄の淑女フルメタルレディ〉」
(Furumetaru Redi)
“Fullmetal Lady”「オムライス♡」 (Omuraisu♡)
“Omelet Rice♡”
Anya’s pitfall is that when she plots a new avenue for the “Friendship Scheme”, she only has 1 attack plan, based entirely on the assumption that “Second Son” will act the way she wants him to. It’s only a matter of course that her plans fail, when she doesn’t know her target. She is only 6 or 7, so this is what you’d expect from a young kid-it would be unnatural if she could give Twilight a run for his money in planning for multiple scenarios. It is nice to see her character writing so consistent in showing how her maturity level is at odds with her abilities.
Anya takes Becky’s romantism “If you have wings you can fly” quite literally, giving Desmond’s gryphon a girlfriend for wings. While cute and fluffy on the surface, it gets dark when you think about how Desmond desperately wants his father’s love. Held down by the pressure of trying to earn that acceptance through exceeding his family name and expectations, he takes it out on others in his demanding attitude, isolating himself from genuine relationships.
Desmond’s character has this divide between his attitude of bratty entitlement and inner insecurities. You get two different views of him, depending on which side you view him from. Take his tearful moment of vulnerability. Viewed from the superficial layer, he looks like a kid who can’t stand not having his way. Viewed from a deeper layer, he is a child heartbroken at not being “good enough” to be loved by his father.
It felt awful to see Anya hijack Desmond’s vulnerability for her schemes. At heart, I think Damian and Anya have a lot in common. Like Damian, Anya is craving acceptance and feels the pressure of carrying out her father’s work so that he will keep her. It’s unfortunately a painful reality that children internalize what adults say and try to meet those expectations the way the adults do- an impossible task, creating a vicious cycle of insecurities and rejection. Fortunately for Anya, Loid is a father who is more involved in her life than Desmond Sr. is for Damian. I would love to see a light at the end of the tunnel with Anya and Desmond overcoming their barriers to be the genuine friend they each need. The whole rom-com in the making angle of the Anya and Desmond scenes certainly show promise for that.
We don’t get a deep dive on Becky, but man is she scary-Anya had better not get on her bad side. The way she unflinchingly crushed her precious Loid sculpture with her own fist upon deciding to make a different creation hinted at a darker side to her. That violent streak in her combined with her family’s weapons industry could be a dangerous combination when she gets older. While she could become an interesting, fully-fledged character, I suspect the series might treat her as Anya’s wingwoman rather than a character in her own right, much in the same way that Damian’s cronies are for him.
The bigwigs sobbing over a child’s crappily made “art”, convinced it wa a peace message was utterly ridiculous-I suppose art is in the eye of a beholder. Seriously, these adults have stupidly high expectations for the artistic and social sensibilities of grade schoolers. I was modestly surprised that a roomful of kids competing to make prize-winning sculptures with limited materials didn’t rip each other to shreds like a pack of hungry animals.
Completely different in subject matter, Part B glimpsed a human side to the “Fullmetal Lady”. I appreciated the “spies are normal people too” moment when Twilight is too scared to tell the boss that she left her tag on. It felt like a genuine, down to earth moment amidst all the heavy spy work.
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Oh man, when you said Anya has one attack plan I immediately thought of Captain America’s line to Tony Stark. “Tony, do you have a plan of attack?” “Yeah, it’s called attack.”
Damian’s need to get Father’s approval may not be healthy for the growing boy. But, in a weird way Anya acts as a relief from Damian’s pressure.
At the same time Anya trying to help Loid succeed in his mission would jeopardize Anya’s family life. Anya is inadvertently accelerate disbanding the “Flogger Family”.
It’s good to see an episode centered around the kiddos again as it has been a while. Oh boy, arts and crafts time. The construction paper, the Elmer’s glue, the safety scissors, the rubber cement… Be careful with sniffing that stuff!
To the credit of Damian and Anya, it does somewhat resemble a griffin. How the other adults interpreted it might be a dig at art criticism.
Indeed, Damian has got it tough with a father who seems not to think about him at all. It does contrast with Anya and Loid’s relationship, which is much better and from a “fake” family, no less.
It looks like Uncle Yuri will be visiting soon. I wonder if he’ll try to get along with Anya because it would make Yor happy, or if he gets jealous because the little squirt gets to spend so much time with her.
You know, the only thing I sniffed and huffed back in 3rd – 4th grade was scented markers, second hand smoke when my old man lit a cig with the windows up, petroleum.
… was scented markers
OMG, I forgot those were a thing for a time!
Ah, nostalgia!
Anya Musk putting a rocket engine on everything!
This series is so good on so many levels, like “spies are normal people too”,
Without going into a lot of explicit backstory on Handler (did the Anime
give her a real name yet and I missed it?), we can know she saw a lot of
pain first hand in her past by how she explained what war was to those
college kids. I love this kind of exposition – we don’t have to hear the
details to know what they (probably) were. Really good writing and carried
through to the Anime adaptation.
Waiting for the next episode!
Anya isn’t 6 or 7, though. She lied to Loid about her age to get adopted, and may have been as young as 4 at that time. She’s still in her first year, but she may be 6 by the end of it. This explains her childishness when she runs into those unavoidable difficulties, kidnappers, and bad guys who have pistols with silencers.
There’s a lot of difference between a 4-5 year old and a 6-7 year old. I think the fact that she is much younger than her peers, yet still manages to (shakily) keep up with them is evidence that she’s actually pretty smart.