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252.Blade of the Moon Princess by Tatsuya Endo - By the author of Spy X Family comes an earlier work from 13 years ago. A misbehaving princess needs to step up and learn how to be a ruler fast because they deposed her mother and sent her to the planet. It's fun. So far this one has none of the dark subtext of Spy X Family but you can see how these things developed. The sword is magic or maybe really science fiction like. Either way, the usurpers want that blade in order to make certain that they seem legitimate. But she has it.
This one is only five books, but it looks like they are only being published in English now.
253.Spy X Family by Tatsuya Endo - This is an interesting one to end the year on, since it gives us the war that Twilight came from, showing how Twilight went to a kid playing guns with his friends (and even feeling guilty for getting money from his dad to buy a toy gun) to a war orphan who lies about his age to get into the military. One of the major themes under the cute stories about telepathic kids and psychic dogs is that war is very easy to fall into and it does no one any good once there's commitment. Twilight's background as a child who loses everything in a couple bombings that take out his family and towns is very traumatic. One interesting thing about this story is that he thinks that his friends die in the bombings which is why he joins the military in the first place. Then his friends turn out to alive. Only to die in an operation. So Twilight goes from hating an entire country to hating the military. Also his sidekick was an enemy soldier that he was going to kill but then just let live because it didn't seem to make sense.
Oddly enough the sidekick is usually an idiot in the main stories. In fact, there's even a story where he walks Bond to the dog park in order to hit on a woman in a very stupid way because he met her once. But in the background story, he's the one who knows that there's no reason for people to hate each other, especially in a border war since it's the leaders who fucked up.
So this is way more Russia vs. Ukraine than Hamas vs. Israel, but of course, there's no reason to hate Palestinians or Israelis. Israel has to kill every member of Hamas but that's really the only way that Gaza has even a remote chance of becoming the paradise that it was meant to be in 2005. Hell, it's even got luxury hotels (a real fun fact to bring up to anyone who spouts that "open air prison" bullshit) and those tunnels could have been a viable subway system. Instead Hamas decided to steal all the humanitarian aid and use any infrastructure money for weapons and planning to murder and rape Israelis and people who were just in Israel at the time.
But Russia vs. Ukraine. That's one motherfucker and his fan club (Trump, Caitlin Johnstone, etc.) pushing Russia to invade Ukraine because power is fun and who wants to just rule over fucking Russia when you can rebuild the USSR but fascist this time.
So we learn that by the time Twilight became a spy he was already bitter towards the military and unable to get up the hate for the enemy nation. Which kind of makes him a perfect spy and shows why he and Yor were unwittingly allies in the luxury ship story line since neither one wants to see the countries go to war. Again. They've both lost too much.
The other story is Yor trying to fake being a mother and running into socialites who invite her to their volleyball game. She loses but they actually give her a break because it was fun (basically Yor's assassin skills aren't too great at things like actually getting the volleyball to land in the right place instead of fly through the net) and then the woman turns out to be Donovan Desmond's mother.
And so we have to wonder if this was a chance meeting or if the Desmonds are onto Twilight's operation.
The first story with Twilight's background is much better, obviously. Not every story in this series is great but most are fun.
This one is only five books, but it looks like they are only being published in English now.
253.Spy X Family by Tatsuya Endo - This is an interesting one to end the year on, since it gives us the war that Twilight came from, showing how Twilight went to a kid playing guns with his friends (and even feeling guilty for getting money from his dad to buy a toy gun) to a war orphan who lies about his age to get into the military. One of the major themes under the cute stories about telepathic kids and psychic dogs is that war is very easy to fall into and it does no one any good once there's commitment. Twilight's background as a child who loses everything in a couple bombings that take out his family and towns is very traumatic. One interesting thing about this story is that he thinks that his friends die in the bombings which is why he joins the military in the first place. Then his friends turn out to alive. Only to die in an operation. So Twilight goes from hating an entire country to hating the military. Also his sidekick was an enemy soldier that he was going to kill but then just let live because it didn't seem to make sense.
Oddly enough the sidekick is usually an idiot in the main stories. In fact, there's even a story where he walks Bond to the dog park in order to hit on a woman in a very stupid way because he met her once. But in the background story, he's the one who knows that there's no reason for people to hate each other, especially in a border war since it's the leaders who fucked up.
So this is way more Russia vs. Ukraine than Hamas vs. Israel, but of course, there's no reason to hate Palestinians or Israelis. Israel has to kill every member of Hamas but that's really the only way that Gaza has even a remote chance of becoming the paradise that it was meant to be in 2005. Hell, it's even got luxury hotels (a real fun fact to bring up to anyone who spouts that "open air prison" bullshit) and those tunnels could have been a viable subway system. Instead Hamas decided to steal all the humanitarian aid and use any infrastructure money for weapons and planning to murder and rape Israelis and people who were just in Israel at the time.
But Russia vs. Ukraine. That's one motherfucker and his fan club (Trump, Caitlin Johnstone, etc.) pushing Russia to invade Ukraine because power is fun and who wants to just rule over fucking Russia when you can rebuild the USSR but fascist this time.
So we learn that by the time Twilight became a spy he was already bitter towards the military and unable to get up the hate for the enemy nation. Which kind of makes him a perfect spy and shows why he and Yor were unwittingly allies in the luxury ship story line since neither one wants to see the countries go to war. Again. They've both lost too much.
The other story is Yor trying to fake being a mother and running into socialites who invite her to their volleyball game. She loses but they actually give her a break because it was fun (basically Yor's assassin skills aren't too great at things like actually getting the volleyball to land in the right place instead of fly through the net) and then the woman turns out to be Donovan Desmond's mother.
And so we have to wonder if this was a chance meeting or if the Desmonds are onto Twilight's operation.
The first story with Twilight's background is much better, obviously. Not every story in this series is great but most are fun.
