Are we just here to suffer? Sometimes, it really does feel that way.
Take what you can get, because those scars will never fully heal
Young Loid survived the initial bombings, but the kind old croquette-slinging lady didn’t. His mother quickly found him in the aftermath of the first bombing just for him to lose her when the war front kept advancing. Young Loid then somehow survived on his own long enough to join the war effort as a hate-filled soldier. His father tried to stem Loid’s hate. His methods might not have been the best (don’t beat your kids, folks) but he did try. But what do you expect to happen when a child loses everything? This is why people belabor the point about the cycle of hate. Violence only begets more violence. And sadly, all that hate didn’t even amount to anything. Did Loid as a soldier finally get to punish the evildoers who stole his mother’s life and destroyed their home? Of course not. Instead, he had his last glimmer of hope snatched away right before his very eyes. He was briefly reunited with his childhood friends only to be greeted with nothing but their dog tags after they were sent on a foolish operation.
We know where Loid is now. We know that he is the world’s top spy on a critical mission to prevent another tragic war from ever breaking out again. Hell, he might actually succeed in accomplishing said mission. But he’ll never get his justice. Not for all that he’s lost. The best he can do is prevent kids like Anya from going through what he had to go through. And sure, at the end of the day, that’s “good enough.” Through his family — a family he had to cobble together out of necessity — Loid is slowly healing from his warborne trauma.
Anya’s antics allow him to regain that childlike sense of play and imagination that he lost as a kid. He might find it terribly embarrassing whenever he goofs around for his daughter’s sake, like pretending to be Bondman, but he needs to do it. He needs to embrace every second he gets with Anya, because play is crucial in healing from trauma. And there’s a reason why Yor’s lullaby reminded him of his mother. His wife’s stabilizing presence gives him the comfort and nurture that he lost when his mother died. All of this adds up to Loid finally being able enjoy a brief bit of respite at the end of every busy day. After all, he’s such a workaholic that the neighbors thought he was cheating on Yor. He needs his family to slow him down no matter how much he might gripe about the state of the mission.
Remember when Loid collapsed after finding out Anya had passed the first exam for Eden Academy? That wasn’t a sign of weakness. That was the world’s best spy finally being normal if only for a brief moment. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he finds himself inadvertently collapsing again in front of his family. And when he does so, he’s going to curse his own weakness again. He’s going to opine about how he’s let himself get rusty, how he needs to refocus and whip his spy self back into shape, blah blah blah. Even Fiona thinks being a family man has made her former mentor soft. But we know otherwise. We know how much he needs any rest he can get, because at the end of the day, none of this will fully heal him. It can’t. That doesn’t mean all hope is lost. That doesn’t mean that everything he’s done has been a complete waste of time and effort. Rather, it reminds you exactly why his mission is so critical. Again, he’ll never get true justice for his family, his home, his childhood friends, his innocence, so on and so forth. The only thing that the world’s best spy can do is prevent more injustice.
Accepting our ignorance
Are the Ostanians devils who eat humans? Obviously not. But after that, things get murky. At the end of the day, it’s the people at the top who has the power to declare war. It’s a bunch of old men sitting in their cushy seats who has the power to send a bunch of mostly young people to die. But even then, it’s not quite as black-and-white as we would like it to be. Could the world’s worst dictators have committed any of their atrocities if they didn’t have a substantial support from the people? We can’t assume either that Ostania is entirely to blame. Why is there so much bad blood between the East and the West? Is Westalia honestly the innocent good guys that we would like them to be? Not every conflict boils down to, “We hate them and want to scapegoat them for all of society’s ills!” Sure, that does happen, but not all the time. Humans like to assign blame, though. Humans like to put things into categories, especially binaries. Everything is neater that way — easier to understand and act upon. Even if it’s completely wrong and ignorant.
The reality is that, like Loid at the time, we know nothing. We can only see things from young and teen Loid’s perspective, which was a position of ignorance of someone trapped at the ground level. He was a kid, then he became a grunt in the army. Basically, he was a nobody. He had no real influence over the war or anything really, so naturally, he understood very little about the war, why the war was happening in the first place, about the other side, about his own side, so on and so forth. It’s understandable ignorance to a degree, but it’s ignorance all the same. So it makes perfect sense that it took Loid meeting a goofball like his future bestie Franky in order to be reminded of his father’s lesson. They’re not all devils. They’re not the Others. Some of them are just like you, victims of a conflict they have no control over.
More importantly, he was no better than Frankie. The guys up top who escalated this conflict into a war? They’re the bad guys. Some of the bad guys. Maybe. See, we still don’t really know. But what we do know is that faceless army grunts like Loid and Franky are just pawns who’ve been fed nothing but misinformation. It’s only fitting then that they both became spy and informant respectively, because Loid’s recruiter is right: it’s all about information. No longer will Loid allow himself to be completely ignorant and neither will Franky.
Stray thoughts & observations:
- It really sucks all of the seriousness out of the story when we find out that his fake name in the military was Lorand Spoofy. Spoofy. Are you fucking spoofing me? The mangaka really couldn’t come up with a less ridiculous sounding name than Spoofy?
- Does it signify anything that Loid has been saved twice by a helmet? Eh, probably not. Helmets are just darn useful.
- So we now know when, why, and how he first met Franky the soldier, but we still don’t really know when, why, and how he started working with Franky the informant. I guess that’s a flashback for another day, another episode, and possibly even another season.
- Is it strange that he can remember his old friends’ faces so clearly but not his parents’? I don’t think so. Losing them is probably a trauma he wants to be bury deeper than the trauma of losing his childhood friends. It’s not a competition, but your folks gotta outrank your buddies, right?
- Memories of halcyon days with his childhood friends allow Loid to react to Anya’s tonitrus bolt with kindness and understanding. What I’m curious about, however, is if she was able to see even a brief glimpse of his thoughts. Did Anya get to see what her father’s precious memories? This isn’t an important question, so I doubt it’ll ever be answered. It’s still food for thought, though.
- Is Yor still only capable of making a single dish?
- Looks like next week’s episode will return us back to the show’s typically light-hearted atmosphere. I could definitely use the fresh air, though. Loid’s backstory is certainly emotional resonant, but I can’t deal with its heaviness week in and week out.
- It really bugs me that I was five minutes late in getting this post out.
- I even forgot to give this post a subtitle. Sigh.
