#guido spy classroom

[your-fave-jewish-magical-girl]

I promised that I would become a Spy Classroom blog so here I am! And I will be ranking every single villain in Spy Classroom from worst to best.

Keep in mind that unlike a lot of series, I don’t actually hate any of these characters. Even though some of them aren’t very deep, I think they all fulfill their purposes.

Spoiler warning for Light novel season 1 (Volumes 1-4) and Anime season 1-2 (first 24 episodes) under text

David

Yeah, so this one goes without saying. I’m betting most of you don’t remember him. (I’m probably one of like 5 people who remember his name, Takemachi included.) but just for a refresher, he was the antagonist in Grete’s short story in SSC 1 : Bridal Royale and the finale of season 1. He is the president of Mannheim inc. and started a harassment campaign against a local meat pie owner to gain his recipe without paying. He attempted to take advantage of Lily (under the alias Lillian) under the assumption she was desperate and poor and turn her into his “lover”, which is really gross. He is just a violent, borderline pedophiliac scumbag and I hope he never shows up again. Overall there is not much to talk about since he’s just a guy who adds tension to the plot and exists so Grete and Lily can defeat him in the end.

Frisé

Ok, in his defense, having Orphan Gang Leader in your resume is really funny. You also may have forgotten him, but like with David from before, Frisé is a character from Bridal Royale/episode 6. He was in charge of a gang of child orphans which he picked up from the street and forced to commit crimes for him in exchange for food and shelter. If they (the orphan children) didn’t meet their quota, he would respond by physically abusing them under the guise of his expression of “love.”

Really fucked up guy, arguably worse than David from before, but unlike David, his fight with Klaus and Sybilla was cool and his philosophy of being someone taking in these kids with nowhere to go and giving them a home and food on the table while the government of Din all but abandoned them is pretty interesting, and goes back to Sybilla’s past in a natural way. (Also in the light novel, he is referred to as a golem looking guy before he is given a name which is funny.)

Eve

Yeah, so am I the only person who did not imagine Ever would end up looking like that? Thought she would look younger and a bit more disheveled.

Anyways, bad villains end here folks, While Eve doesn’t actually get to do much (especially since the anime cut out all the cool shit she did). She makes every moment count with her light novel screen time. Her wire ability is really cool and I hadn’t seen anything similar at the time of reading it. Her philosophy of extreme brains over brawn, while it doesn’t go anywhere (since she gets offed by Klaus like 3 pages later) adds context for the world of spy classroom. She treats soldiers as beneath her because she is a young adult in a world where that kind of combat is growing more and more obsolete.

Where Eve really shines is in Bridal Royale with her fight with Monika. She is the best out of all three of the antagonists in that volume. The way she used her wires to surround the living room and how Monika had to use her calculation skills to get out was awesome. Props to Takemachi for giving her a cameo in that volume because she was someone I wanted to learn more about (even though I forgot about her until I reread volume 1.)

Rip Eve, Takemachi cannot stand to see a girlboss win.

Matilda

So rip any anime-onlys I guess (though you should have heeded the warning.)

Yeah, I’d you’re wondering why Matilda is so low, she is kind of my least favorite main villain in season one of the light novels. She is the antagonist of Volume 3 of the light novel and will show up in season 2 as an antagonist for the former half of the series. With Guido and Olivia, the other twist villains, you don’t really see it coming. With Guido, because you are under the assumption that he is dead and that Klaus’s arc will consist of moving past his abuse. And with Olivia, she had previously been a mob with not much presence. You really had to not be paying attention or understand the formula to not think she’s gonna do evil shit.

Even so, she’s the “bad” kind of bad villain. Yeah you don’t sympathize with her because she’s a piece of shit who abused Annette, made her blind in one eye and literally gave her amnesia. But she doesn’t have any guiding philosophies that make her worldview understandable like most of the villains and she doesn’t get any cool fight scenes either. You’re really just wondering when they’re gonna reveal that she’s a baddie.

Her role as a character, despite how predictable she is is still good in terms of her role in the story. The actual conflict she creates between Lamplight (specially Monika and Thea) has created one of the best fights in the series revealing a lot of character between them that has stuck with both of them ever since. I love seeing Monika and Thea as rivals and Volume 3 convinced me of that. The impact she leaves with Thea as the end actually lasts too, creating legitimate questions Thea had to ask herself moving into volume 4. She is like the anti-Hearth in that way. The fact she actually unnerves White Spider speaks volumes about how deranged she is. The scene where she holds up her blue toolbox with White Spider in the room saying that she used that toolbox to beat Annette’s memories out of her gave me straight chills. Like holy shit, this woman should not have been anywhere near a child.

Her impact on Annette though…Christ. Rereading scenes with her and Annette in volume 3 with context make everything so much worse. She’s the only villain so far that Lamplight has outright killed. (Lamplight being Annette). I can’t say she didn’t deserve it.

And maybe that is the point of her, Takemachi didn’t her her reasons for acting like a live of shot or an ideology that justified it simply because. She is an awful person who did awful things to Annette because she’s a coward. Even so, that does not make it any less awful to read about her.

Corpse/Roland

Ok, before you scream and cry at me for putting Roland so low, let me explain: I think Roland is a good character, I don’t think he’s a good villain. This is because his actual character development happens in Volume 4 where he has been defeated is not acting like a villain

Roland’s role in Volume 2 was basically to be a decoy to distract you from Olivia, hyping you up for a showdown between him and Klaus when he couldn’t actually measure up, that was it, it was funny, but “Corpse the evil imperial assassin” ended there.

Now Roland has a different role in Volume 4. He is withholding information from the Foreign Intelligence Office and when he is giving information, he is warning Lamplight of Purple Ant. In the latter half of Volume 4, we learn a lot about him, how Purple Ant stole his life away and turned him into an assassin, abandoning everything, how he eventually got bored of being an assassin and wanted something new and exciting (a callback to when he became Olivia’s boyfriend.) Thea helped him defy his Master and fight for his freedom. While he did die, he died on his feet as opposed to living the rest of his life on his knees. And that’s pretty damn honorable.

But yeah, we see an ok fight between him and monika and him betraying Thea in Volume 4 was cool which does put him above Matilda. But his great aspect’s don’t really come from him being a good villain specifically.

Guido

Oh hey, on the subject of pieces of shit, we have Guido! Yeah, you can argue that we know less about Guido than Matilda, and I’ve heard people argue that he is the worst villain. I doubt that, as of now, the information we know about him is scarce. We know he was a member of inferno and was basically like Klaus’s Dad, he treated him harshly and insulted him. For some reason, he left Inferno to join serpent and let the rest of his team minus Hearth and Klaus get killed on the Abyss Doll mission. We don’t know why he acted that way to Klaus, and we don’t know why he defected.

One reason I am putting Guido above Matilda is that he actually gets one of the most badass fights in the series. Takemachi did NOT pull his punches with Guido. The actually build up to Guido was great and well foreshadowed. The flashbacks with Klaus and him could easily have been interpreted as an arc for Klaus to overcome Guido’s death and accept Lamplight as his new family, and we got that…just not in the way we were expecting. Guido is my favorite kind of twist, a twist that is completely inevitable in the context of the story and makes you goes “How did I not see that coming?” Even though all the evidence was right there. His fight with Lamplight is on par with later fights in the series like Purple Ant or the one in Volume 5.

Second reason, I don’t think we’re finished with Guido just yet. We know next to nothing about Serpent (and I doubt It’s the standard run of the mill imperialist type stuff the empire does either.) and discovering serpent is going to give us clues to Guido and why he did what he did.

So yeah, while we don’t get much of him, we will soon. His role as an antagonist is extremely well fulfilled given his lack of time and his impact on Klaus sticks with the rest of the series, overall, great villain.

White Spider

No image yet! Anyways, White Spider is great. He isn’t the most memorable, but he breaks the formula for a Spy Classroom villain. White Spider is a serpent member, and so far the only villain Lamplight has not defeated. He stands out from the rest by being a guy who is pretty reasonable-ish. He doesn’t make messes when he fights and he knows his own limits. Also in the fight with Klaus in Volume 3 he was really funny. He has a concept of morality (thinking Purple Ant and Matilda are monsters) and really is just here to get the job done. From what we’ve seen with him so far, his mushroom appearance is great full exaggerated (which is sad, rip mushroom boy) but he makes for a good straight man when communicating with the rest of the villains. Not that much to talk about, but I do hope to see him more!

Olivia

Talk about a controversial pick. Yeah Olivia is a really underrated villain and I am fully planning on writing and analysis on her and how she acts as a foil to Grete one one these days. (The anime completely nerfed her design from the manga lmaoooo)

Anyways, I really love Olivia. She is a bitch, she is selfish, she is insecure, superficial and jaded and I love her. The buildup to Olivia was fantastic, you wouldn’t be blamed if you thought she was just going to be some random mob while the girls hunter for Corpse. But like with most spy classroom twists, the villain was right in front of us.

It was less predictable than last time, but the way Olivia was revealed to be a villain in the light novel was no short of awesome. She is so awful and I love her to bits. Her relationship with Corpse makes for a wonderful contrast to Grete, their dynamic is inspired and brings out the best and worse in both of their characters. Her time in the underground brothel thinking that was all she would ever add up to before meeting Corpse really stuck with me, and knowing what we know now about how Corpse actually thought about her, she wasn’t really deceived. Olivia was an opportunist. She saw Corpse as a way out and she took it, same with Roland. You hate her for making the choices she did but you can never fully blame her. It’s could she have even escaped her soul sucking existence if she hadn’t taken his hand.

I really want to write about Olivia in the near future because she is my favorite villain to think and write about, and she does not get the appreciation from the fandom she deserves

Also, I hate how they cut out the final scene with her and Grete disguised and Uwe. It was the perfect ending for her character before getting captured by the republic.

Purple Ant

Yeah, this should surprise nobody. But hey, guess who has an official design now. (Pleasedontfuckuphisdesignintheanime)

Purple Ant is the best villain in Season 1 by a long shot. He is cunning, sadistic, manipulative, charming and so much more. He is the king of Mitario, the greatest villain Lamplight has faced so far. With the manpower of 400 Ants worldwide. He challenges all of Lmaplihht at their own games. All without lifting a finger. He holds an iron clutch on the lives of hundreds of people he believes are lower than him. Miranda, Barron, The bartender, Corpse, the accounts of their torture burned into the brain of anyone who read volume 4.

Purple Ant breaks people, targets in no way excluding, pushing even Klaus to the absolute brink in a way we have not seen in this entire series. Being an Ant is a fate worse than death, your body and mind in control of someone else, being forced to murder, torture, capture, your family members held hostage and being punished if you do not do everything to a T—or just because he feels like it. When you become an Ant, you are stripped of you. You lose what makes you an individual and turn into another one of Purple Ants pawns.

That isn’t even breaking into the neat of him, his relationship with Hearth, Thea, Klaus, Corpse, holy crisp do I need to do a mega post on him. I feel like his ideology towards Mouzaians (the people he turned into Ants exclusively because he believed they were entitled and privileged after Galgad lost the Great War to them) has clues on serpents actual ideology. He offers a piece the puzzle that has been brewing throughout the entire series.

Props to Takemachi for keeping him alive…so far, I hope he gets in one or two extra moments before Takemachi offs him for good. I can’t imagine this bastard ever getting redeemed lmaoooo

[lethekazhorai]

We watched the Spy Classroom stage play

AKA "Spy Room" officially, or "Spy Kyoushitsu" in Japanese.

We were really hyped for this one both because we're big fans of Spy Classroom, and because we knew a whole bunch of the actresses from Assault Lily plays (Asakura Fuyuna/Grete as Moroi Saho, Hoshimori Sana/Monika as Seren and Shenlin, Ishii Haruna/Thea as Nagisa and Kiito, Kitazawa Saki/Annette as Imari, Sakura Ui/Erna as Raimu.)

And it delivered! In fact it probably ties with the Bocchi the Rock stage play as the best play based on an anime (or on something that got an anime, anyway... I'm not gonna count Assault Lily in that though) that we've watched so far.

The play adapted the entire first novel (corresponding to episodes 1-3 of the anime) with some minor abridgements.

The weakest parts of it had little to do with the performers themselves. One big issue was that the stream audio, specifically the actors' mic balance, was bad. We could hear characters that had powerful voices like Klaus and ones that yell a lot like Lily, but some others like Grete and Sara were completely inaudible as often as not.

Another thing I didn't like is that Renjo Makoto used an extremely deep voice for Klaus and it was clearly at the limit of her vocal range, making it sound kind of monotone. I assume the director or someone told her to do this, probably to mimic Klaus's voice in the anime. If I were in charge, I would've leaned into Klaus being androgynous and had the actress use her natural voice.

But that's enough about the bad. Let me talk about the good.

Yokoyama Yui's Lily was excellent, which was surprising when she had relatively little experience in stage acting compared to the other performers (not none, just little.) Takaoka Kaoru's Sara was also charming, and I particularly liked the new scenes where the two of them talked with each other—they gave Lily an "encouraging big sister" vibe she doesn't get to show that often in the novels.

All the Assault Lily veterans were excellent, of course, though if I were to pick one it'd be Kitazawa's Annette and her cute antics even in scenes where she wasn't the focus.

I complained about Renjo Makoto's voice for Klaus, but that aside, her acting was great too.

And I have to give a honorable mention to Takada Jun's Guido, who left quite an impression on me despite only appearing in the final act and not being a cute girl. He should have been tapped for Majima in the LycoReco play instead of that wannabe Joker guy.

Last but not least, the effects and video projection were great, and even the extras were remarkably memorable, particularly the ones that dropped in during Erna's attempts to defeat Klaus on their date out in town.

All in all, it was an excellent and very enjoyable play that was vastly superior to the anime's take on the same novel. The anime got a lot better later on, but the disappointment of that first arc felt like getting stabbed in the back.

You've still got time to catch the final two streams on Confetti (hopefully they fixed the audio, we watched the very first performance that got streamed.) Don't dawdle though, the archives will be available for less than a week from the moment I type this.

[juuniper-com]

Middle School Confessions

Summary: Fugonara? In MY 2021? More likely than you think. Fugo not so subtly tries to flirt with Narancia who's going through a touch of gay panic.

(Hope you all enjoy this!)

Narancia was wide awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling.

“Am I gay?”

He had been asking himself this question for three days now and the answer always ended up being yes. Even the quizzes he took agreed with him! Groaning, he buried himself under the covers and pouted. This was all stupid Pannacotta’s fault. If he wasn’t so- Narancia stopped himself there. Did he really think Panna was... cute? Was cute even the word he was looking for? Even if it wasn’t, the teen couldn't think of anything else to call him so cute it was then.

Whispering to no one, he tried the phrase out. “Panna is cute... Panna is cute... Panna is cute?” Yeah, he really needed to go to bed... Closing his eyes, Narancia took a deep breath to try and relax, letting the night’s thoughts disappear for now....

“So, is that all?” “Huh?” Narancia snapped back to reality. He was with Pannacotta, and they were in school. Well, not in school, but on the schoolyard... basically the same thing. This wasn’t a weird dream either, judging by the pinch mark on his arm. So what were they talking about again? He looked at his friend sheepishly, and the other sighed. “You said we were friends, and I asked if that was all we were.” Not seeming to get what the other was saying, Narancia gave him a confused look. “Ugh- Narancia.” Panna stopped walking and faced him. “Are we. Just friends.” It took a few seconds but something clicked in his mind and his eyes widened for a second. Narancia then quickly nodded his head, a nervous smile on his face. “Mhm!” Panna definitely didn’t seem to be convinced by that, but let it go for now, shrugging slightly. “If you say so...”

'Hell yeah, crisis averted!' The teen gave himself a mental high five. 'It would have been really awkward if I said no- And just because Panna has a crush on someone at school, doesn't mean he likes me!'

And so it began.

"Hey Pannacotta, who's the dude you have a crush on?" "Oh, um, well he's in our friend group, and he's really funny and nice… That's all I'm telling you though, Guido!"

It wasn't till the end of the day when Pannacotta had left the class to be picked up, that Narancia came up with a very alarming thought. 'Maybe he does like me?' If he thought really hard it made sense.. Slightly convinced but not wanting to waste any time, he ripped a piece of paper out of his notebook and began to write.

Dear Fugo,

Hi!! Just wanted to say that I like you. Like, like like you. You’re really cool and cute, and I love the way you smile cause it’s really pretty! You’re just amazing, and I wanted to know if you feel the same way about me… Um, have a good weekend too!!

-NARANCIA

He went over what he wrote a couple of times before deciding this was good enough to give to him, and with that, he went outside.

"Panna! Wait, Panna! I have something for you!" Right before Pannacotta stepped into his dad's car, Narancia came running up to him holding a carefully folded paper. "This is really important okay? Read it over the weekend." And before the other could say anything, he ran back inside the school.

It was Monday and Narancia was terrified. He knew Panna had probably read his note in the car and had already made up his mind on how to respond. Will he accept his feelings, or will he say that he’s in love with someone else? Narancia would never know if he didn’t get up and go to school so that’s exactly what he did.

When he arrived, Narancia tried his best to avoid his friend. Yes, it wouldn’t accomplish much, seeing as they’d still hang out later with the rest of the gang, but it made him feel like a spy which was slightly comforting. As he went over to the sixth-grade floor though he caught a glimpse of Pannacotta and Leone, one of their seventh-grade friends, talking in the locker room. Guess he wasn’t going to be walking in there anytime soon. Making a beeline for his classroom instead, he dumped his backpack at his desk, plopped himself down on the seat, and decided to stare out the window until class started.

Sadly, he was interrupted by a tap on his shoulder. “Hm?” Turning to look at who had tapped him, he was met with a blushing face. Pannacotta’s blushing face to be exact. The other handed him a folded-up note and quickly said, “Don’t read it until the end of the day.” before quickly walking out of the room. Narancia, not paying attention to what had been said to him, simply went into the bathroom and read the note.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think… don’t want to your you? Don’t worry Panna…” He combed through the rest of it before stopping at the last few lines.

I like like you too if it wasn’t obvious already.. I have been trying to flirt with you, you know. Anyway, you genuinely brighten up my day, and I really love hearing you laugh. It makes me feel happy… Even if it’s not very possible, I hope this will last all the way to high school.

-Love, Pannacotta Fugo

Narancia stared at the paper for a few seconds before rushed out of the bathroom and searched for Pannacotta, finally finding him in the locker room. Calming both his nerves and his excitement, he walked over. “So you really like me?” Panna blushed and nodded, turning his head away. “Y- yes, I d- wait…” He suddenly snapped back to look at Narancia. “You read the note!” Raising his hand, he bopped the other on his head. “Dummy! I told you not to read it yet!” Well there goes the romantic mood. Narancia pouted and bopped him back. “I know, but I didn’t want to waiittt~” Pannacotta sighed, a hint of a smile crossing his face. “Fine, I know how impatient you are anyway..” “Does that mean we’re dating now?” The other froze, wracking his mind for the answer, which he really already knew. “Y-yes… we are.”

Sadly, before Narancia could say anything, the bell started to ring, telling the two that class was about to begin while also startling them in the process. “Ah! I guess that means we have class now- See ya at break then Panna! Love you!” And with that, Narancia waved goodbye to his new boyfriend and ran to class, leaving the now flustered Pannacotta by himself.

“Yeah, I love you too...”