#the rest of the tags are spoilers guys

[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

[artianwen]

You're in "the good place".

[hrokkall]

it feels like thinking through cheese wire

[lucabyte]

Invoking the quadrants to explain sifloop hurt me psychically but. You are so fucking right. Anyway wanted to say I so so so enjoy your loop + sifloop + sloopis + honestly ISAT as a whole headcanons/ideas. I feel like you really capture the tone of how fucked up yet meaningful song and loops relationship is. And also how real the Isa torment nexus is. It's enriching to him <3

you look me in the eyes and tell me that simultaneous pity, pacification, armistice and rivalry aren't four of the most fitting adjectives for this goddamn ship its insane right (also thank u for the compliment on the headcanons i love to. try and read texts in as supported a manner as i can)

also yeah. get in the torment nexus pear wiggler boy. dance for my amusement

[firethekitty]

for vash

tears for fears - everybody wants to rule the world // beach house - on the sea // of monsters and men - human // lord huron - the balancer's eye // radical face - welcome home, son // marty robbins - tall handsome stranger // orville peck - the curse of the blackened eye

[spaciebabie]

Have a ruin meme I made!

my real reaction

[bidokja]

I was joking a while back that the actor they have playing KDJ for the orv movie was too handsome for him and a friend who's read orv was like "KDJ is actually secretly attractive!!" And I just felt my soul leave my body right then

SIGHS...

Okay. Buckle in. I'm gonna finally actually address and explain and theorize about this whole...thing.

I'm not gonna cite any exact chapters cause it's like 11:30 and I've got an 8 hour drive in the morning but I'll at least make an approximate reference to where certain things are mentioned. Also, this post is just my personal interpretation for a good bit of it, but it's an interpretation I feel very solid about, so do with that what you will. Moving on to the meat of things:

There is one (1) instance in the web novel that I know of which describes specific features of Kim Dokja (especially ones other people notice). This takes place when members of KimCom are trying to make Kim Dokja presentable to give his speech at the Industrial Complex (after it's been plopped down on Earth). This is when they start really paying attention and focusing on Kim Dokja's appearance since they're putting makeup on him; I still don't think they can interpret his whole face, but they can accurately pick out and retain more features than usual. If I remember correctly they reference him having long eyelashes, smooth skin, and soft hair. These features can be viewed as (stereotypically) attractive.

Certain parts of the fandom have taken this scene and run with it at a very surface level, without realizing (or without acknowledging at the very least) that this scene is not about how Kim Dokja looks. This is, in part, due to not realizing or acknowledging why Kim Dokja's face is "censored" in the first place, and what that censoring actually means. I think it's also possible that some people are assuming the censorship works like a physical phenomena rather than an altered perception.

I'll address that last point first. The censorship of Kim Dokja's features is not something as simple as a physical phenomena. It's not a bar or scribble or mosaic over his face. If that were true it'd be very obvious to anyone looking at him that his face is hidden. But his face is not hidden to people. They can look at him and see a face. If they concentrate on his eyes, they can see where he's looking. They know when he's frowning or grinning. They see a face loud and clear. But what face are they seeing? Because it's not really his, whatever they're seeing.

No one quite agrees on what he really looks like. And if they try and think about what he looks like, they can't recall. Or if they do, it's vague, or different each time. We notice these little details throughout the series. Basically, Kim Dokja's face is cognitively obscured. Something - likely the Fourth Wall, though I can't recall if this is ever stated outright - is interfering with everyone's ability to perceive him properly. This culminated in him feeling off to others; and since they don't even realize this is happening, they surmise that he is "ugly."

Moving on to the other point about what the censorship means: To be blunt, the censorship of his face is an allegory for his disconnect from the "story" (aka: real life, and the real people at his side). The lifting - however slight - of this censorship represents him becoming more and more a part of the "story" (aka: less disconnected from the life he is living and the people at his side). The censorship's existence and lifting can represent other things - like dissociation or depersonalization or, if you want to get really meta, the fact that he is all of our faces at once - but that's how I'd sum up the main premise of it. (The Fourth Wall is a larger part of the dissociation allegory, but that's for another post).

So you see, them noticing his individual features isn't about the features. It's not about the features! It doesn't matter at all which features got listed. Because they could describe any features whatsoever and it would not change the entire point of the scene. Because the point isn't what he looks like. The point is that they can truly and clearly see these features. For the first time. They are seeing parts of him for the first time. Re-read that sentence multiple times, literally and metaphorically. What does it mean to see someone as they are?

This is an extremely significant turning point dressed up as a dress-up scene.

---

P.S. / Additionally, I'm of the opinion that Kim Dokja is not handsome, and he is not ugly. He is not pretty, and he is not ghastly. Not attractive, nor unattractive. Kim Dokja isn't any of these things. More importantly, Kim Dokja can't be any of these things. The entire point of Kim Dokja is that you cannot pick him out of a crowd; he is the crowd. He's a reader. He's the reader. Why does he need to be handsome? Why must he be pretty? Why is him being attractive necessary or relevant? He doesn't, he doesn't, it's not. He is someone deeply deeply loved and irreplaceable to those around him, and someone who cannot even begin to recognize or accept that unless it's through a love letter masquerading as a story he can read. He is the crowd, a reader, the reader. He's you, he's me. He's every single one of us.

[mintypsii]

missing

[tragedycoded]

Shout out to Royston, who got his chapter done in 2100 words (less than two hours) so I could go outside and play Fear & Hunger for the next twelve hours.

[vodid]

i struggle heavily with reading comics (the format just isn't for me) but skybound's tf comic i enjoyed. i already wanna draw for it........

[torrentofhermits]

dont get me wrong, i've enjoyed how sopping wet he's been as of late quite significantly, but i just loved this moment. so much.

[cowboyskeletons]

thinking about my au where after the trial the dads are actually just transported into another universe where jodie was transplanted and they replaced their alt-universe selves.

so there are small details that the kids notice (except for nicholas) that are kinda... off, but it's not big enough of a shift to notice until reminiscing about childhood memories and like it doesn't matter (it does matter but that's only half of the story)

point is that without them, their home universe kinda crumbles, as the narrative is about Them and why even exist if there's no purpose? so everyone kinda just fades away over a short span of time (thinking around a week) as the world loses its flavor.

....buuuut nick's still there.

because the dads are The Dads, right. it's their defining characteristic. they need to have children to be dads (if the child is dead it doesn't matter, just needs to exist in the universe). the children are... kind of like anchors.

so if their children stopped existing, what then? well, it was a simple solution-- they got linked to the new verse kids. done done. new anchor, continued existence, "forever" relevance, hoorah.

only problem is that glenn doesn't have a kid. and he's not a dad anymore. so like, what's the point of his being there? nicholas is technically completely unrelated to him. in the new verse, it's said that he's darryl's friend who's just. there. in-auniverse and in a more meta concept sense, he really shouldn't have been there.

(eventually, glenn won't need an anchor anymore because of the relationship he develops with nicky but for now he needs a weight to assert his existence in the narrative)

erasing him from existence kind of goes against the court ruling because then why all the shenanigans. so he still has an anchor, though the new universe is unaware of it

so nick is still there.

nick is... not fully what he used to be. he seems overall the same, but he's in a sort of... stasis? like the most obvious effect is not aging but there are mental effects too. his and glenn's relationship and place in the world can't really change, so he doesn't.

he's like an ice sculpture now metaphorically-- fading like the rest of the world, but his process is slower because he's connected to glenn and he's still important to the story. he has approximately until the s1 finale until he starts getting into the danger zone. the worlds aren't exactly synced up time-wise, but time shifts and flows and the universes drift so there's never a concrete ratio-- usually worlds sync by story beat but. yea

so he's just wandering the world as it breaks apart. he's the only reason that it's still there, actually-- it becomes weaker as he does, as it loses its purpose completely.

by some chance, nicholas manages to contact nick then Stuff Happens.

cue shenanigans, primarily with nicholas and nick but several other people come into play too like glenn and jodie and morgan

(yes nick still dies in the end but there is Closure with the family okay. can't spell closure without close. do you get it)

[fisherrprince]

So how was stormblood? I know it's very hit or miss for people, so what're your thoughts?

I understand why it’s hit or miss! It — to get to the point i would be straight up lying if I said I was an unbiased consumer because I’m not, I’m a coastal American mid 20s rando with a Lot of very current cultural baggage around concepts like patriotism and freedom. And Hamilton references. It all has a sweet and strong and very anti-occupation message (along with themes I very much enjoy dissecting like the constant assertion that it Doesn’t Have To Be This Way, or the expansion into You may not understand this person but you must be able to accept them,) but when combined with Stormblood’s shakier coherence in writing and dialogue and pacing, it comes off as A Bit Off. to me. And I think it missed ever so slightly just due to how it was all structured and set up with the characters we have and motivations we have because the stuff OUTSIDE or Adjacent to the main story, despite how out of place it could feel, was structured great!! Like the Kojin and the Ananta trial and the Kugane mishaps and trying to murder Zenos twice and the ghost ship. Could the main structure have come across very well yes absolutely! It does it on and off it succeeds in there often! But sometimes it doesn’t. I can see a lot of where concepts were promised and not fully delivered, pacing was a bit off, things just happened without really belonging there (despite how much I loved Susano, he could have been better structured. same with many instances and also I feel like the unethical science should have been MORE IMPORTANT THAN IT — maybe it comes back. Who is that scientist.), sometimes dialogue felt somewhat canned. I feel like in a consequences-heavy expansion, many things just didn’t have important consequences, which was very strange

HOWEVER! I cannot give the new gameplay features abd dungeons any crap they are all SO GOOD. And so PRETTYYYYY. And there were so many solo duties that ruled! Every dungeon in this expansion was like whoa this is a PLACE im in you know what I mean??? I’m in a place that’s big and there’s people and there’s NEW MECHANICS and active time maneuvers (??!!!!!!!) and unique fights! I can jump on the roofs in Kugane! And, mind you, when the dialogue was good, it was good. Lyse has a fantastic voice actor. Alisaie is my favorite girl elf creature in thw world. Estinien is like the best p- the guy ever. also m’naago is my new friend. The tower was a great part of sb to me despite my singular gripe. I think Zenos’— I know it’s controversial to some people because he does assume your wol to be a bit more murderous than some people would prefer their characters be and doesn’t take no for an answer, but his um speech did something to my brain a little bit

ON that note the ending was very fast?????? Or like — not FAST, but I wasn’t expecting Zenos or Shinryu to go down in one fight. Two co-op fights, right next to each other. I kind of wanted to beat him up myself. And when Zenos was so impossible to beat before. I was expecting both of them to be WAY harder. Though Shinryu is a COOL fight I’d do the royal menagerie again in a second. I was kind of expecting a three stage trial? Like Nidhogg? I love going into space hiiii big dragon where were you this whole time… u were shafted… but u could not be suffered to live so. Maybe if we’d gotten an instance of fighting the dragon alone after beating the trial?? Could have been Themes. I don’t know

anyways no I can’t quite pin it down, but I’ve said it before I think they had the outline for the story and then built it and went oh this is too much and not enough at the same time and got stuck writing the whole thing after getting stuck in the story they already had. A COMMENDABLE job for getting turned around like that, way better than a lot of video games stories out there, good gameplay and areas that didn’t feel too empty. glances at coerthas falcons nest area. I think the ways they did the exploration thing was good, having us venture further into occupied territory etc, but so much exploration stuff felt oneoff and not there to do much for someone who has been skipping almost all of the side content except stuff I’ve been told is good. It almost felt like they were Trying New Stuff a lot, and some of it succeeded some of it failed. Such is trying stuff!! Such is trying to imitate what you had while making something new and exciting! And I can’t fault them for that

so like — putting aside the fact that I haven’t done post-sb which is like missing 40% of the Thing according to past expansions and my thoughts very well might change, i would 100% do the fights again, maybe watch some cutscenes, but I don’t think I’d NG+ this one. where is that lady selling buuz it is a CRIME i did not get to have any buuz let me buy one yoshi p

[rivilu]

Haven't had the chance to play actual dnd in real life, but In this run I get the sense that bg3 perfectly captures the "party progresses in a weird sideways way that bypasses tons of the dm's prepared lore, so the dm takes revenge by dropping a near impossible encounter on them" vibe I hear so much about

[eggs-love-loki]

Me: I’ll watch one episode of my hero after dinner that’ll be fun :)

Me three episodes later, having gone from crying earlier to just pure distress by the end: Well that was the worst choice ever

[iamsigningmylifeaway]

god forbid we have a horrible murderer woman with the eyes of that painting of lucifer and the disposition of a rabid street dog in an alleyway. god forbid we have one thing.