Forger Family & Associates (Loid Forger | Anya Forger | Yor Forger)
Eden Academy | Ostania
The Forger Family

A spy, assassin, and telepath who each for their own reasons have assumed the identities of a husband, wife, and their daughter... while also all but the telepath being unaware of the other two's secret identities... and all three of them increasingly realizing their fake family is more than just pretend.
- For individual members of the family, please see their respective Character-Specific Pages.
- Affluent Ascetic: Despite both having steady, well-paying jobs, Loid and Yor seem to avoid spending money on non-essential items, only really indulging in clothes – Loid's finely tailored suits and Yor's "Thorn Princess" dresses. Beyond that, neither of them appear to have lives outside their occupations, including hobbies or pastimes (barring Yor's fascination with blades), and default to decorating the house with generic furniture. True to the point, when Yor moves into the Forger apartment, all of her belongings are stuffed into a few easy-to-carry boxes. Meanwhile, Anya's room is filled with various toys, plushies, and merch from Spy Wars.
- Badass Family: The father/husband is a spy, the mother/wife is an assassin, the daughter is a psychic, the dog can see the future, and the uncle is a Secret Police member.
- Becoming the Mask:
- Twilight is surprised by how defensive he is about how good of a wife Yor is, and has to remind himself that they're not an actual married couple. With Anya, meanwhile, he deeply values her safety and well-being, and will not tolerate her getting mistreated.
- Yor has been finding herself quite protective of Anya and trying her best to help her have a happy life, even while worrying about her place in the "fake" family. She also tends to be uncomfortable towards anything that might threaten her marriage with Loid.
- Birds of a Feather: Loid and Yor share many similarities in that both are individuals who were orphaned at a very young age, partake in morally grey and life risking jobs for completely selfless goals while trying to hide their identities from everyone around them, and are extremely proficient in their respective occupations to the point they reached legendary status. They both also greatly care for Anya, despite her not being their biological daughter.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Loid is a blonde, Yor is a brunette, and Anya is pink-haired (a red variant). Interestingly, personality-wise the whole trio inverts the usual stereotypes, with blonde Loid being a Badass Bookworm, brunette Yor being a Dumb Muscle, and reddish-pink-haired Anya being a generally anger-free Rose-Haired Sweetie.
- Breakfast Club: Four attractive social outcasts, comprised of two professional murderers and two science experiments, all orphans of war, who band together to survive against a world that would otherwise reject them. Spy X Family, however, differs from most "Breakfast Club Plots" in that whereas most other bands of this sort cannot stand each other, and refuse to change or compromise, the Forgers are bound together in love as they show each other nothing but their best, human, and genuine selves to each other.
- Combat, Magic, Trickery Trio: The human Forgers have this dynamic. Yor, the mother, is Combat — a deadly assassin who fights in direct combat with borderline superhuman physical capabilities. Anya, the daughter, is Magic — a young girl who is small and physically weak, but possesses extraordinary mind-reading powers. Loid, the father, is Trickery — a master spy who uses his skills to deceive his targets and perform heists while preferring Combat Pragmatist methods over direct combat.
- Couple Theme Naming: Loid's codename is Twilight, while his wife Yor's name can be pronounced "yoru" (night) in Japanese.
- The Cowl: Loid and Yor are, for all intents and purposes, essentially the superheroes of Ostania, doing their best to save lives and keep the peace during the Cold War. They both are feared urban legends in their respective circles, prefer operating at night or in secret, possess talents and abilities far beyond those of their contemporaries, hide their identities behind themed codenames/personas, do the occasional random good deed for innocent civilians, and usually withhold their wrath for people who actually deserve it.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Each of the Forgers is associated with a particular color, even with the outfits they wear.
- Loid - Green (Occasionally Blue as well)
- Yor - Red (Occasionally Black as well)
- Anya - Pink
- Bond - White
- Crazy-Prepared: Everyone in the family carried at least two extra sets of clothing for the entrance interview in case their clothes got dirty. Henry, the Housemaster overseeing the interview, is completely shocked at the preparedness.
- Dark and Troubled Past: None of them have had safe or secure lives:
- Twilight's father disappeared at the outset of the war, his childhood friends were killed in the initial bombing or so he thoughtnote , his mother died in an air raid, and he ended up fighting in the war as a soldier.
- Anya was experimented on as part of a secret project, escaped the scientists' lab, and got shuttled back and forth between orphanages and foster homes.
- Yor and Yuri's parents died when they were young, leaving Yor to raise Yuri by herself, which included her becoming an assassin.
- Bond was subjected to various experiments, including Electric Torture, as part of a government project, then ended up on the black market, where he was bought by a student terrorist group as a bomb dog.
- Everyone Can See It: Loid and Yor's relationship is a mutually beneficial lie to cover their double-life. Despite this, many characters, including Anya (who is fully aware of the arrangement), Franky, Becky, Yuri, and Nightfall, all suspect that their feelings are the real deal.
- Fake Relationship: Loid and Yor establish this for their own purposes without knowing each other's true motives. Only Anya's in the loop regarding everyone's secrets.
- Family Theme Naming: The Forgers are named Twilight, Yor and Anya (the latter two translating to "night" and "dark night" in Japanese respectively). Anya's brief (and self-made) nickname is also "Starlight" which furthers this.
- Foil: Loid and Yor parallel and contrast each other. Each is considered a Living Legend in their respective circle, but Twilight's identity remains unknown to his enemies while Yor's face is well-known in the underworld. Twilight is a blond blue-eyed man while Yor is a dark haired red-eyed woman. Twilight is hyper-analytical and cultured, while Yor is more down to earth and somewhat of a ditz. Twilight's job requires him to have no interpersonal attachment whatsoever (though that's changing with Anya), while Yor is fiercely devoted to her younger brother. Finally, each has demonstrated they can be a One-Man Army, but Twilight relies on sneak attacks and ambushes while Yor can just walk in through the front door and massacre everyone in the building though Twilight was like that back when he was a soldier. Loid has trained his body to be immune to alcohol, while Yor has built up an immunity to all poisons EXCEPT alcohol (which instead is extra potent on her).
- Four-Temperament Ensemble:
- Loid is Phlegmatic (very versatile and adaptable depending on the situation, gentle but logical and confident and a true Action Hero when needed);
- Anya is Sanguine (the kind, innocent, Cheerful Child with typical childish mischief and playfulness);
- Yor is Melancholic (not a depressed example, but shy by nature and often worried about having to be a more competent person in life and as a mother);
- Bond is Ecletic (peaceful Big Friendly Dog still able to take action when needed).
- As the family's uncle through Yor, Yuri can be counted as Choleric (very unpleasant, rude, irritable, and quick-tempered, especially to Loid).
- Fourth-Date Marriage: Loid and Yor agree to get married after essentially the first date because both are in a hurry to find a suitable spouse for their civilian covers. In the English dub, after having just proposed that their agreement extend into a Marriage of Convenience, Yor privately (and nervously) thinks that this is happening so fast, but Loid seems like the only person who could accept her for herself and so this is likely the best chance she'll ever get.
- Fur Against Fang: While they are not enemies (yet), the Forger parents subtly invoke this theme when they unleash their inner murderous beast. Whereas Yor, the "warrior" of the couple, assumes the serrated lupine teeth and piercing bloodshot gaze of a werewolf when she is literally tearing her foes apart, Loid the "scheming tactician" becomes a nebulous living darkness, pierced only by a pair of demonic glowing orbs of pure hatred, that silently disapears into the shadows, only to effortlessly reappear behind his victims when it is too late for them to fight for survival, not unlike a vampire.
- Gentle Touch vs. Firm Hand: Yor is the Gentle Touch to Loid's Firm Hand, while she's more permissive with Anya, while Loid is stricter with Anya to ensure that she does well in school for the sake of Operation Strix.
- Good Parents: Anya gives both Loid and Yor a "perfect 100" when asked what she thinks about them. They take care of her, listen to her, keep her focused on her studies but try not to put too much pressure on her, etc. And if they ever do mess up or upset her, they're both quick to own up to it, apologize, and do better from there on. They are also very scary when Anya is threatened by anyone.
- Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Played with but overall inverted in the case of Loid and Yor. While Loid is no slouch in terms of hand-to-hand combat, his primary weapon in taking down an opponent will be a firearm or some form of explosives, or throwing things at people. Meanwhile, Yor's primary weapons are sharp objects, but she's also just as likely to brute force an enemy to take them out.
- Happily Married: Downplayed, since they're in a consensual fake marriage, but, sometimes, Loid and Yor show they do appreciate each other's support, and have a healthy dynamic with each other. Their fake marriage routine is so convincing that even a bitter, divorced professor admits that they look like lovestruck movie stars. It's also revealed in Mission 79 that Yor can't even think of a single thing about Loid she's dissatisfied with (despite Loid himself admitting he has a lot of shortcomings), unlike her coworkers with their respective partners.
- Hyper-Awareness: All of the family members have various levels of this. Loid can always tell when and where someone is watching him, and is also easily able to pick out the various organization types from normal civilians. Yor's abilities are a bit less then Loid's, mainly because she is more attuned to whether or not a person wants to kill her, so someone just observing her can sometimes slip by; she is aware she is being watched but not always where from, but the minute anyone has any intent to harm her or her charge she will pinpoint them in an instant. Anya can actually be more aware of her surroundings than either of her parents thanks to her psychic powers, but because she is a child she doesn't always understand what she is hearing, and since her powers are not always fully active she has been caught by surprise several times.
- Living a Double Life: Loid, Yor and Anya all hide their true identities from everyone, including each other. Since Anya's an esper, however, she knows who Loid and Yor really are, but they don't know she knows, and being a child who watches cartoons of spies she doesn't understand what their other lives are actually like.
- Lonely Together: A variation; all four Forgers, being professional killers and science experiments, are outcasts of "normal" society who band together for companionship and survival. However, due to showing nothing but their best sides and qualities to each other, they are held together by genuine love rather than reluctant necessity.
- Male Might, Female Finesse: Inverted with Loid and Yor. Both of them are dangerous when need be, but Loid relies on ambushes, deception, and technique while Yor is monstrously strong, tough, and fast and eliminates her targets with straightforward violence.
- Marriage Before Romance: Loid and Yor sign a marriage certificate because both need to get married to keep up the cover of their jobs as a spy and an assassin respectively. After they start living together and raising Anya as their daughter, they're gradually becoming more and more like a real married couple.
- Marriage of Convenience: For one reason or another, and while not discussing their real motivations, Loid and Yor agree to get married simply because it will make their lives easier. This happens to be the one thing neither are hiding from each other. That being said, it becomes increasingly clear that they've started to view each other as more legitimate romantic partners. Unfortunately, the two have a habit that whenever they think there might be something more to their relationship, they end up shutting down those thoughts by reminding themselves that it's a fake marriage.
- Meaningful Name:
- A "forger" is a person who falsifies items and documents. The Forgers' identities are a disguise for their individual double lives, even to other members of the family.
- Alternatively, "forger" can also refer to forging as in "to create something new". Though the (adult) Forgers think that their cover is merely that, there's increasing evidence that this pretend family is becoming more real with each passing day.
- Multilayer Façade: To the public, the Forgers are a widower psychiatrist, his daughter, and the city hall employee that he recently remarried. To each other, they are a Marriage of Convenience where the husband gets a mother figure to help him raise his daughter, and the wife gets to avoid the scrutiny that comes with being 27 and unmarried in The '60s. In reality, they're a foreign Deep Cover Agent in a long-term mission that requires having his pretend daughter enroll in a school for the elite, a Professional Killer who needed to reinforce her cover after getting wind that the Secret Police was paying extra attention to unmarried civil servants her age and older, and a 6-year-old (she says) Psychic Child who gained Telepathy from a Freak Lab Accident and Escaped from the Lab and is using her powers to help her pretend family in secret because she doesn't want to return to an orphanage, because she has come to love them for real, and because being the daughter of such interesting parents is just too exciting for her to pass up.
- Mutual Masquerade: The premise of the story revolves around the family hiding secrets from each other while posing as an upper crust family. Loid is actually a spy (codenamed Twilight), and Yor is an assassin (nicknamed the Thorn Princess). Neither of them know this about one another. Several others play out their own hidden agendas with all of them being equally unaware about anyone else. Anya, the Happily Adopted daughter of Loid and Yor in a false family, is the only exception to this because her Telepathy gives her complete knowledge of people's actual jobs and intents once she's near them or with someone else who knows. She naturally keeps this knowledge to herself for one obvious reason and also for her entertainment. However, there are some points in the story where the charade slips a bit.
- In Mission 12, Loid figures out that Yuri (Yor's brother) is a member of the Secret Police soon after meeting with him. In turn, Yuri is Right for the Wrong Reasons regarding his suspicions about Loid being a spy but understandably can't risk making a move at the time.
- Mission 16 has Anya in a precarious situation where somebody's in danger and she only knows because of her telepathy. She wants to tell Loid, but the fact she knows this despite not being anywhere near the scene makes her have an Imagine Spot about this scenario:Anya: Somebody's drowning in the pool!
Loid: [Alertness Blink] How could you know that?! What are you?!
Anya: [cue Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises at the idea of Loid possibly viewing her as a monster if she revealed her Telepathy]
- Romantic Fake–Real Turn: It's heavily implied that Loid and Yor have legitimate feelings for each other despite both believing they had just entered a Marriage of Convenience. Mission 120 reveals that Yor, at the very least, is genuinely in love with her husband.Anya: ...So are you gonna kiss now? (manga) / Papa and mama are flirting. (anime)
Loid / Yor: We're not! (manga) / No we are not! (anime) - Satellite Family Member: Twilight's Origins Chapter shows his unnamed father to be a strict disciplinarian who berated and even beat him in hopes of toughening him up. This impacts how Twilight parents Anya, as he sees how he was brought up as how not to be a father.
- Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: In the family, Loid serves as the savvy guy to the energetic girl of both his wife and daughter. Loid is incredibly intelligent, observant, and is quick at picking up situational cues but is also rather pragmatic and skeptical while Anya, being intrigued by his job as a spy, is an energetic seeker of fun with an imaginative but short-sighted view on the world and Yor is far more positive and passionate than her husband, with her cheerful disposition and occasional childish thought process.
- Shared Family Quirks:
- As much as Loid wants to be the Only Sane Man, all four of them are prone to wildly overblown Imagine Spots that operate on flimsy slippery slope fallacies. Almost every inconvenience has led to Loid thinking he'll be exposed as a spy, Yor thinking Loid will divorce her, or Anya thinking her parents will divorce and cruelly abandon her. Bond is thus far the most justified in this regard considering he can see the future, and one chapter seemingly confirms that he seriously, really would've died if he didn't do something about it. (Though according to the author's chapter commentary in the Eyes Only fanbook, Bond was only unconscious.)
- All three human Forgers are (in)famous for Megaton Punch scenes that are hilarious (Anya), horrifying (Loid) or both (Yor).
- A running gag for both Yor and Anya in the Japanese version is their tendency to incredulously shouting "Ga-n!!", which literally means "Clang!" or an onomatopoeia of "Shock!", whenever they are well, shocked. Loid officially adopts this family trait in Episode 16; an understandable reaction to being told that Yor is making dinner for the night. And if you listen closely, even Bond (a dog) reacts with a "woofed" version of this shock ("Gwa~an!!") in the Anime version of Short Mission 3, after Anya shouts that she hates him for mauling her Penguin doll in a fit of jealousy.
- Hilariously, they also share a habit of being Oblivious to Love; Loid doesn't recognize Fiona's obvious crush on him and Yor doesn't recognize Yuri's Big Sister Attraction towards her, and the both of them are both this trope in regards to themselves and each other as part of their fake marriage, as their feelings are very obviously becoming real even as they try to rationalize them away. Even Anya, who not only recognizes this trope is in play for her parents but can also read minds, can't seem to quite catch on to Damian's own obvious crush on her.
- Ship Tease: Loid and Yor got married out of mutual convenience, but it's hinted with increasing heaviness that they've begun falling for each other for real. Mission 120 reveals that Yor has developed genuine romantic feelings towards Loid.
- Sleeping Single: Since their marriage is meant to only be for cover, Loid and Yor sleep in separate bedrooms. Loid has stated they will share a room for appearances' sake if they have company staying overnight, but this has yet to happen.
- Spider-Sense: Both Loid and Yor are skilled enough to know when they are being watched. Loid was able to actually tell the level of skill, a grasp of their motives and a general location of where they are. Yor is only able to tell that she is being watched and (usually) if the watchers have murderous intentions. Anya can also usually tell, but for a different reason.
- Twice Shy: Both Loid and Yor are very reluctant to even explore their growing legitimate feelings for each other, partly because they both believe their marriage to just be a mutually-beneficial lie, and partly because they're equally insecure about how their significant other views them.
- Undercover as Lovers: Twilight is a spy who needs to get himself a fake family to infiltrate his target's social circle. Yor is an assassin who wants to keep a low profile under a government that views single women with suspicion. Both agree to get married for the sake of appearances, although neither is aware of the other's true identity. However, real affection is slowly growing between the two.
- Unknowingly in Love: Neither Loid or Yor have ever had a stable, loving relationship with anyone before, and for the most part see their marriage as fake. Yor begins to develop her feelings for Loid, though she doesn't seem to be aware of it or her jealousy towards his co-worker, Fiona. And Loid likewise doesn't seem to intuit that the traits he finds admirable in Yor are signs of his own growing feelings towards her. Mission 120 reveals that Yor has figured out that she's in love with Loid, but she keeps it a secret from him because she's not yet sure if he reciprocates.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The main reason Loid and Yor manage to keep their secret identities secret from one another is that the two have been at their professions for so long, they can no longer recognize what is actually normal or not. Loid has witnessed Yor's monstrous strength several times, and she knows about his frequent and sudden absences, but neither realizes that this behavior should raise some eyebrows.

Voiced by: Ken'ichirou Matsuda (JP), Tyler Walker (EN) Foreign VAs
The family dog of the Forgers. A Great Pyrenees with the power to see the future, Bond was a subject of Project Apple—an Ostanian research initiative to create super intelligent animals for military purposes, before ending up in the black market to be used as a bomb dog after the project was cancelled. After saving Anya and helping to prevent a terrorist attack with her, Anya pressures her parents to adopt him as her reward for getting a Stella Star. The name "Bond" is a reference to Anya's favorite cartoon character, Bondman from "Spy Wars".
- Action Pet: Mission 40 shows him accompanying Twilight on a mission, and helping him accomplish it while joining in on kicking the asses of some mooks. He even somehow performs a dropkick on one of them.
- Amplified Animal Aptitude: Justified as he was specifically experimented on in order to become an Uplifted Animal. Bond displays complete understanding of human language and while his reasoning is often too simple, he is able to take action to prevent his own predictions from happening.
- Animal Facial Hair: His long hair makes him look like he has a big, scruffy mustache and beard on his face, despite being a dog.
- Badass Adorable: A big, adorable doggy who makes for a very capable Action Pet.
- Baritone of Strength: Although he doesn't get to express it much outside of "borfing", his internal thoughts are deep and gravelly, which may be a result of his old age.
- Big Friendly Dog: Despite being a trained combat dog the size of a miniature Shetland pony with a Dark and Troubled Past of brutal animal experimentation, able to chew through a leash in seconds if necessary, he's a peaceful, sweet, and helpful Gentle Giant whose usual demeanor is halfway between 'oversized teddy bear' and 'rug'.Anya: "That's a big Mr. Doggy..."
- Canine Companion:
- He's mostly this towards Anya, especially since they are both science experiments that gained supernatural powers. They were able to work together in saving Loid from a bomb trap and support him in solving an attempted murder mystery.
- He's also this to Loid a couple time as he's quickly grown fond of him. He aided Loid in one of his missions and they both worked together in saving a puppy from a burning building.
- Character Tics: When he's foreseeing the future, he sniffs the air and his ears perk up.
- Commonality Connection: Anya quickly bonds with Bond due to him both saving her life and having psychic powers just like her.
- Cowardly Lion: He gnaws through his leash and leaps in front of Anya to protect her from terrorists, but when they threaten him he immediately cowers and starts hiding behind her instead. He ultimately gets Anya out of the situation before she could be harmed thanks to his precognition.
- Dark and Troubled Past: We see a glimpse of his life as a government project, which involved being subjected to Electric Torture.
- A Day in the Limelight:
- Mission 40 is told entirely from Bond's point of view.
- Short Mission 13 follows what Bond does when he's left to watch the house alone.
- Short Mission 17 sees Bond get worried about his blood-type horoscope.
- Death Glare: Bond gives one to an aggressive smaller dog that was about to attack Anya in Mission 23. It's so effective that the other dog falls over with a small tap.
- A Dog Named "Dog": Despite connecting with him right away, Anya initially has no intention of naming her new big fluffy companion, simply referring to him as "Mr. Doggy"note . This is subverted after Becky teaches Anya the importance of naming a pet, and Anya tries to find a name for him, settling with Bond as a homage to the main character from her favorite show.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: He's unable to have or replay visions on command, prohibiting himself or Anya from just checking up on the future constantly to see if it's in their favor. Case in point, when Anya knows she won't be able to cheat by mind-reading her fellow students on the day of a major test, she asks Bond what the answers will be... and Bond's next vision is simply what the human Forgers will be having for dinner, leading Anya to forget about her test until the next day.
- Dramatic Irony: Flashbacks of Bond's time as a research subject indicate the scientists who created him thought "Subject 8" was a failure and eventually discarded him, oblivious to the fact that they'd actually created a hyper intelligent dog who could see the future.
- Establishing Character Moment: Bond's action in his first full appearancenote is to save a young boy from being crushed by a sign. This, combined with his prior vision of the Forger family, cements his precognition powers while simultaneously establishing his quick wit and kindness.
- Eyes Always Closed: The ways his eyes are slanted makes it look like he's always got them shut. When really expressive, they'll open up more like in shock or anger.
- Feeling Their Age: Noted to be a bit long in the tooth. During the dog competition with Handler, he's visibly winded after running a course for two minutes, whereas Handler's dog completed the same course in under 40 seconds and looked perfectly fine.
- Fluffy, Not Fat: After an adventure saving a puppy from a burning building, his fur catches fire and Loid has to throw water on him. This causes his fluffy fur to lose its volume and reveals that he has a skinny body underneath.
- Forced into Evil: He was used by a terrorist cell to try and bomb a summit, albeit he never got to the point of even being equipped with a bomb.
- Friend to All Children: Not only is he very close to Anya, but he also rescues a young boy from danger in his first outing.
- Funny Background Event: Later in the series, in events taking place inside the Forgers' home where Bond isn’t particularly the focus of the scene in question, Tatsuya will sometimes draw Bond doing silly or cute things in the background while the other characters do their business on the forefront.
- Gentle Giant: Next to the tall (187 centimeters) but slim and muscular Loid, Bond easily looks like the largest member of the Forger family in sheer physical mass (though it's actually very fluffy fur over a surprisingly slender body), and he has the warmest, sweetest and gentlest disposition of the quartet.
- Happily Adopted: Bond is very grateful towards the Forgers for giving him the love and kindness he's never received before. He especially enjoys Anya's company and plays with her whenever he can.
- Heroic Dog: The first action Bond takes in the story is saving a young boy's life, and then helps Anya save the day against a terrorist group. Mission 58 gives him another moment to shine, as he braves a burning building to save a puppy and, to boot, catches the arsonist responsible, positively impressing Loid in the process.
- Horse of a Different Color: Mission 19 has "Doggy" let Anya ride him to escape from the terrorists.
- In-Series Nickname: Before he gets a proper name, Anya just refers to him as "Mr. Doggy" note (which is also how she refers to every dog she meets).
- Iconic Sequel Character: Bond doesn't get properly introduced until Vol. 4 of the manga/the 2nd cour of Season 1, but following his introduction he becomes just as important a part of the Forger family going forward as the initial trio.
- Informed Species: He's supposed to be a Great Pyrenees; while he has the breed's typical white coat and large size, his prominent mustache makes him look more like other kinds of shepherd dogs. He also has black paws, which Great Pyrenees generally don't have. His ears aren’t naturally floppy either and appear to be cropped, which all kennel clubs would see as a breed standard that is never mandatory for Great Pyrenees.
- Jealous Pet:
- Short Mission 3 shows that he can get quite jealous of Anya's toys, as he shredded Anya's beloved penguin plushie. He immediately regrets it after Anya found out that it was him and told him that she hates him for it. Thankfully, Anya easily forgives him after Bond brings her a packet of peanuts.
- In Mission 87, he gets jealous of Anya's new toy lion, so he tries impersonating a lion himself. Unfortunately, Anya's so impressed, she asks him to do other animals too, which... doesn't quite work out.
- Lazy Bum: Most of his appearances shows him just lazing around and sleeping. Justified, as the average dog when home alone usually sleeps when no one is home. Anya even calls him one in Mission 40.
- Logical Weakness: As a dog — no matter how intelligent — Bond is simply unaware of many aspects of the human world. He knows Loid has some sort of "job", but thinks it has something to do with throwing spears at pigs and that's where food comes from. In another chapter, he's surprised to hear that he can't come with his owners on a cruise ship.
- Bond may get visions of the future, yet unless the context is obvious, he's not guaranteed to know exactly what they mean. From his perspective, Bond's first vision of the Forgers was of people he's never seen or met before; only later, when he's adopted by this new, loving family does he realize its true meaning. Then when another vision shows a black void, he at first guesses that maybe he's wearing a blindfold, playing hide-and-seek, or in the middle of a blackout.
- Bond's visions are almost always from his perspective, and those that aren't are comparatively rare (such as the World War vision that he/Anya later stop, or the burning building in Mission 58). If he's not in the right place at the right time and/or within a certain distance to the event(s) in question, he can't see what will happen. As an extension of this, at least half of his visions are of relatively mundane stuff, rather than being limited to major events.
- Nearly Normal Animal: While he's an Uplifted Animal who possesses human-level intelligence and is smart enough to fully comprehend how to utilize his Seer powers, he's otherwise still like any other dog, having canine interests and instincts, acting like a Jealous Pet when he finds a rival for attention, and being The Speechless. That last one can be rather problematic, as his inability to explain to others with words how to deal with his future visions means that, outside of Anya using her Telepathy to directly look in his mind and see the imagery, he has to be a Guile Hero by guiding people like Loid into helping.
- Non-Standard Character Design: He's drawn far more stylistically compared to the more realistic looking dogs in the series, as well as having the appearance of a mustache and beard. With the 1st Databook in 2022 confirming his breed to be Great Pyrenees, it shows how cartoony Bond really is drawn as he barely looks like said breed in real life.
- The Nose Knows: Being a dog, he has a highly developed sense of smell and he can use it to his advantage. In Mission 40, he's able to track down Loid from miles across the city just by following a few scent cues.
- No Sense of Direction: Despite being a seer, he runs straight back into the terrorists just after fleeing from them. Even the terrorist was surprised how easy it was to find them, leading Anya to quote this trope. The fact he led Yor to the group using Anya (and later, leads her to the clock tower from his vision with no problems) might mean it was completely intentional, but their reaction makes it ambiguous.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Bond is usually calm and never raises his voice around the Forgers, yet during Mission 58 after having a vision of a small puppy being left in a burning building, he tried to go save him. When Loid holds his leash preventing him from going, Bond roars at Loid to force him to go with him. Even Loid was shocked by his behavior.
- Properly Paranoid: In Chapter 40 he gets a vision that just shows black static, causing him to fear that it's a Bad Future where he dies and tries to think of/avoid the various ways he might die. While some of what he imagines may be outlandish and contrived, the fact that he manages to get a non-static vision in the end implies that had he not tried to change the future, he really would have died. The future where he lives was one where Yor did not cook dog food for him, which is pretty much confirmed in the anime's adaptation.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: He is made to look extremely cute and fluffy despite being a large dog. This is compared to the trained spy dogs the Forgers first look at in chapter 18, who are all drawn extremely muscular and jut their teeth out, as well as the other dogs that were purchased along with him from the black market.
- Secret-Keeper: Bond is aware of Loid and Yor's real jobs (as much as a dog can be "aware" of such a thing), and makes no attempt to hide that he knows - Loid also has no issue bringing Bond on his missions, as since Bond is a dog, albeit a hyperintelligent one, he's unlikely to let his secret slip, so Loid has no qualms about it.
- Seers: He is able to predict the future, seeing a vision of the Forger family long before meeting them, and saving a boy from a falling sign before it begins to fall. He also uses this to predict the terrorists being distracted by a phone call and escape with Anya. The futures he sees are mutable, changing based on current events.
- Shout-Out: He's no doubt named after fiction's most iconic spy, though In-Universe Anya named him after her favourite TV show's main character, Bondman, because of his kindness and black paw colourations reminding her of Bondman's black gloves.
- Shown Their Work: Several Great Pyrenees owners have noted that Bond's barks (Borf! Borf!) is quite accurate to how they bark in real life.
- Spanner in the Works: It's thanks to him and Anya that a war was prevented from breaking out and Loid is still alive.
- Stealthy Colossus: Although Bond has been mistaken for a polar bear, his preternatural intelligence means he knows how to keep a low profile. His feats include infiltrating a well-lit, populated laboratory (admittedly with help from an accomplished human spy) and snatching a giant plushie from the bed of a child, savaging it, and returning it to the child's bed without waking her.
- Story-Breaker Power: Even despite his Drama-Preserving Handicap of lacking the ability to speak, and his visions only being viewable by Anya and himself, Bond's Seer powers have the ability to shape and change the course of various events, along with the fates of many.
- He saves a little kid from being crushed by a falling sign.
- His visions of a cataclysmic war being read by Anya, beginning with Twilight being killed by the student terrorist and the assassination on Foreign Minister Brantz being successful, leads to said global tragedy being stopped by the brave little girl with Bond's help, saving millions of lives and preventing both countries from potentially collapsing.
- In the manga, after being shown a vision of pure black static, Bond gradually comes to think that he's going to die and seeks to subvert it. He soon believes that his cause of death is likely to be from Yor's cooking him dog food, and as it turns out, that was the case: getting Loid to fix him some food subverted his fate (and in the anime, he has an explicit vision of Yor's cooking killing him).
- At the dog park during training with Loid, he has a vision of a building on fire and a woman begging for someone to save their loved one. After dragging Loid to/into the building, they not only manage to save the woman's dog, but catch the arsonist responsible (who fully intended to keep setting things on fire).
- Super-Soldier: He was part of a government project by the previous Ostanian regime to use experimental methods to greatly increase the intelligence of dogs and other animals and use them for military purposes. The results were considered middling, and the project was shut down both due to funds drying up and a new party gaining control of the government. The dogs were later sold to the black market rather than being put down. Bond, though recognized as more intelligent than a normal dog, was still considered a failure because nobody could see inside his head and realize what they'd given him the power to do.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: Has this reaction when Twilight reasons he tracked him down for the chance to get revenge on a company that's rumored to have been involved in Project Apple. In truth Bond had no idea about any of that, just wanting Twilight to finish his mission in time to feed him (and so avoid the death via Yor's cooking that he had foreseen), but Twilight's interpretation worked for the same purpose.
- Terse Talker: Of the thought variety, since he can't actually speak. The few times we've been able to hear his thoughts via Anya, they've been very brief and simple despite his high intelligence. The various times we've seen his thoughts from his own perspective they've mostly consisted of him remembering things he has seen or heard and proceeding to act or react in turn.
- Uplifted Animal: He was part of a secret government project to create hyper-intelligent dogs for military operations. While he can't speak, Bond can understand complex instruction and speech, picking up on things before even humans can, and he's also smart enough to actively try to prevent anything bad he sees in his visions of the future from coming true. That said, he still usually defaults to thinking like a dog, and his ability to understand the complexities of human society is limited at best despite his general understanding of human language.
- Weaponized Animal: The intention behind the experiments that enhanced his intelligence. After the results were deemed insufficient, Bond was sold and supposed to be one of several dogs detonated by a warmongering isolationist terrorist cell in an attempt on Foreign Minister Brantz's life.
- You Are Number Six: Used to be known as Subject 8.
Forger Family Relatives
The blood related members of the family.
Voiced by: Kensho Ono (adult), Mirei Kumagai (child) (JP), Dallas Reid (adult), Sarah Wiedenheft (child) (EN) Foreign VAs
Played by: Kurumu Okamiya (2023), Takizawa Tsubasa (2023 and 2025), Sion Yoshitaka (2025)(Toho musical)
- "I love my family...I love my sister. And I'll do anything to protect the country she lives in. Anything."
Yor's 20-year old younger brother, whom she had to raise alone after their parents passed away. Officially, he is working as a civil servant for the Ostanian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, but in truth he is a Second Lieutenant of the SSS who excels at his work.
- Acquired Poison Immunity: He's quite resistant to Yor's cooking on account of having consumed it almost every day since childhood.
- Affably Evil: While evil is an exaggeration, he can be charming, disarming, and quite goofy, even in his morally questionable work for the Ostanian Secret Police. For instance, he cheerfully tells a man he's interrogating about his sister and how he just found out she got married. This does seem to vary widely with his mood; in later chapters he tends towards treating everyone around him with bitter contempt except his sister and his superiors when he's in a bad mood.
- Affectionate Nickname: Played with. He keeps assuming that Yor has these for Loid, despite Yor's insistence that she doesn't. Yuri often refers to Loid internally by various nicknames such as "Loiloi" and "Loidy", which irks both Loid and Yor.
- Alliterative Family: Yuri and his sister, Yor.
- Always a Child to Parent: Well, to his sister who got a Promotion to Parent. Yor still worries about him, asking if he's getting enough to eat and reminding him to clean up after himself. One can't exactly blame her, however, given that he's a Manchild who turns into an obnoxious brat wherever she's concerned.
- Always Second Best: Yuri really is a fantastically talented secret policeman, and ordinary criminals are hardly a match for him. But Twilight is one of the greatest spies in the world, and Yuri just can't measure up even on Twilight's exhausted and overworked worst day, much to his frustration.
- Anti-Villain: Really, the only reason Yuri can even be called a villain is because he's part of an organization that opposes the protagonist (who himself is about as morally grey as you can get), which he joined to make Ostania a safer place for his sister. It certainly helps that, as of now, he hasn't really made things worse for anyone and his plans for the family aren't so different from what Loid intends to do when the mission is over. In addition, during the Red Circus hostage situation, while his superiors were perfectly willing to sacrifice the hostages to ensure the death or capture of the terrorists, Yuri is completely focused on saving every hostage.
- Arch-Enemy: Reveals in the anime that he considers Twilight to be this for him, as he thinks Twilight, being an opposing spy, wishes to throw the country into chaos. He has no idea that Twilight actually wants to assure peace.
- Awesomeness by Analysis:
- He's extremely apt at detective work, such as using his contacts and skills to find the second missing school bus during the Red Circus arc, and in Chapter 82, he realises something is amiss when he finds his exact shoeprint in an area he hasn't covered yet and is correct in assuming Twilight ran to the sewers... only to discover the former had disguised himself as Yuri.
- During his fight with Twilight disguised as Yuri, Yuri's quick to make note of how flawless his disguise is, wondering at first if he's just that easy to mimic, until he realizes that the only way he can be that meticulous in a really short period of time switching disguises is because Twilight has been in close proximity to him for a long time - as either someone close to him or someone observing his daily life and can comfortably pretend to be him - which comes very dangerously close to him outing Twilight as Loid before deciding to focus more on the fight at hand. Those same observations come dangerously close to outing Loid a second time at home when he notices his right arm twitching - where Twilight sustained injury - but after checking for himself and seeing that there is no wound, Yuri drops the matter, presuming that Twilight is too skilled a spy to require pretending to be Loid, in order to be so effortless in disguising himself as Yuri (or anyone else)
- Big Little Brother: He's noticeably taller than his older sister Yor, who is already at an above average 170 centimetres, when they're standing together.
- Big Sister Attraction: Back when he was a child, he asked Yor, who raised him like a mother, to marry him when he got older. He doesn't bug the residence to spy on Loid because his heart wouldn't bear it if he heard his sister make certain noises. In his drunken state, he is brought to tears when his sister is about to kiss Loid and desperately tries to make them stop. Even when sober, a lot of his behavior makes it obvious that he still has a huge crush on his big sister, who thinks he's just a little too attached to her. When Anya reads his mind, Yuri's obsessive lovesick thoughts about Yor make her sick in the stomach. The anime clarifies this even more, as when he visits the Forger household for the first time, he brings a giant bouquet of roses to give it to Yor (in the manga, he brought orchids instead and wasn't shown giving them to Yor).
- Big Sister Worship: He idolizes his big sister for raising him after they lost their parents. He was moved by how Yor seemed to get herself seriously injured every day to get money and buy him presents, not knowing she was actually covered in the blood of people she killed. However, it's later made clear that his feelings for his sister aren't just familial.
- Bizarre Taste in Food: Camilla thinks having to eat Yor's food every day since they were kids must have warped Yuri's palate.
- Black Sheep: He's definitely this for the Forger family, due to not getting along with any of them except Yor. There's also his status as a morally ambiguous SSS agent who is actively hunting down spies, which makes him an obstacle to Operation Strix's success (though he doesn't know this, and it's debatable what he would do if he did know).
- Blood from the Mouth: The anime includes a scene where he throws up a sparkling torrent of blood after eating some terribly awful muffins made by Yor.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: His ambiguity is largely due to the fact he bases his morality compass mostly on his obsession with his older sister Yor and what he thinks will protect her or make her happy.
- Book Smart: The opposite of Yor, Yuri always pushed himself academically in order to impress her, going as far as to skip high school entirely and move straight into college as a result. His smarts carry over into adulthood in the form of a very analytical mind that can quickly spot holes in a person's logic, so long as that person isn't his sister anyway.
- Broken Pedestal: When Anya learned from Loid's thoughts that Yuri is in the secret police, she found it just as exciting as Loid's spy and Yor's assassin jobs, becoming upset with sleeping through the first occasion to meet him. However, when she finally did meet him and heard his obsessive thoughts about Yor and jealous thoughts about both Loid and herself, her fascination with her new uncle quickly turned into being creeped out by him. In Chapter 68, given the choice between studying (which she dislikes/struggles at) and trying to interact with her uncle's loony antics, Anya chose studying.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Just like his big sister. He's rather forgetful and an upbeat dork in general, especially when it comes to the subject of his sister. However, he is a very good interrogator, being able to get a confession out of a prisoner his fellow officers were struggling with. It's also Played With in that his sister complex is shown to actually get in the way of his competency at his job, most notably because it's the main reason he wasn't able to figure out that Loid is Twilight. During the Bus Hijacking arc, he shows an extreme skill in deduction that unknowingly rivals Twilight, as he uses his informants and knowledge to easily find the second hijacked bus and near-singlehandedly defeats the Red Circus members guarding the hiding spot. And in Chapter 82, he's the only member of the secret police to figure out that Twilight has escaped into the sewers and run him down on foot.
- Can't Catch Up: Yuri may be a trained and competent policeman, but he's hopelessly no match for Twilight/Loid, an ace master spy who is far more skilled and talented than he is in every conceivable way. No matter how hard or how much he tries, Loid always beats him in any type of competition, much to his chagrin. Amusingly, he's blissfully (well, maybe not the right word) unaware that Twilight and Loid are actually the same person, meaning he's frustrated with two separate identities of the same man for exactly the same reason completely independently.
- Can't Hold His Liquor: Like Yor, he doesn't seem to have a high tolerance for alcohol, getting drunk after one glass of wine. His coworker's comments imply Yuri getting drunk and hurting himself through acting like a jackass isn't anything new.Loid: [in his thoughts] Are all Briars just bad drunks?
- Characterization Marches On: In his Early-Bird Cameo in Mission 2, he's pretty open-minded and encouraging about Yor entering a relationship with someone. While he still hints at his Secret Police job by implying interrogation to see if any potential suitor is clean, he's remarkably restrained considering the later reveal about his obsessive Big Sister Attraction. However, it is shown that he initially didn't have a problem with meeting Loid until he was outside their house and came to the conclusion that the reason she didn't tell him she was married for a whole year was that Loid was a scumbag. Though given how obsessed with Yor he is, the idea of Yuri ever actively encouraging her to get a boyfriend still comes across as odd, even without the suspicious nature of Loid and Yor's "marriage". He's also more generally cheerful and friendly in his debut chapter than he would become later, where he's often rude to everyone but Yor and, to a lesser extent, his SSS co-workers.
- Charles Atlas Superpower:
- According to Volume 5's omake, the combination of Yor's cooking and embarrassed slaps during Yuri's childhood has made him tough enough to walk away from being hit by a truck with only a minor facial injury... after going without sleep for four days.
- His freakish durability is shown in a more serious manner in Chapter 83 during his fight with Twilight. Despite being completely outmatched in CQC, Yuri tanks each blow and even when he does get knocked down, he swiftly gets back up for more. He come dangerously close to beating Twilight through sheer attrition before Twilight decides to end the fight by smacking him across the head with a lead pipe. And even then, Yuri manages to briefly get back up before finally falling unconscious.
- Child Hater: Well, one child anyway. Despite being her uncle by marriage, he dislikes Anya, thinking of her as a brat. Even his efforts to tutor her in school was only for his sister's happiness.
- Cloudcuckoolander: While he's not as gullible as his sister, the guy's definitely weird. His obsession with his sister is very probably the main reason for his bizarre behavior.
- Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: He himself isn't really that normal either, but it's clear by his Sure, Let's Go with That attitude towards Yor's Blatant Lies that he's way past making a fuss over his sister's eccentricity.
- Comically Missing the Point: In Mission 89, he interprets Chloe saying he should show Yor he's able to protect himself as meaning he should improve his defensive skills, like his evasive speed and blocking. He figures out what she actually meant a little later on while talking to Yor.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: Played for Laughs. Because he grew up with Yor's terrible cooking, he sincerely thinks it tastes good and asks for seconds, even though it makes him vomit.
- Cordon Bleugh Chef: The least strange dishes Yuri made for a family dinner in Mission 68 were a whole fish sandwiched between slices of bread and an arrangement of radish, asparagus, and strawberries. The others include a lobster covered in cream, hard cheese, and an unpeeled banana.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: He makes it clear when he visits the Forgers' home in Mission 12 that he's jealous of Loid out of fear of Loid taking his only remaining family left. Mission 26 reveals he's also jealous of Anya of all people due to feeling she's also trying to take Yor from him.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Thanks to being raised by Yor, Yuri grew up to be resiliently tough, and he uses this durability to accomplish his missions, as he blithely takes any strike that would put down lesser men. Apparently he's tough enough that in a single mission he fell off a roof, got hit by a truck, and received a beating from a suspect only to have a bandaid as proof of treatment. However this mentality of simply absorbing the blows of his opponents has its limits, especially against a foe that's skilled in hand to hand combat, as when Yuri faced off against a disguised Twilight in Mission 83. In that mission, Twilight kept knocking back Yuri, who instead of blocking or dodging just kept absorbing the hits to show off how tough he was, which eventually wore Yuri down, but not enough to go down easily. As a result, Twilight resorted to bashing Yuri's head with a piece of steel pipe he managed to swipe from him, and instead of dodging Yuri simply took the pipe strikes, until Twilight finally knocked him unconscious.
- A Day in the Limelight:
- Mission 11 focuses on his job as a Secret Police interrogator.
- Mission 41 sees him investigating an anti-Ostanian writer.
- Short Mission 6 has him catch a cold and flash back to his childhood, when he had a fever and Yor took care of him.
- Mission 89 follows up how he's doing in the aftermath of the Winston Wheeler incident.
- Ditzy Genius: For a guy who was considered smart enough to skip high school altogether and go straight to college, Yuri can be incredibly dense and childish at times, particularly when it comes to anything involving Yor.
- Drop-In Character: Periodically invites himself over to the Forgers' to visit his sister. He usually picks bad times for this.
- Entertainingly Wrong: Believes Twilight's mission is to throw the world, and Ostania, into chaos, which could not be further from the truth.
- Establishing Character Moment: His first scene, after his initial introduction meeting with Dominic, has him interrogate a man while at the same time talking to him about his sister and her marriage.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- He dislikes Anya, but his reaction to a journalist threatening a group of children makes it clear he doesn't dislike all children. His method of arresting the same journalist, by waiting outside his apartment so his family doesn't have to witness the arrest, along with his promise to give the journalist's father financial support also indicates he doesn't extend the same contempt he has for people who threaten Ostania to their families.
- Additionally, when Red Circus hijacks two buses full of Eden Academy students, one of which has Anya in it, Yuri immediately tries to get involved in the rescue operation. He might personally hate Anya, but he can't bear to see Yor's devastated reaction should something happen to her adoptive daughter.
- Evil Uncle: Played for Laughs. He's Anya's uncle by adoption, and Yuri is bitterly jealous of her thanks to his belief that she is taking Yor away from him. His attempts to one-up Anya, a six-year-old, however, just make him look rather pathetic.
- Failed a Spot Check: Yuri's cover story of what he is doing for work immediately reveals to Loid that he's working as counter-intelligence for Ostania, because the story is a literal textbook example. Worse, the info is outdated, which Loid knows, but Yuri didn't verify. To be fair, Yuri is very new to this and Twilight was suspecting Yuri the moment he learned Yuri is working in Ostania's Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Not to mention, Yuri was too distracted trying to impress Yor to pay close attention to Loid, and drunk, because he Can't Hold His Liquor.
- Family Theme Naming: The name "Yuri" is just "Yor(u)" with the two kana replaced by the ones immediately above them on the gojūon.
- Fatal Flaw: His Big Sister Attraction really hinders his effectiveness in spots. As the narration points out, he basically loses all sense of reason and logic when it comes to Yor, resulting in some truly bizarre rationalizations and ready acceptance of things that are Blatant Lies. Even away from her, simply knowing she is not presently in the city causes his performance at work to suffer.
- Father, I Want to Marry My Brother: A young Yuri told Yor that he wanted to marry her. Yor jokingly promised to wait for him to grow up, unaware that Yuri was possibly being absolutely sincere with his wish.
- Foil: To Fiona. Both hate members of the Forger family (Loid for Yuri and Yor for Fiona) and have a low opinion of Anya. They both desire to destroy the loving family for their own selfish reasons. Yuri works for the Secret Police trying to take down spies like Twilight while Fiona is a spy herself and is massively in love with Twilight. Fiona is harsh and highly apathetic towards everyone while Yuri is much more emotional, able to be childish when he wants, and cruel on the job whenever needed. While they both are unlikable Jerkasses to pretty much everyone around them, Yuri is capable of caring for others aside from his sister and has had a few Pet the Dog moments with more well-intentioned actions despite his behavior. Yuri treats Anya well despite not liking her much, while Fiona's idea of showing she cares for Anya is to whip her into a Stella Star-earning machine. Finally, Yuri's dislike of Loid stems mainly from not trusting him which is understandable, while Fiona's hatred of Yor is rooted entirely in petty jealousy.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Played with. Yor considers Yuri to be the responsible sibling to her foolish, stating that Yuri was a much more capable child than her and that he taught her more things than she taught him. In reality, he's the foolish one, as his sister complex causes him to get sloppy with his work, leading him to miss evidence that's right in front of him, give himself away to Loid the very first time they meet and blindly charge into dangerous situations out of desperation to prove he's the only one who can protect Yor.
- Foreshadowing: His Early-Bird Cameo hints at his real job at the Secret Police when he promises to get a friend to background check a boyfriend Yor lies about.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Yuri's open antagonism towards Loid and Anya gives them a healthy dislike of the man, with Loid particularly wary of him due to his status as an SSS officer. However, his obsession with his sister doesn't exactly endear him to his colleagues, either, as they typically end up clouding his judgement and impairing his effectiveness in the field, so they generally only give him the bare minimum of respect due to his rank and success record. Even his beloved sister has limited patience with his antics, with Yor taking particular offense at Yuri's tendency to verbally attack Loid.
- Gave Up Too Soon: He gets dangerously close to realising that Loid Forger is Twilight during the Winston Wheeler arc where he comes face-to-face with the spy disguised as Yuri, reasoning that Twilight must be someone close to him and manages to shoot him in the arm. This comes up at the end of the arc where Yuri notices that Loid's arm might be injured in the exact same spot he shot Twilight and immediately runs to inspect it, only to discover there's no injury and immediately disregards his suspicions that Twilight is someone he knows. Twilight later rips off the latex mask he put over his injured arm, proving that Yuri could have legitimately found him out.
- Gone Horribly Right: Mission 114 shows this to be the case concerning his successful career as a member of the Secret Police, which he took only to help provide for his sister and make it easier for him to help her not worry about him so much. It's pretty much gone exactly the way he intended and he's able to stand entirely on his own to ease Yor's worries, but his new responsibilities have ultimately put him in a position where he begins to recognize that he's drifted so far from Yor due to his job's need for secrecy and devotion to the state he works for now. His initial reasoning for becoming an officer is effectively All for Nothing: he no longer has the relationship he craves desperately to have with his sister by his own decisions, and probably never will due to now being too mentally mature (for the most part) to ever be able to fully revert to the helpless position he used to be in, which made him so attached at the hip to Yor to begin with.
- Grade Skipper: Ended up at college at the age of 14 without completing high school.
- Hilariously Abusive Childhood: While it's unintentional on Yor's part, Yuri had it rough with her parenting, what with the broken bones and torturous meals and all. Despite all that, he still looks back on his childhood fondly.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Yuri's attempt to get Loid drunk, so he can interrogate Loid and then reveal his "true" self, fails because of Yuri's own jealousy, causing him to get himself drunk on his own wine that he brought. Worse, when Loid notices the beginnings of a familiar textbook cover story, he subtly asks Yuri more questions, which instantly give away that Yuri is working for Ostania's counter-intelligence agency, as he didn't verify the info in the manual for deception. Not to mention, it was revealed in a earlier chapter that Loid had already long trained his alcohol tolerance so he never gets drunk, meaning Yuri's plan was doomed from the start.
- Hyper-Awareness: While Chloe is actively driving the car they're in down a street with the windows rolled up, Yuri manages to hear Yor's footsteps outside and smell her, something that should be supremely difficult given a master assassin could only identify Yor by her lack of a scent. Downplayed, in that while Yuri is shown to be very perceptive, his greatest feats of awareness all revolve around a person he devotes himself to entirely.
- Hypocrite:
- He considers liars to be trash, yet believes he's completely justified to lie about his job if he uses Yor as an excuse.
- Chloe flat-out calls him a "self-serving hypocrite" in chapter 89, pointing out that for all his talk about how everything he does is for Yor's sake, he never seems to consider how she'll feel if he ends up dying on the job, since he constantly throws himself into dangerous situations out of desperation to prove he's the only one who can protect her.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: The more he sees "proof" of the legitimacy of Loid and Yor's marriage, the more he dunks the wine he brought.
- If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...: He almost threatens Twilight to have him executed if he ever makes Yor cry.
- Ignored Epiphany:
- Double subverted. One of Yuri's coworkers, Chloe, reads him the riot act about the ways in which his creepy obsession with his sister and disdain for everyone and everything else, including his own safety, are both doing him harm and serving to one day make Yor sad if her brother gets himself killed on the job. All Yuri takes away from it is that he needs to start training to properly defend himself. He subsequently realizes what Chloe actually meant, at least in regards to his own well-being, when Yor pops round for a visit a little later on... only to then have a second example, where he effectively realizes that Loid makes his sister happy, that she would be very sad if Yuri actually got his wish and managed to lock Loid up for some kind of crime, and then basically forces himself to forget that realization rather than give up his grudge.
- Later, while trying to use his particular brand of anti-logic to get Yor to admit she actually hates the Forgers, she talks about how lonely she felt when Yuri moved out and how happy she is now that she has a bit more of a life and Anya to take care of as a new daughter. Yuri immediately offers to turn himself into a pathetic loser for Yor to have to take care of again.
- Incest Subtext: At seeing Loid about to kiss Yor, he has a flashback to a childhood memory in which he said he wanted to marry Yor. When he remembers that she told him she'd save herself for him, he immediately regrets asking them to kiss and tries to stop it. It should be known that he was very drunk at the time.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Yuri's dual missions to catch Twilight and to break up him and Yor (Professional and personal, respectively) are always doomed to fail in ridiculous ways. Despite Yuri being an Anti-Villain who's very creepy toward his sister and unhesitant to torture people and arrest Twilight under false pretenses, he's nonetheless so harmless, silly, and self-sabotaging that he's almost entirely Played for Laughs and it's shown he'll ultimately do the right thing more often than not—no matter how begrudgingly.
- Infant Sibling Jealousy: This is the source of Yuri's animosity toward Anya, aside from her being an extension of Loid the sister stealer. He's furious that there's a new kid who gets the lion's share of Yor's love and attention now.
- Intelligence Equals Isolation: According to Mission 89, Chloe, Yuri's partner for that mission, met him at university where she was a regular college-aged student, while Yuri got in 4 years early. However, Chloe, who saved Yuri from being stabbed in the back by a suspected militant after he single-handedly took out the rest of the gang, states that as smart as he is, the only reason he understands other people is to know how to extract information out of them, as he refuses to form any meaningful relationships besides Yor. Chloe also notes that his sole focus to exist is to prove how smart and strong he is in order to protect his older sister, a fact that Chloe uses to remind him that Yor will be sad if he rushes headfirst into a mission and gets himself killed trying to prove how he's the only one who can protect her.
- Internal Reveal: Finally learns Yor's got married in Mission 10 (Mission 7 in the anime).
- Irrational Hatred: Downplayed. While his Big Sister Attraction does play a part, Yuri makes it clear that his dislike of Loid stems first and foremost from not trusting the man, since he (rightfully) finds it suspicious that Loid's been married to Yor for a year without him ever knowing about it. Nevertheless, his hatred goes into this territory when Yuri starts seeing everything Loid does as antagonistic. When Yuri asks if Loid has an Affectionate Nickname for Yor, Loid says he just calls her "Yor". Yuri gets mad at this, saying "that's our thing", despite the fact that it's just her name and nothing more. Yuri even admits that Loid is basically perfect, which just makes him even more angry that he can't find a good reason to hate Loid. When eventually faced with the realization that Loid makes Yor happy, and that if he got his wish and found some reason to lock Loid up Yor would be deeply hurt and heartbroken, he basically refuses to acknowledge it and tries to convince himself and her that Yor actually hates Loid with Insane Troll Logic.
- Irony:
- He's very reluctant to let Yor know about his work for the Ostanian Secret Police due to the Dirty Business he's involved with. He has no idea Yor is actually an assassin with just as much blood on her hands.
- Similarly, his motive for working for the Secret Police is to keep the country a safe place for his sister. Due to her employment as an assassin, the Secret Police would most likely target her as one of said threats.
- Yuri wants to arrest Loid because he's very jealous that Loid married Yor, not knowing that his brother-in-law is Twilight, the greatest spy of Westalis, and thus he'd have the perfect excuse. Also Twilight realizes Yuri is a member of the Secret Police because of the wine Yuri brought over to get information out of Loid.
- Yuri struggles with a crippling feeling of loneliness ever since he and Yor parted ways, not realizing his obsession with Yor blinds him to the fact that he already has trusted comrades in the form of his fellow SSS officers.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: As a member of the Secret Police, it's pretty much a requirement that he employs some violent measures to get information out of prisoners.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While Yuri's sister complex is portrayed as creepy and overblown, it really doesn't change the fact that he suddenly learned that the only family he has left has supposedly been married for a year to a man who, from his perspective, came out of nowhere and is a single father to boot. It's saying a lot that Loid, who usually doesn't tolerate anything getting in the way of his missions, privately admits that Yuri's concern is perfectly reasonable, and even suggested simply coming clean and admitting the marriage is fake. note
- Jerkass to One: Loid and Anya are the only people he has a personal vendetta with; to everyone else, he's either outright friendly or only rude to them because it's part of his job. Given his obsession with Yor and fear they will take away the only family he has left, it's not hard to see why. This is eventually revealed to vary with his mood; when he's ground-down from the punch-up with Twilight he's instead an asshole to everyone but Yor and it turns out he made few friends while rushing through college.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: At his worst, he acts like a dick to everyone around him except his sister. That said, he's not incapable of being polite and has a few Pet the Dog moments.
- Knight Templar Big Brother: "Little brother" in this case. He joined the Secret Police to keep his sister safe from the threats to their country.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Yuri's brashness and willingness to do anything for the state is what made him become the youngest second lieutenant of the SSS at 20. However, his assertive attitude has gotten him seriously injured or at risk of death, as in Mission 73, when he took a bullet while taking out the Red Circus terrorists, getting his head bashed with a metal pipe when he chased Twilight down the sewers in Mission 83, and almost got stabbed in the back after single-handedly taking out the rest of a gang of suspected militants in Mission 89. In that latter chapter, Chloe, his partner for that mission, who already knows him when both of them were at university, calls him out for being so focused on proving how strong and smart he is that he always puts himself in danger, and implores him to think about how Yor would feel if he got himself killed trying to prove how only he can protect her.
- Lethal Chef: Implied, considering his cooking gives off the same evil aura Yor's does. However, the one tasting the food was the iron-bellied Yor, so it's ambiguous how the food would affect a normal person.
- Living a Double Life: Is a new member of the Ostanian Secret Police, but keeps it secret even from Yor.
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Many characters have commented on how handsome/cute his physical appearance is, and he noticeably has longer hair than most of his colleagues within the Secret Police.
- Love Makes You Dumb: Yor reassures Loid that she'll have the perfect excuse for why she didn't tell Yuri about their marriage. The excuse? "I just forgot, okay?!" Loid is initially horrified at how thin of an excuse it is, then shocked when Yuri accepts it, and realizes that Yor is a major blind spot for Yuri.
- Made of Iron:
- Thanks to being subjected to Yor's entirely accidental physical abuse during his childhood, Yuri is able to shrug off a lot of serious injuries, from a bleeding head wound to a head-on collision with a truck. He really shows off how durable he is in Chapter 83 during his scuffle against Loid disguised as him, where it takes what would ordinarily be a near-fatal braining with a metal pipe to finally bring him down... and it still took a little while for his body to fall from that, which leaves Loid visibly shaken by how much abuse Yuri can take. In Mission 89, it turns out he gets hit by trucks and cars on his way to work often enough that his desensitized boss treats it as a mild inconvenience rather than a medical miracle.
- Deconstructed somewhat in Mission 89, as Yuri comes to realize that while he's always been able to endure brutal hits, he's unconsciously used it as a crutch and neglected other useful skills in the process, such as dodging and blocking. This may have worked against most people, but it leaves him severely lacking against skilled opponents who can take/dodge his attacks as well as dish out their own.
- Major Injury Underreaction:
- He gets slapped by Yor so hard that he's left profusely bleeding from a head injury, but he's too busy threatening Loid to notice. Loid theorizes this sort of thing has happened so many times that Yuri is used to it. Then again, Yuri is also drunk as hell, and possibly concussed.
- In Chapter 73, while assaulting the holed-up terrorists with the SSS, one guy shoots Yuri in the shoulder; he promptly wipes the floor with the shooter. Only after the adrenaline's worn off does Yuri react properly, particularly when his co-workers are trying to attend to the wound.
- Discussed in Chapter 89. After Yuri single handedly takes out a cell of suspected militants, Chloe, his partner for the mission, comes in and saves him from being stabbed by a militant that took cover while Yuri took out his accomplices. When Chloe calls him out for being so careless that he almost got stabbed, Yuri brushes off her comment by saying that getting stabbed is no big deal for him, which is when Chloe slaps him, twice, and flat out tells him: "You will die. People die. Even you Yuri."
- Manchild: Played with. Yuri's antics regarding his love for Yor and grudge with Loid and Anya more resemble that of a child than someone who is twenty years old. He gets easily riled up, pretty much loses all rationality when Yor is even tangentially involved, and engages in childish rivalries with both Loid and Anya over her attention, the latter of whom is roughly a quarter of his age. Outside of that though, he can be much more mature in his day-to-day life and carries a degree of professionalism when acting as part of the Secret Police, though his superiors do still consider him a kid, his boss even comparing him to an earnest puppy.
- Momma's Boy: Yor is Yuri's sister, but she raised him alone from an early age and their relationship is like a mother and son's on an emotional level. His hostility towards Loid is just as much for taking away his surrogate mother's attention as it is for his sister's attention.
- Morality Pet: Not only did he join the Secret Police for the sake of keeping Yor safe, but his love for her tends to rein in some of his more gray actions. For instance, when Anya gets abducted, he seems content with the possibility she might die until he realizes Yor would be devastated.
- My Sister Is Off-Limits: Yuri zigzags this as it was by mostly his urging that Yor settle down that she looked for a fake boyfriend, but he becomes mad with jealousy when he learns that Yor has been married to Loid for over a year (which is actually a lie on the couple's part). When he considers the possibility of Yor marrying a scumbag, he immediately goes on the defensive.
- Nice, Mean, and In-Between: Of the three adult Forger family members, he's squarely the Mean to Yor's Nice and Loid's In-Between. Yuri is bratty, obnoxious, delusional and highly judgmental towards anyone who gets close to his sister. While he does genuinely love Yor and cares about Dominic, his bad points tend to outweigh his good ones.
- Oblivious Younger Sibling: He had no idea his older sister is an assassin... despite the fact she often came back covered in blood with tons of money when they were kids, exhibits extreme physical skills and has tended to go to Murder Is the Best Solution tangents in front of him for years on end. Currently, he also doesn't know Yor's husband is a spy (although Yor doesn't know that either).
- Obliviously Evil: In spite of his protectiveness of his sister, Yuri is by no means a bad person. He's just as much a victim of Ostania's propaganda as anyone else. He genuinely believes he's doing the right thing as a member of the secret police. He's also genuinely under the impression that Twilight is trying to bring chaos to Ostania.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: He hates his new brother-in-law even before meeting him because he doesn't believe there'll ever be a man who is good enough for his dear sister. To make it worse, Yuri is a member of the Secret Police, making him Twilight's natural enemy as a spy.
- Only One Who Likes Spam: Yuri is the one person who actually likes Yor's cooking, and he's got a certain tolerance to it. Granted, this still means puking, bleeding, cold sweats and near death experiences, compared to others who would instantly be knocked out from a single bite.
- Parental Abandonment: His parents died when he was little, leaving him to be raised by Yor.
- The Perfectionist: Much like Loid, Yuri has a tendency to beat himself up over every little mistake he makes, though he takes it one step further by projecting his sky-high standards onto everyone around him. Chloe calls him out for this.
- Pet the Dog: He has his moments:
- Despite not liking Loid because he took his sister from him, he still really cares about his sister's happiness.
- When going after a guy that was posting slanderous propaganda about Ostania, he had the SSS wait outside of his residence to arrest him as to not upset his family. He also promises that he'll try to get the guy's father financial assistance.
- In Mission 2 of Family Portrait, despite being annoyed at being roped into babysitting Anya all day he does end up taking her out somewhere fun and help her make a present for Yor. He also sympathizes with her because he knows how much it hurts when Yor is too busy with work to spend time with her family.
- The Pretty Guys Are Stronger: Superhumanly resilient, surprisingly strong for his size, and noted by his coworkers to be quite handsome.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
- Gives one to a captured informant who passes intelligence along to spies in exchange for money to fund his extramarital affairs, justifying it as passing along scraps of paper.
Yuri: Mr. Hayward, the crime you've committed is called treason. Maybe those were just scraps of paper to you, but those scraps of paper might have endangered the lives of countless citizens. Do you not see that? Unlike you, I love my family. I love my sister. And I will do whatever it takes to protect the country that she lives in. Whatever. It. Takes.- He gives another, much longer one to another captured informant in Chapter 89, essentially calling him a Lazy Bum who blames society for his problems instead of making the effort to better himself. Deconstructed as his co-worker Chloe feels that Yuri went too far and later calls him out for taking out his bad mood on suspects, pointing out to Yuri that not everyone can be as strong as he is (though he doesn't listen).
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: He's got red eyes like his sister, and is a member of the Secret Police that serves as a threat to Loid's mission.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: As befitting of a Ditzy Genius, Yuri has a tendency to come to conclusions that, while not incorrect, are purely due to him letting his emotions cloud his judgment.
- He thinks Loid is a spy because being a nice guy is the best way to trick someone. He is completely right, as that's what Loid is doing, but it's obvious he is claiming this out of jealousy rather than any proof.
- In Chapter 89, Chloe tells Yuri that he's overestimating how much punishment he can take and he needs to take better care of himself, which Yuri takes to mean that he's been using his resilience as a crutch and he needs to work on other areas like evasion and blocking. Chloe admits he's not wrong about that, but says that isn't what she meant.
- Selective Obliviousness: As the narrator puts it, "He loses all reason when it comes to his sister", seeing as said sister constantly came home covered in blood and he focused more on the idea it was her blood.
- Shared Family Quirks: He's got a plethora of similarities to Yor that really drive home how they're definitely siblings:
- He has quite a bit of poison tolerance... okay, technically it's Yor's cooking, but considering a bite would knock out anyone else, including even Twilight, it might as well be poison.
- Yuri's own cooking doesn't seem poisonous like his sister's, but it is rather weird and gross-looking.
- He's also one hell of a lightweight when it comes to alcohol and completely loses his self-control.
- He shares her tendency to sport unsettling Death Glares whenever they're angry or working their real jobs.
- He's also somewhat ditzy and absentminded when he's off the clock.
- Just like Yor being superhumanly strong, Yuri is superhumanly durable, able to walk off being hit by a truck after going without sleep for four days.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Does this to Franklin Perkin when arresting him in Mission 41. After Franklin claims to have the moral high ground due to fighting against tyranny, Yuri says, "Unlike you, I would never do anything to cause my sister pain. Ever." Franklin promptly goes silent as he's led away in handcuffs, realizing what his being arrested will do to his father. Downplayed considering how hard it is to argue that the secret police have the moral high ground (Yuri even destroying a note he made after he let slip in his writing that he sympathized with Perkin, something that his colleagues would presumably not look favorably on), and possibly a hypocritical point on Yuri's part given he keeps his job a secret in large part because he fears how Yor would react to what he does.
- Sore Loser: Downplayed. Mission 68 has him getting into a childish competition with Loid and losing at everything, demanding a new competition after each loss. Finally, after throwing a tearful tantrum and despairing over being unable to beat Loid and not being needed by Yor, Loid takes pity on him and gives him a way to salvage his ego by pointing out how his childhood with Yor has left him still knowing her better than he does. Yuri eagerly latches onto this and agrees he has a one-up on Loid, then slams the door behind him as he leaves.
- Spotting the Thread: The first clue he gets that Loid and Yor's marriage might not be what it seems is when he notices the two act bashful when their hands touch each other as they clean the water he spilled. He bitterly points out that couples who were married for over a year wouldn't act so shyly with each other.
- Stalker Shrine: The inside of his work locker is plastered with photos of Yor. He has a lot of photos of her at home too, but presumably he can pass them off as family pictures.
- Strong Family Resemblance: He looks like a male version of Yor, the only noticeable differences being their heights and hair length.
- Teen Genius: In Mission 89, it's revealed that he was such a talented student that he skipped high school, and while as a teen he graduated from university, got a job in the Ministry of the Foreign Affairs, and got hired by the State Security Service, becoming the SSS's youngest second lieutenant at age 20.
- Token Good Teammate: He's shown to be one of the few SSS agents who genuinely believes in the organization's mission to protect Ostania and extends that responsibility to innocent civilians, as to opposed to most of his colleagues who tend to be more jaded, malicious, or outright corrupt.
- Unbalanced By Rival's Kid: His attitude towards Anya has shades of this. He can't stand being near the kid of Yor's husband and feels jealous that Anya can spend all day with Yor.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Loid chooses to spare his life due to his growing feelings for Yor, and, while Yuri doesn't know that Loid chose to not kill him for Yor's sake, Yuri still tries to out Loid as Twilight the moment he notices his right arm looks hurt, showing Yuri was perfectly willing to arrest Loid right then and there completely ungrateful over the latter's mercy. Justified in that he still fully believes Twilight is an enemy of his country and people, viewing Twilight sparing him as a mystery at best or an insulting expression of indifference from Twilight toward him at worst.
- The Voice: Until Mission 10, he only appeared via a phone call to his sister and an obscured photograph in Mission 2.
- Wasted Beauty: All of Yor's female co-workers express attraction to him after seeing a photo of him but they quickly lose interest after deducing that he's a siscon.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Little brother version. Yor recalls that Yuri would always learn new things as a child just to impress her, and he's remained devoted to her as an adult. Yuri will do anything for Yor's praise, including helping Anya study despite disliking the kid.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He completely buys into the SSS's mission to purge all of Ostania's enemies by any means necessary, as he wants to make sure to create a peaceful and safe world for Yor to live in.
- What Does She See in Him?: Asks himself this about Yor's relationship with Loid, and then answers his own question (he's a handsome, considerate doctor) while trying to play those reasons down.
- What You Are in the Dark: When he learns about Anya's kidnapping, he briefly entertains the idea he shouldn't care, as he regards Anya as a competitor for his sister's attention... then he realizes how Yor would probably react to Anya's death and promptly starts trying to get involved with the SSS response. His co-workers ended up having to tie him to a pole to make him stay put.
- When He Smiles: Yor mentions how as a kid, his smile lit up a whole room when she praised him.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Both are cases of Posthumous Characters, and while Mr. Briar's dynamic with the siblings still remains unknown, Mrs. Briar appears to have lovingly raised her children before she died.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Mrs. Briar shares the siblings' black hair color.
- Never Found the Body: Of his father... which doesn't necessarily mean anything since he was likely caught in a massive bombing by a country currently at war who probably wouldn't have bothered wasting time trying to identify all the bodies, but still noted.
- Posthumous Characters: While his father's fate after the Ostanian air raid in Luwen is ambiguous, his mother was Killed Offscreen with the only indication of her grim fate being her son's cry of despair upon discovering her after the air raid in Kielberg.
- Stern Parent, Doting Parent: His father aggressively forced him to study and became violent when his son expressed anti-Ostania sentiment, while his mother was kind and gentle.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Twilight shares both of his parents' light blond hair color and his hairstyle is oddly similar to his dad's.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Implied. Anya cries when being reminded of her by Housemaster Swan, and she still has dreams about her.
- I Just Want to Be Free: Heavily implied - upon seeing a butterfly she remarks to Anya "Wouldn't it be nice if we could soar through the sky like that?"
- Reused Character Design: Like her daughter Anya, she heavily resembles Ashe from Rengoku no Ashe/Ashe of Purgatory, with the same curly hairstyle.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Shares the same horn buns as her daughter.
Twilight’s Affiliates

Voiced by: Hiroyuki Yoshino (JP), Anthony Bowling (EN) Foreign VAs
Played by: Kento Kinouchi (2023) and Shogo Suzuki (2025) (Toho musical)
A scruffy information dealer and friend of Twilight's. He occasionally helps him on his missions.
- Action Survivor: The few times Franky has gone out on the field he's displayed as actually being fairly competent in his own right. Impressive given that he's a knowledge broker first and foremost. Although a flashback shows that he was an Ostanian soldier, meaning he has some experience to begin with, and while he doesn't fare so well in a fist-fight, he's more than able to get up to some action heroics with his many inventions in Chapter 105.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When held at gunpoint by Twilight in the past, Franky was crying hysterically and begging for his life on the grounds he didn't want to die without getting together with a woman.
- Alliterative Name: Franky Franklin.
- Bromantic Foil: Laid-back Butt-Monkey and Casanova Wannabe Franky is the closest friend that serious, straight-laced Twilight has.
- Bros Before Hoes: Despite his desperation to have a girlfriend, he ditched a date to go save his friend in chapter 105.
- Butt-Monkey: Things rarely go right for the poor guy; His attempts to woo women tend to blow up in his face, and the anime-original content of his role in Anya's castle game features him getting targeted by Loid with one of the ball guns.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Manchild tendencies aside, Franky is very competent at what he does and Twilight trusts him enough to recommend him to his colleagues at WISE. Proof of this is that Nightfall began to request his services frequently despite her initially looking down on him.
- Casanova Wannabe:
- He can't land a date, despite "not being picky". In Short Mission 2, he becomes a stammering mess when trying to ask someone out, he's not good at judging what's appropriate to say on a date, and had pretty much stalked the girl in the name of learning everything he could about her. Twilight even bluntly calls him a stalker.
- In Mission 43, he uses all his resources and even gets Yor's help finding a lost cat belonging to a waitress he's attracted to. It turns out she already has a boyfriend.
- In Short Mission 8, he's much too pushy when asking a girl out, getting himself a slap on the face.
- Conscience Makes You Go Back: In Mission 105, he finally lands a date with a pretty girl, and they are set to go to a movie that the racetrack cashier/fellow WISE informant gave him tickets to. As Franky gets ready for his date, he gets a call telling him the racetrack cashier got arrested by the SSS, and he's the closest operative in the area, and Franky tells the caller that they should get someone else to rescue the racetrack cashier, because he's got a date, and hangs up the phone. As Franky walks to the movie theater, he takes a detour to a secret weapons stash, and sets out to rescue the cashier, calculating that he may miss the movie, but he'll at least get dinner with the girl. Once they're safe, Franky goes on his date, and the girl tells him she met someone else, and they really hit off, so she wants to thank him for everything.
- Contagious Cassandra Truth: When held down at gun point by Loid when they first met years ago, Franky discusses the idea of what even is the truth behind the conflict between Westalis and Ostania, arguing that powerful people can just feed the masses the needed information, and craft convenient scenarios, for them to rally behind any war, regardless of what the truth may be. Franky letting go of once believing Ostania is completely in the right against Westalis is what made him defect from his army, and trying to reason with Loid that Westalis may not be just a victim only gets Loid to completely reject this idea at first. However, a little while later when he reunites with his thought-dead childhood friends only to lose them to a poorly planned operation, Loid rethinks his beliefs about everything concerning the conflict between Westalis and Ostania, recognizing some of the truth in Franky's words.
- Cool Uncle: In spite of not being assigned this role in the Operation Strix family masquerade, Franky ironically fits this trope perfectly; because unlike Anya’s actual Uncle Yuri who despises her, Franky adores Anya dearly and enjoys playing and spending quality time with her, even if he won't openly admit it.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
- He is nowhere near as skilled as Twilight, Yor or Nightfall, but despite what his Butt-Monkey status may lead to believe, he is actually fairly competent, not only as a knowledge broker but as a fighter as well, being able to ambush Nightfall when she sneaks into his lair.
- Chapter 105 has him near-effortlessly rescue an information broker of his from the SSS using his gadgets to make a quick getaway despite being heavily outnumbered.
- A Day in the Limelight:
- Mission 60 sees Franky getting recruited by Nightfall to put her in contact with a counterfeiter, and later she protects him from getting captured by the SSS. The chapter ends with Nightfall making it known she plans to use Franky's services again in the future, much to his consternation.
- Mission 105 follows a day in Franky's life.
- Defector from Decadence: When Loid first met him, he'd just deserted from the Ostanian army.
- Evil Is Hammy: While he's strictly on the side of the heroes, expect him to lovingly take the cheese when playing villain roles such as "Count Scruffy" for Anya's pretend game and an SSS officer.
- Expy: Endo modeled him after Mozzie from White Collar.
- Face Death with Despair: During Twilight's Flashback set during the war, Franky accidentally stumbles onto Twilight who is out on combat patrol. When Twilight sees sees him, Franky asks for help because he's unarmed, unequipped, and is being hunted by his squad for desertion. Twilight outright tells Franky he should kill him right there and then simply because they're enemies, and Franky tearfully begs for his life, not wanting "to die without first being with a woman!" This causes Twilight to chuckle and spare Franky's life and give him a spare ration while discussing the war.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Downplayed. Loid and Franky have known each other for many years, before Loid even became Twilight, going back to Loid’s days as a vengeful Westalis soldier under the name Roland, when they met on the battlefield when Franky deserted the Ostanian army, but they didn't become friends until much later.
- Funny Afro: He has an afro as part of his comical character design.
- The Gadfly: When he "arrests" Loid while disguised as a member of the SSS, he slaps a real pair of handcuffs on him, purely to troll Twilight.
- Gadgeteer Genius: He brought some spy gear he created himself in one of Twilight's missions, but we never saw them. Until Chapter 43, where he uses them to try and catch a lost cat. Unfortunately, Yor and the cats destroy most of them. Later more show up in Chapter 105; it's mostly the Simple, yet Awesome ones that get real use, like old-fashioned birdlime bearings and a bouquet that's actually a set of rockets, while the Awesome, yet Impractical ones either fail, backfire, or explode.
- The Gambling Addict: Franky takes an extra payday from babysitting Anya in Chapter 105, and "invests" it at the racetrack, where he loses so much money he's worried about eating for a month.
- Goggles Do Something Unusual: According to Eyes Only, he attempted to invent X-Ray specs, but it is noted to be one of his invention failures.
- Gonk: Downplayed. While most characters in the show are drawn in a pretty normal and reasonably attractive anime style, Franky was not so fortunate; however, he's rather cartoonish and goofy-looking instead of absurdly ugly. It's still enough for his attempt at a wife disguise to fail horribly.
- Graceful Loser: Frankie is unlucky in love, and despite never getting a girlfriend after he finally manages to score a date, doesn't allow himself to feel bitter, and moves on hoping for better luck next time. In Mission 105 he even looks at the fact that a girl he went to dinner with hooked up with another guy as a good night overall, since he only missed the movie part of their date because he was rescuing a captured fellow agent, and sees himself as a cupid for the girl and her new beau.
- Hidden Depths:
- Despite his unassuming looks, he's actually an expert information dealer, a somewhat competent burglar and apparently even a master crafter.
- He's pretty considerate of Anya and decides to help her when he half-correctly guesses that she's worried about Loid and Yor divorcing. Likewise, he suggests to Loid that Bond's reluctance with working dog training is because it brings back unpleasant memories of his test subject days, which is actually the case.
- For all of his complaining to Loid, Franky actually does enjoy babysitting Anya.
- As much as his character is seldom taken seriously, a remark he made to Twilight when they first met during the war indicates that just like Twilight he lost everyone and everything he loved during the war.
- He turns out to be a pretty competent field agent in his own right in Chapter 105, when he isn't palling around with one of the best spies in the world.
- Honorary Uncle: Franky reluctantly finds himself assuming this role for Anya, often being the one left to watch over her and Bond whenever Loid needs him to. Despite constantly complaining about it and shown to be crying inside while playing with her during one of his focus chapters, he seems to actually enjoy it on some level. Doubles as something of a Development Gag as Franky was originally envisioned as being a part of the family during the planning phase for the series.
- Hypocrite Has a Point: He often overlooks his own advice for his own personal reasons, but he does make a point that Loid really shouldn't get too involved with Yor due to their line of work. Considering she is actually an assassin in secret, he's not too far off.
- Hypocritical Humor: His dating mishaps tend to involve a lot of this, even the very premise of his desire for a serious romance goes against him espousing to Twilight that people like them can't get too close to other people. Further, he complains about women who he believes reject him for not being handsome enough (more often his desperation is probably the main turnoff), despite his own criteria for romance options appearing to include that the woman be quite conventionally attractive (likewise despite him claiming to be "not picky"). Twilight sometimes points out these hypocrisies as part of the humor, but normally it is left for the reader to notice.
- Inconsistent Spelling: His name was initially spelled "Frankie".
- Incredibly Conspicuous Drag: He tried to disguise himself as a woman to pass for Anya's mother, but even Twilight said that he wouldn't be able to save it due to Franky's overall build and face shape. Though even he admitted that he could pass for a specific kind of middle-aged woman.
- Inconvenient Attraction: For Nightfall. He thinks she's physically attractive, but finds her icy personality and disregard for people equally unattractive.
- In-Series Nickname: Anya calls him "Mojamoja" ("Scruffy") for an obvious reason.
- In Vino Veritas: He spilled that he stole Anya's entrance test's answers in front of Yor after drinking too much. Fortunately, she was even drunker herself.
- It Amused Me: By his own description, he's not on anyone's side, but he's not a big fan of how Ostania does things, finding it too rigid and controlling, so he likes shaking things up with some trouble.
- It Began with a Twist of Fate:
- Part of the reason why Twilight decided to keep Anya was because Franky found out about her bad track record with previous families and read them out to him.
- It turns out that a chance meeting with Twilight he had when defecting from the Ostanian army was the catalyst for Twilight understanding the Grey-and-Grey Morality of their current wartime situation and later accepting the role of a spy to always be aware of the full picture behind the situation, in essence making him indirectly responsible for Twilight becoming known as the world's greatest spy by the present. Not to mention it was also the catalyst for their later friendship
- Knowledge Broker: He is a talented information dealer and can find almost any document. For examples, he snuck into the City Hall to steal hundreds of single women's files, was able to find both a rare entrance exam application and the answers to that very test, and was on the Forgers' doorstep to celebrate Anya's admission seconds after they learned about it themselves.
- Lampshade Hanging: Rebukes the manga's very concept at the start of the story, pointing out that its requirements (a wife and child with a reliable cover story) and timeframe (immediately) are absurd even for a spy as skilled as Twilight.
- Lost in Character:
- He was completely into his Card-Carrying Villain role in Anya's game, not to mention completely wasted.
- He is equally way too into his role as a Secret Police officer when helping Loid secretly interrogate Yor.
- Lovable Traitor: It bears repeating that he's technically helping a foreign agency infringe upon his country's national security, but it's for keeping the peace between Westalis and Ostania.
- Love Is a Weakness: He makes a point of reminding Twilight that in their line of work, they can't get attached to anyone if they want to survive. Of course Franky doesn't follow his own advice either, growing attached to Anya and seriously trying to ask out Ostanian women.
- Manchild:
- His safe house is protected by numerous juvenile pranks, including a rolling boulder trap. Not to mention he joyfully laughed and frolicked with Anya through the castle rented to celebrate her admittance to Eden with just as much childish enthusiasm as her.
- And whereas the romantic drama playing in the cinema they tailed Loid & Yor into predictably put Anya, a child, to boredom-induced sleep, Franky was so moved by the love story onscreen that he openly wept like a teenage girl.
- Franky is also clearly a fan of the Spy X Family universe's equivalent of Mecha Anime, (or at least Robert A. Heinlein, whose novel Starship Troopers created the Mecha genre), as he spent ten years of his adult life building a(n expensive) Steampunk Exo-Suit frame that can theoretically enhance his speed and strength to superhuman-levels. If only it did not take 15-minutes just to start the darned thing, and if only Yor didn't rip off the backpack like it's made of cardboard and threw it in front of the fleeing cat Mr Koppi to stop him from running into traffic.
- Master Forger: He was willing to create false evidence to force a random woman to marry Loid as a last resort. He also possibly forged Loid and Yor's "year old" marriage certificate (and actually did so in the anime).
- Mean Character, Nice Actor: He often gets roped into disguising himself as various unscrupulous people to protect the family, or acting as the "bad guy" for Anya to defeat while they're playing during babysitting. Despite his protests, it's obvious he secretly loves playing the villain and always devolves into Evil Is Hammy for the role.
- Messy Hair: He always has messy hair spikes and his hair almost resembles a short bearskin hat. The Volume 13 omake suggests that this is a side-effect of his gadgets, as a hair dryer he sells to Millie leaves the poor woman with a nearly identical hairstyle.
- Minor Major Character: Franky is mostly a side character, albeit one that appears somewhat often to assist Twilight, to star in his little episodic hijinks and to be Anya's caretaker as a holdover from his role as her pretend uncle in the series' pre-publication development phase. However, later in the series, he is revealed to be quite important to Loid's early development and change of beliefs that shaped the man who would become a spy under WISE; it was the chance meeting as soldiers in opposite sides of the war between Westalis and Ostania that had Franky plant the seeds of doubt in Loid's blind revenge fueled hatred against Ostania, concerning the unknowns behind that conflict in which neither side was truly just in their cause. Years later Franky and Loid meet again, becoming an unofficial spy and informer/gadgeteer duo ever since.
- Must Not Die a Virgin: The first time Twilight and Franky meet, Twilight is in the Westalis army, out on patrol in a forest during the Westalis-Ostania war, while Franky is unarmed and in an Ostanian army uniform, because he was running away from his squad who were hunting him down for desertion, and when Twilight tells Franky he should just shoot him for being his enemy, Franky pleads that he doesn't want to die without first "being with a woman." This causes Twilight to chuckle and give Franky a spare ration.
- Mysterious Past: While the entire cast follows the same pattern with their personal backstory being revealed only bit by bit over the course of several arcs, many of them have their core motivation and pain revealed quite early, enough for the audience to see these characters for they are while waiting for further developments. Franky on the other hand is portrayed as a bumbling information broker that doesn't have much going for him for a long time, until the deeper dive on Loid's past actually starts shedding some light on Franky's character, showing he has war-time baggage as well, with lost loved ones and fueled hatred of a opposing nation, before losing that hate and faith in his own nation to then try to see the conflict as something more complex than just good vs. evil. Even then, there are only hints at what happened with Franky before, much remaining uncovered.
- Nerd Glasses: His thick-framed rectangular glasses strongly add to his image as a goofy, nerdy info dealer that provides Loid and other <WISE> operatives with hard-to-get intel and gadgets.
- New Job as the Plot Demands: Officially he is an Information Dealer with a cover of running a cigarette stand. However he can also do some spy work, create gadgets, and babysit.
- Nice Guy: Although Franky enjoys teasing Loid, he does care for the spy and genuinely enjoys taking care of Anya. The Fanbook also reports that he is as anti-war as Loid, and once in a while he does charity work like giving aid to victims of war or demining (the process of removing land mines from an area).
- No Name Given: "Franky Franklin" is his cigarette stand alias. His actual name isn't known.
- Non-Action Guy: He really isn't a fighter at all, but is willing to help Twilight anyway if he needs him (and the pay is good).
- Non-Standard Character Design: Compared to all the other characters and their normal anime-style designs, Franky looks downright cartoonish with his square head and Black Dot Pupils. Gets poked at when Loid ropes him into pretending to be an SSS officer with a Latex Perfection mask, which is just his face redesigned to look more cohesive with the adult cast.
- Not in This for Your Revolution: Downplayed. He has repeatedly said that he's not doing this for the sake of <WISE>'s goals. That being said he's working with them in hopes their actions get his country to be less authoritarian, and that's not counting his obvious friendship with Loid.
- Odd Friendship:
- Neither Loid or Franky consider each other as a friend or even an acquaintance and claim that their relationship is strictly professional. But in practice, their relationship is more akin to one normally seen with bickering best friends.
- He gets along quite well with Bond. The two even bond together during the Cruise Ship Arc, with Franky trying to help Bond impress a female dog he's attracted to.
- Only Friend: He's the closest thing Loid has to a friend, even if the latter doesn't consciously admit it. While Loid may get irritated by him when Franky comes to him for love advice, he'll also share a drink with him when he's clearly been rejected. It helps that Loid has known him since he was a soldier.
- Only in It for the Money: Claims to only help Loid and <WISE> for the money, but also admits he hopes that <WISE> will get his country to stop being authoritarian. Though he really does like the money.
- Overshadowed by Awesome: Chapter 105 reveals Franky actually is a really smart, capable field agent. He's just usually working with Twilight when the audience looks in on him.
- Repetitive Name: Franky Franklin is pretty repetitive when said in full.
- The Resenter: Downplayed, but being lonely beyond reason has given Franky an intense dislike of hot guys who pick up women easily. Hence why he wastes no opportunity to have fun at the good-looking Twilight's expense.
- Schadenfreude: He gleefully enjoys it when, despite Twilight being an expert Chick Magnet, he keeps floundering on his date with Yor in Extra Mission 2. Anya calls him out on it, and he tries to justify it by saying it's the one perk of being undateable.
- Sidekick: To Twilight on some occasions.
- Signature Laugh: Whenever he's on the task of entertaining Anya, his way of laughing involves repeatedly saying her nickname for him, "mojamoja" ("scruffy-scruff"), in a chuckling tone.
- Smarter Than You Look: He looks goofy and can act childish, but he's actually an expert information dealer who is capable of inventing and quite perceptive. When he and Anya tail Loid and Yor's date, he half-correctly guesses that she's worried about Loid and Yor divorcing. When Bond is reluctant to engage in the dog training Loid wants him to go through, Franky correctly guesses that it is due to the fact it brings back unpleasant memories of his test subject days.
- Stalker with a Crush: In Short Mission 2, Franky has a crush on a girl and has been researching every personal detail about her. Twilight says what Franky is doing is called stalking.
- Stealing from the Till: His only motivation for helping Loid with robbing a smuggling ring was with the promise that they could make a few small pieces "go missing".
- Tsundere: He frequently claims that he only helps Loid for the benefits and only plays Anya's Honorary Uncle because it helps their cause by freeing up Loid for other work, but his actual actions betray the fact he truly views Loid as a close friend and genuinely enjoys acting like a Cool Uncle to Anya.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: He at first manages to score a date with someone thanks to some movie tickets an information broker gave him, but has to put the date on hold because said broker got arrested by the SSS and Franky breaks him out because of what he did. Once he gets back, however, his date ran into a work friend and started pining for him instead. Franky doesn't mind however since he got to save one of his friends.
- All for Nothing: Twilight's reason for joining the war effort was to avenge them, which was in vain as they were revealed to be alive. They then died in their next mission anyways.
- Posthumous Character: They appear in Twilight's flashbacks, long after they are already dead.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: During their teenage appearances, Twilight's friends look far more well-adjusted than Twilight, who at this point has killed scores of Ostanians in revenge. Sure enough, they die soon after that.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Twilight is overjoyed to see his friends alive, after which point they all die in their next mission. Twilight as a result becomes so done with war he takes up WISE's offer to join them.
<WISE>
A spy organization based in Westalis that Twilight covertly works for. It aims to keep the peace between countries.
Tropes that apply to the organization as a whole.
- Badass Crew: Features many thoroughly trained and very competent spies, who are just as capable in completing missions alone as they are in groups.
- City of Spies: As the capital of Ostania, Berlint naturally has a fair number of spies and counterintelligence agents. However, it's the only city we've gotten much detail on so far.
- Everyone Knows Morse: WISE agents are very proficient in using Morse code and it appears to be a common form of communicating with each other in public without the risk of enemies or civilians hearing the conversation. The most notable example is during the Campbell Tennis Tournament where Twilight and Nightfall were locked in a room with an inhibiting gas and discussed their next move with Morse to avoid showing awareness of the trap to the enemy potentially surveilling them.
- Government Agency of Fiction: WISE is the Westalis intelligence agency that Twilight works for. They handle under-the-table work that's beyond the scope of regular law enforcement.
- Covert Group: As noted before, WISE is a top-secret government organization. While the rumor of spies has been fairly frequent in Berlint and the SSS regard WISE as their top enemy, most civilians don't appear to know of the agency.
- Sigil Spam: Despite being a secret government organization from a foreign country, the agents of WISE oddly wear accessories consisting of their insignias in public, even in board daylight or when shadowing themselves. Twilight, their best agent, usually wears a WISE shoulder pin on his suit and even in some of his disguises, while female agents such as Fiona and Sylvia wear WISE earrings. Some WISE agents even wear clothing such as hats that contains a WISE logo.
- Spy Speak: WISE frequently hands Twilight/Loid Forger his assignments this way by handing him a coded message and mentioning which cipher to use via making an animal noise (for example, "Meow" means Cipher C for 'cat') or using the same letter frequently in a sentence such as a waiter giving Loid a dish that's described with a lot of letter P's. This is just one of the many ways they communicate with each other.
- Temporal Theme Naming: Certain agents such as Twilight and Nightfall have a codename referencing a period of time. Oddly, despite also sharing the same name theming, Daybreak doesn't appear to be associated with WISE. (It's unclear whether Sylvia has a codename; "Handler" is her position, and "Fullmetal Lady" is a nickname her agents gave her.)
- We Do the Impossible: They manage to overcome very intense obstacles. Whether it's stopping terrorist attacks or gaining intel from enemies' strongholds, WISE agents have taken on various kinds of missions, even something as mundane as hosting a congratulatory event for a little girl. The Ace, Twilight, gained a reputation amongst spies for this hence why he's assigned to Operation Strix.

Voiced by: Yūko Kaida (JP), Stephanie Young (EN) Foreign VAs
Played by: Manato Asaka (2023 and 2025) (Toho musical)
A <WISE> higher-up running a secret base in Ostania and managing Operation <Strix>. She was also Twilight's trainer when he first became a spy.
- Alliterative Name: Sylvia Sherwood.
- All There in the Manual: Eyes Only reveals that she is actually the agent who adopted the German shepherd Keith Kepler attempted to attack Twilight with. It's finally shown in the main series in Chapter 78.
- Armor-Piercing Question: She absolutely bombards the college student terrorists with these once they reveal that they wish to start a war between Ostania and Westallis, ramming in just how ignorant they are to what they wish to achieve and how little they have truly thought their plan through.
- Beneath the Mask: Endo says in Eyes Only that she's sloppy outside of work; her room's a mess and she doesn't appear to take care of her looks and health. We eventually get a look at this side of her in Chapter 78.
- Benevolent Boss: She treats her employees well and listens to any criticism she receives from them. She gives Twilight time off when Anya wins a cruise trip citing he's done a lot of work for WISE and has more than earned a vacation.
- Big Good: She is Twilight's immediate boss and is invested in making sure to keep war from starting again between Ostania and Westalis.
- Clark Kenting: She does it, even though it's unknown if Ostania even has an idea what "Handler" looks like. Still, her disguise for her cover job comes down to not trying to hide her own sloppiness and wearing a more nebbish pair of square glasses than the striking pair of circular frames pictured. She's easily capable of much more elaborate disguises, but just doesn't bother for her day-to-day outfit.
- Clock King: Invoked. Since her official title is one that's frequently used for Diplomatic Cover Spies, she's routinely tailed by SSS agents the time she steps out of the Westalis embassy. As a result, she purposely cultivates this reputation to get the Secret Police tail on her to become complacent, allowing her to slip past them in disguise.
- Dark and Troubled Past: It's heavily implied that she didn't have the best life before joining <WISE>. Her mentioning that she used to have a daughter in Chapter 22, her Day in the Limelight in Short Mission 5 having a quick note about her being single despite said former daughter, and her memory of her husband and daughter in Chapter 78, paint a strongly implied picture about why she became a spy in the first place. That, along with her clear fury as she recounts how terrible war is to the terrorists in Mission 20, makes it likely she personally experienced at least some of the horrific things she mentioned firsthand (possibly regarding her family, considering "finding a piece of your lover stuck to a wall").
- A Day in the Limelight:
- Short Mission 5 goes into how she arranges to meet Twilight while under surveillance.
- Mission 63 sees her in her role as a higher-up in <WISE>, directing a Naïve Newcomer to the organization in dealing with a death threat against a popular former opera singer traveling to Westalis.
- Mission 78 provides a deeper look into her life as she has another meeting with Twilight.
- Dented Iron: In Mission 63, she knocks out a would-be assassin with a single strike, using a skirt belt. She spends most of the rest of the chapter rolling her shoulder in obvious pain and discomfort, muttering that she hopes that she won't have to do anything like that again anytime soon. Earlier in the same chapter she even muses that she's starting to feel old. In Eyes Only it's mentioned she deals with some back pain.
- Diplomatic Cover Spy: Her official title is an attache of the Westalis Embassy. Since the attache title is conventionally used as cover for intelligence personnel, when she comes out of the embassy building she's being tailed by SSS officers.
- Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes: She has these and at first it seems like it's to illustrate her as a calm cool secret agent. Mission 78 though starts drawing in the Exhausted Eyebags as the reader sees her true very tired self.
- Disappointed by the Motive: After taking some of Keith Kepler's allies hostage, she asks them what their goal is, and they reveal that what they want is a war. While she never explicitly states her disappointment, the sheer number of Armor-Piercing Questions she bombards the students with just screams this trope.
- Elaborate Underground Base: Her hideout is right under the Ostanian city where the Forgers live and was seemingly created just for Operation Strix. It is unknown how elaborate it is exactly, but it seems to pack numerous computers and wiring devices.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": While she very much has a name as Sylvia Sherwood (though it's uncertain if it's an alias like with her operatives), everybody under her command simply refers to her as "Handler".
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Sylvia may be a figurehead of an organization that indoctrinates its operatives to be unsentimental pragmatists who ensnare targets with promises of false love and abandon them the second they are no longer of use to the mission, but she absolutely will not tolerate actions that leads to war and the death of innocents, including that of helpless animals.
- She has no problem in allowing fellow agents in assisting another with a mission, but not at the expense of ruining what little happiness the primary agent has fought hard to earn. When Nightfall wanted to replace Yor as Loid's wife, she immediately refused, citing that they were already in good standing with their neighbors, and got taken aback at Fiona's implication of making Yor leave to replace her. This also implies that Handler wants Anya's happiness to last as long as possible, having become fond of the little girl upon witnessing her kindness towards the dogs rescued from the terrorist bombers.
- She's noticeably horrified to learn of the college age isolationists' plan to use dogs as suicide bombers.
- Friend to All Children: She has a soft spot for children, which makes sense given she herself had a daughter around Anya's age. She's come to grow fond of Anya herself, reassuring the girl that the dogs used by the terrorists will be treated well and given proper homes. This is also played in regards towards Anya's family life as well, as she was angered at Nightfall for wanting to make Yor leave to replace her because, while the family is all a part of the mission, Handler genuinely wants Anya to be happy with her foster family as long as possible until the mission ends.
- Genius Slob: Her ability to manage her agents does not translate into her ability to keep her room or workstation clean, with the WISE hideout at risk of a rat infestation thanks to her impulsive forgetting of donuts. As shown in Mess of Woe, she used to be neater, but found it difficult to care after her husband and daughter died.
- Giver of Lame Names: Downplayed. Aaron isn't inherently a bad name for a dog but Sylvia didn't put a lot of effort into deciding it; she openly says that it was just the first name on the first page of a book of names.
- The Handler: She is literally introduced as "Handler" and manages Twilight's missions and budget.
- Heroes Love Dogs: She's horrified to learn that the college age terrorists are using dogs as suicide bombers. Later in the manga it's shown that she's adopted one of the bomb dogs.
- Improvised Weapon: She stops a would-be assassin (and breaks his jaw) using only her belt as a whip. Unlike most examples of belts-as-weapons, she used the buckle to strike with, making the damage she inflicted more justified (and she hurt her shoulder in the process).
- In-Series Nickname: Her agents call her "Fullmetal Lady" for her flawless performance in commanding a corps of secret agents while under surveillance by Ostania's Secret Police.
- Leg Focus: The manga and anime put emphasis on her long legs in fishnet stockings.
- Living a Double Life: Her official job is an attaché at Westalis's embassy in Ostania. Her unofficial job is commander of a corps of secret agents.
- Martial Pacifist: Like Twilight, and understandably due to her Pragmatic Hero nature, she hates war, but that doesn't stop her from hurting or killing anyone who threatens to start a new war.
- Master of Disguise: Just like Twilight, she is highly skilled at disguising herself as another person to covertly interact with her agents. She's good enough that she can convincingly take on the appearance of an elderly woman.
- Mess of Woe: Mission 78 reveals that she lives in a filthy apartment and wears clothes that are noticeably dirty, and gets into an argument with a colleague about her workstation running the risk of attracting rats into WISE-HQ. It's heavily implied that she stopped seeing a point in tidying up after her husband and daughter were killed during the war. She feels some obligation to tidy up for Aaron's sake, but has difficulty committing to it.
- Ms. Exposition: Explains to Twilight (and thus the readers) how Eden Academy and the Stellas/Tonitrus system work.
- Mysterious Woman: She is this trope to a T, black suit and hat included. She also wears a fashionable black pussycat bow and Stoic Spectacles.
- Not So Above It All: She projects the image of an Iron Lady who flawlessly commands a covert spy organization from the shadows, but even a peerless woman like her sometimes slips up, such as forgetting to remove the price tag from a newly bought coat. The fact she's usually quite good at her job means that when her agents notice these slip-ups, they're afraid to point them out.
- She eagerly goes along with Anya's suggestion of a competition between her dog Aaron and Bond, apparently just because she wants to show off how well she trained the dog. She even smugly tells Loid that he can take a mission off if he wins.
- In Mission 87, she dresses in a nurse outfit as she checks in on Fiona's condition while admitting she wanted to wear the nurse outfit because she thought it looked good on her.
- Not So Stoic: Her usually emotionless face breaks when Twilight goes overbudget. She also expresses a bit of horrified shock when she hears that the terrorists they were after were using trained dogs in their efforts. And she freaks out along with Loid when Anya threatens to stop going to school unless she can have Bond.
- Older Than They Look: She looks virtually identical to her current appearance when she shows up in Mission 62's Whole Episode Flashback, while Twilight was only just out of his teen years at that time and looked the part, which implies that there's quite a gap in age between her and Twilight, despite them looking around the same age in the present. She also mentions having had a daughter Anya's age who is implied to have died during the war, which suggests she's approaching or in her 40s at the least.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Implied in Chapter 22 when she says she used to have a daughter Anya's age herself, and again in Chapter 78 as she recalls her husband and daughter.
- Pet the Dog: Almost literally. After the bombing crisis is over, Silvia reassures Anya that they will take care of the other dogs involved in the affair and ensure they go to good homes just like Bond does. She even adopted the German shepherd from that time, naming him Aaron.
- Pragmatic Hero: There's no doubt she's a heroic character overall, but she can be ruthless at her worst. She places the stability of her country above all else and has zero tolerance for those who would try to start another war between Westalis and Ostania. One student terrorist who proclaimed he wanted war got a foot firmly implanted in his face, and another got a gun against the neck.
- Public Secret Message: How she sometimes contacts Twilight while he is with his family, for example by writing codes on his restaurant food with sauce.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: She takes complaints about overworking her staff to heart and allows Twilight to go on a cruise ship vacation with his family. She also chooses to not call Twilight in during the events of Chapter 63 after hearing he passed out in his home, deeming he needs some rest. In the Code: White movie, she agrees with Twilight that his proposed replacement in Operation: <STRIX> is a screw-up not talented enough for the job and is implied to be behind the photographs that expose his philandering and destroy his relationship with the powerful relative that was giving him opportunities.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives a hell of one to the war-hungry Ostanian student terrorists, highlighting that she is fully aware that War Is Hell and they are painfully naive for trying to start one between Westalis and Ostania without realizing the consequences involved:"Have any of you ever killed anyone before? Have you ever been killed before? Have you ever had a limb torn off by an artillery shell? Have you ever heard the sound of bones shattering? Have you ever smelled the reek of rotten flesh? Have you ever found the crushed bodies of your parents and siblings in a pile of rubble that used to be your home? Have you ever discovered a blown-off piece of your lover stuck to a wall? Have you ever been so hungry you tried to eat tree bark? Have you ever stewed human flesh in a pot? Have you ever convinced yourself your enemy was sub-human so you could slaughter them like animals? Have you ever been so haunted by shame and regret afterwards that you cried until you puked? Have you ever had friends who did the same, and took their own lives? Did you learn nothing about war at your university?"
- Red Baron: "The Fullmetal Lady". She's so capable that her subordinates regard her with awe.
- Showgirl Skirt: An unusual variant; her dress' skirt wraps all the way around her waist, but it goes down almost to her calves at the back, while being dangerously short at the front, cutting off well over half-way up her thighs.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Her response to an Ostanian student terrorist, who is smugly professing his wish for war, is a kick in his face with her heels. She then delivers a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how War Is Hell and how clueless he is to really wish for war.
- Stocking Filler: She wears fishnet stockings and welcomes Twilight with her legs crossed.
- Strange Secret Entrance: Her hideout is located under a public photo booth. If a known spy such as Twilight shows on the camera, they activate an elevator to bring him underground.
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Though serious and stoic, and strictly business with the majority of people, she's fundamentally a genuinely kind woman with a very soft spot for children, and her being very professional and pragmatic shouldn't be mistaken for being emotionless. She even adopted the German shepherd from the Doggy Crisis Arc and named him Aaron.
- Training from Hell: Is implied to have subjected Twilight to this when he first became a spy, and it forged him into the greatest spy in all of Westalis. She is not sadistic by any means, however, and Twilight holds her in great esteem (and she in turn holds great trust in him).
- Tranquil Fury: She appears to be perfectly calm when a terrorist she just caught proudly proclaims to want war, but her kicking the guy's teeth and nose in, while delivering a speech about how terrible war is that ends with her shoving a pistol into another's face, clearly indicates that she is absolutely livid.
- Trash of the Titans: In Mission 78, it is shown that her apartment is in disarray with trash and clothes strewn about. The sad part is that, in a brief flashback, we see she had a kempt home life when she lived with her husband and daughter, but now lives in a Mess of Woe.
- Vague Age: Her age in Short Mission 5 is scribbled out. It's heavily implied however that she had a daughter Anya's age who died at some point during the war (which lasted quite a few years and ended around a decade ago), which suggests she's significantly Older Than They Look. When Anya notes that she was having fun "even at your age", Handler briefly looks offended before brushing it off.
- When She Smiles: When Anya implores her to be kind to the other dogs rescued from the terrorists, Handler's stone-cold face softens for the very first time onscreen into a warm but sad smile and promises her she would, having been reminded of her own little girl who is implied to have been killed in the previous war.
- The Workaholic: Due to her nature, Twilight is afraid that she'll refuse his request to go on a cruise (complete with an Imagine Spot of her pulling a gun on him at the suggestion), but she approves of it and arranges to put an excuse for him to his hospital cover job. It's implied by another agent that WISE complained about her overworking her division.

Voiced by: Ayane Sakura (JP), Lindsay Seidel (EN/Episode 20, 22-onward), Bryn Apprill (EN/Episode 21) Foreign VAs
Played by: Nonoka Yamaguchi (JP musical)
A <WISE> agent currently undercover as a Berlint General Hospital office worker, where Twilight works as a psychiatrist.
- Abusive Parents: Parodied. Her inner thoughts reveal that she would resort to, figuratively or literally, whipping Anya into shape if she were allowed to play the role of Loid's wife. While she might grouse that Yor got there first while she was on a mission, Loid is shown to have never even considered her for the part of wife and parent to Anya because of her harsh disciplinarianism and just overall being unsuited to being a parent.Anya: (after reading Nightfall's thoughts) Every fiber of Anya's being does not want this mama!
- Action Girl: She more than fits the bill, being a secret agent of <WISE> skilled in combat and observation trained by Twilight himself. She's even the most proactive among the supporting characters who appeared in the movie Code: White, getting a few action scenes of her own.
- Adaptational Dye-Job: Downplayed. Her hair is lavender on the manga covers and the promotional art, but in the anime, her hair is closer to pure white with only a light purple tint in certain shots.
- Alliterative Name: Fiona Frost.
- Arc Hero: She serves as the Deuteragonist of the Underground Tennis arc, where she and Loid infiltrate a tennis tournament hosted by a rich man in order to recover a dossier. It's zigzagged in that she plays an antagonistic role in the same arc, with her attempts to usurp Yor's role as the Forger wife.
- Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: A spy whose cover name is Fiona Frost has snow-white hair and a demeanor as cold as ice.
- Attempted Homewrecker: She wants to replace Yor as Twilight's wife, but he's perfectly satisfied with Yor. Even solely from the perspective of the mission, Twilight prefers Yor as a mother figure to Anya over Fiona, because Fiona would be abusively strict.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: She's this with Twilight whenever she's partnered with him in a joint mission. Despite Twilight misreading her unusual actions as being competitive, he still considers her to be dependable as seen in an underground tennis tournament consisting of traps, snipers, modified tennis rackets, ace tennis players with years of experience, and so forth, where they completely smoke the competition together.
- Badass Longcoat: When she's not indoors, Nightfall normally wears a long coat that's purple in color.
- Beneath the Mask: She rarely physically expresses emotion and maintains the appearance of a no-nonsense spy willing to do anything that might benefit her. In truth everything she does is out of a combination of being madly in love with Twilight and doing her best to make <WISE>'s goals a reality.
- Berserk Button: Insult Twilight at your own peril. In the underground tennis mini-arc, she's seen memorizing the faces of the audience members who did. Flirting with him is also unwise; only the fact that doing so would compromise the mission stops her from acting out on her first impulse to ruin the lives of every single coworker at the hospital that seems to have a crush on Twilight. And badly harming Twilight will make her lose her cool to the point where she's willing to use Uninhibited Muscle Power at the cost of breaking/dislocating her limbs, as Winston Wheeler painfully finds out.
- Break the Haughty: Fiona initially looked down on Yor in every way (aside from in looks), viewing her as weak and unqualified to be Loid's wife and does everything she can to convince her to leave so Fiona can replace her. She issues a tennis match against Yor so she can defeat her and break her spirit, only for Yor to easily defeat her in a single move, and even then she had to hold back her strength some just to hit the ball without destroying it. By the time the match is over, Fiona's pride is in tatters, and she runs off sobbing her eyes out over her loss while stubbornly refusing to give up. Notably, Fiona hasn't directly messed with Yor ever since being forced to begrudgingly accept that Yor is too strong.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Despite being madly in love with Twilight, her own professionalism and natural stoicism prevents her from being able to voice or even show any affection towards him, leaving him completely oblivious to her feelings.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: She takes out two doped-up athletes and deals with the general wackiness of the Campbelldon tennis tournament seemingly without breaking a sweat... though it turns out Yor's strength far exceeds her in a short tennis match afterwards (and during the tournament it's shown she is injuring her hands from her exertions). The databook also notes she's far weaker compared to Twilight, who is stated to be roughly at 60-70 compared to Yor's 100.
- Child Hater: A much more subtle one than Yuri, but it's quite evident that she has basically a negative amount of maternal instincts, and, notably, in all her fantasies about building a life with Agent Twilight, no pregnancies or children are ever shown. In her plan to become Anya's mother, it's depressingly clear Nightfall doesn't even see the child as a human being–only another object with which to demonstrate her devotion to her beloved mentor.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: In her debut chapter, she visits the Forgers to harass Yor and convince Twilight to replace Yor with herself as his wife, as she loves him and wants to be his real wife. Later, she considers destroying the lives of a bunch of Loid's coworkers that have huge crushes on him out of jealousy before deciding it would be too damaging to their cover.
- Color Motif: Purple and Blue. Nightfall's wardrobe usually consists of these colors. It's also revealed that her eyes are purple upon close-up.
- The Comically Serious: Her dead serious face is in complete dissonance with her thoughts about Twilight that make her sound like a lovesick young girl. Anya thinks she's funny for this.
- Consummate Professional: Deconstructed. Her biggest character flaw is that she leans far too hard into the 'professional' side of things. Her co-workers misattribute her lust for Loid as cold stoicism unmoored from camraderie or compassion, making her one of the least popular spies in her agency despite her noted skills. Even if they weren't wrong about her motivations, her focus on efficiency would just make Operation Strix more difficult to pull off, since she understands nothing about parenthood and isn't willing to try understanding it, considering Anya nothing more than a controllable variable. Her sheer focus on professionalism causes her to act like a cold, uncaring machine more than the flesh-and-blood human she is, which in turn severly hampers her attempts to end up with Loid; she can only see the pragmatic side of acting as Anya's mother, failing to consider how her approach would just breed resentment and ultimately drag Anya further away from any meaningful interaction with the target. There's no doubt that as a plant and as a proverbial ear to the floor Fiona excels within <WISE>, but the job she wants just does not fit her skills or personality in the slightest, meaning the biggest obstacle in her journey to seduce Twilight is herself.
- Detrimental Determination: Even after seeing how happy Loid is with his family, as well as the fate of Operation STRIX being at stake, Fiona refuses to give up her pursuit of being Loid's wife regardless of the harm she would cause others around her.
- Didn't See That Coming: Believing Yor to be an ordinary woman, Fiona expected her to be an easy opponent when she challenged her to a tennis match to impress Loid. Suffice it to say, Fiona did not expect Yor to accidentally slice the ball to pieces with her first swing, needing a moment to process what just happened. She has a much different reaction when Yor launches another ball at over Mach 1 towards her.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: As noted above, Fiona believes that the only reason she didn't get to play the role as Loid's wife is due to her being away on a mission at the time and Yor "stole" that role from her. She fails to see that Loid has absolutely no romantic interest in her because of her general selfish and cold behavior, and believes that if she proves she's more capable of the role of the wife, he'll decide to have her replace Yor, not understanding the empathetic part needed in being a mother, a loving woman, and an overall good person to others and not just herself.
- In her backstory, Fiona took Twilight's lesson about keeping one's emotions locked down for the sake of a mission to mean that she should never show emotion at all, even when Twilight outright says that she's taking it too far.
- Dramatic Irony: Nightfall believes that Yor only got the wife role because she was busy with a mission at the time. However, Twilight indicates in Chapter 2 - and states outright in Chapter 35 - that she wasn't considered suitable for the role in the first place due to her general mindset and behavior even before Yor became involved.
- Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes: Taking Twilight's words of never revealing your feelings to heart, Fiona's eyes barely change their expression except for a few instances.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Anya learns that if Fiona was to become her "new mom", Fiona would subject Anya to Training from Hell, following a minute-to-minute schedule so Anya would be, in her words, "a Stella Star procurement machine", which Anya sees as Fiona dressing as a soldier with a whip, and cracking it nonstop to "motivate" her. In Mission 35, Twilight lampshades that Fiona would be a pretty terrible mother by any standards, except those of ancient Sparta.
- Dude Magnet: Nightfall is very attractive and is able to catch the eyes of a few men in the series such as Gerald Gorey - the Chief Medical Director of Berlint General Hospital, Winston Wheeler - the mole of WISE, and Franky Franklin. Wheeler even noted that he found her cold-hearted personality attractive.
- Education Mama: If she gets to be Anya's new mom, she's going to figuratively (and possibly literally!) whip the kid into shape as she makes her study 24/7 until Anya becomes an Imperial Scholar. Anya, who can see what Fiona is planning for her, is terrified and will do anything to prevent that.
- Emotion Suppression: She does have emotions, but took Twilight's advice of never letting her true feelings show too far (despite him outright telling her to not take it to such an extreme). It's clearly taken a toll on her mental state too, since she is very willing to bottle up all emotions like her love for Twilight or sadness so as to never let the mask break, which just makes her more and more unhinged, while creating the dichotomy of a stone cold visage with an out of control mind. The only time she shows overt emotion is when Yor displays her inhuman physical might and then obliterates her in a tennis match, leading her to run off with tears in her eyes. Funnily enough, she knows she's this, and is perfectly able to use the fact her opponents know too to her advantage, as shown during her short partnership with Franky.
- Entitled to Have You: She refuses to accept that anyone but herself has the right to be Twilight's wife and refuses to give up her quest at making him hers, even if the result would ruin the family he worked so hard to create to get him. Her crushing defeat by Yor, however, has caused her to return to simply suggesting switching with her to Twilight on occasion, which he just shuts down.
- Establishing Character Moment: Two big ones during Mission 30:
- When she shows up, she asks Sylvia about the progress of Operation Strix, acting stoic and professional... and immediately proposes that it is still possible for her to take on the role of Loid's wife, then starts openly plotting to drive Yor away to replace her, showing both her goal-oriented practicality and Yandere obsessiveness.
- Second is when she's subtly arguing with Loid, who resents her interference, and Anya reads her mind... and completely in contrast to her face, is mentally sing-songing about her love for Twilight and fantasizing about a potential over-the-top honeymoon, like a Smitten Teenage Girl.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Downplayed as Fiona is far from evil. However, she is so amorally selfish in wanting to have Loid for herself that she's unable to understand the consequences her actions would have on not only Operation Strix, but also how the Forger family as a whole would feel. There is also the fact she's perfectly fine at the thought of what would potentially amount to abusing poor Anya for the sake of the mission, not understanding it would be needlessly harsh or cruel.
- Fake-Out Make-Out: Subverted. In SPY×FAMILY CODE: White Yor believes Loid is cheating on her when he sees him leaning in another woman (really Fiona in disguise) and kissing her, unable to see due to the angle Loid is really just trying to catch the hat Fiona was wearing from blowing away from the wind.
- Fatal Flaw:
- Empathy, or rather the lack thereof. Fiona is so in tune with keeping her emotions in check that she keeps a stone-cold poker face on at all times which makes it so hard for anyone around her to understand what she really feels.
- Her obsessive love for Twilight. She's so madly in love with him that she will do just about anything for the man. This blinds her to the fact that Loid doesn't have any feelings for her but suffers more than one humiliation because she doesn't think things through in her efforts to gain his affections. This, coupled with her inability to at least try to show emotions around him or spark up a normal conversation makes her come off as selfish and amoral.
- Selfishness. While she has convinced herself it is all for the good of the mission, in effect Fiona only cares about being with Loid and nothing else, everyone around her be damned. She personally tried to coax Yor to leave by lying that Loid complains about her at work, not even caring how Loid feels about this and at no point does she think about how anyone would feel beyond whether it would benefit or harm the mission in her eyes. And with her driven by spite and envy towards Yor, Fiona has tried on more than once, only for her to never get close to succeeding. Coupled with her apathetic behavior, Loid knows how selfish Fiona really is and never even considered her a wife candidate because she would be a terrible parent to Anya. To add insult to injury, it's Yor being a kind person and a caring mother to Anya that caused Loid to slowly develop actual feelings for her.
- Foil:
- To Defrosting Ice King Twilight and all-too-emotionally-conscious Yor. Especially in Yor's case, there is obvious contrast drawn between Yor's constant admonishments that she shouldn't try to solve her problems with murder or get into a jealous tizzy about Loid because it would be wrong and Fiona's reflection that she shouldn't indulge her vengeful feelings of jealousy to other women in Twilight's life because it would be impractical. It's also worth noting that they physically contrast, with Yor having long black hair kept out of her eyes with a headband and wide Tareme Eyes while Fiona has short white hair with bangs and narrow Tsurime Eyes.
- She is also comparable to Yuri; both are obsessed with one of the Forger parents while jealously hostile toward the other. In contrast, aside from appearance (like his sister Yor) and gender, he keeps his own occupation secret from Yor while Fiona and Loid actually work together in <WISE>. Also, despite his jealousy extending to Anya, Yuri believes treating her well is the best way to earn Yor's praise, while Fiona believes in possibly literally whipping Anya into shape to have her better serve Loid's mission. However, while Yuri does care about his sister's happiness ultimately (keeping Yor happy is pretty much what motivates him), Fiona believes that Twilight will ultimately be as happy as her if she's the one by his side in the end. While Yuri is very open about his emotions in regards to Yor, Fiona is stone-faced to the point not even Loid can figure out what she's thinking half the time. Finally, Yuri's dislike of Loid stems mainly from not trusting him for marrying his sister within the last year and never meeting him, while Fiona's hatred of Yor is rooted entirely in petty jealousy. Fiona is a complete jerkass to the core with few redeemable qualities, while Yuri, for all his faults, does have something of a Hidden Heart of Gold underneath his nasty demeanor and genuinely wants to do good.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Because of Fiona's selfish personality and lack of regard for her allies, no one in <WISE> thinks very highly of her. Sylvia has to order her to behave, and Anya hates her almost immediately after reading her mind and learning of her spartan discipline methods. The only people she has an even remotely decent relationship with are Loid and Franky, and even they aren't too close with her, with Loid viewing her as nothing more than a "work associate" and Franky, while having a small crush on her, finds her personality to be distasteful.
- Gray Rain of Depression: After witnessing how Twilight is genuinely happy around his fake family in a way she has never seen or made him before, Fiona decides to leave the apartment in frustration despite it raining outside. She's actually grateful that it is raining as she didn't want Twilight to see her in tears.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Nightfall is obsesed with marrying Twilight, to the point that in her introduction she tries to manipulate Yor into divorcing Loid by telling her that he's been complaining about how unhappy he is in his marriage. The intent being that Nightfall wants to marry Twilight for real and going from possing as Ms. Fiona Frost to becoming Mrs. Fiona Forger. Following the success of the Tennis Tournament, Fiona challenges Yor to a tennis game to determine who deserves to be Loid's wife, and after Yor beats her, Fiona runs away crying to train in the mountains so that she can defeat Yor in a rematch.
- In Mission 84, after Nightfall's team captures Wheeler, he manages to escape from them, and when he threatens to kill another agent, Nightfall says that all WISE agents in Ostania are ready to die in the line of duty, and Wheeler manages to escape by shoving his hostage into Nightfall so when she shoots around the hostage she misses and he flees into the sewers. When Nightfall gives chase, she states that she's willing to die if it means saving Twilight, but then she has an Imagine Spot where Twilight holds her as she bleeds out, and when he goes back home, lamenting that "the love of my life just died," Yor promises to make him forget about Nightfall. Nightfall snaps out of it and decides that she will do everything to make sure she and Twilight survive this mission and submit a proposal where she replaces Yor as Loid Forger's wife and then marry him for real.
- Heroic RRoD: Downplayed. When she and Twilight enter an underground tennis tournament, she seeks to impress Twilight by thrashing their opponents in each match. However, Twilight notes that she's harming her arm by playing so aggressively and warns her to tone it down.
- Her Own Worst Enemy: At the end of the day, all her efforts to gain Loid's heart fail in part because of her selfish and apathetic behavior, not even taking into account that it's her own attitude which alienates Loid (who decided from the start that she would be a liability as a fake wife, let alone a romantic partner).
- Hiding Behind Your Bangs: Her right eye is covered by her hair, representing the concealment of her emotions.
- Honour Before Reason: During her brief tennis match with Yor, she realises that Yor's supersonic serve is, without fail, going to go out of bounds and all she has to do is leave it and she'll win the match. But because she interprets that as backing down from Yor's challenge, she stubbornly tries to return the serve instead (only for it to shatter her racket), causing her to lose.
- Hopeless Suitor: She wants to become Twilight's wife, but he has no idea about her feelings and she arrived a bit too late as Twilight has already bonded with Yor and Anya as a true family. Even before Operation Strix started, she had time to confess her feelings and didn't.
- Hot for Teacher: She is completely in love with Twilight, who is the man that taught her all about how to be a good spy.
- Hypocrite:
- Just about all of Fiona's assaults on Yor's character (in particular her being completely unfit to be a mother) can be applied truly, or least equally, to her.
- In chapter 84, Fiona coldly tells Wheeler that him taking her comrades hostage will do him no good, since all of them came to Ostania fully prepared to die if necessary. Initially, she seems to include herself when she says this, even saying that she'd be happy to die for Loid's cause... until she realises that if she dies, Loid will be all Yor's, after which she declares she'll survive at any cost. How convenient that her views on self-sacrifice change once she actually thinks about what she stands to lose.
- I Know Madden Kombat: This is how she won in her match against the super doped tennis athlete brothers during the tennis tournament. The insults they made towards Twilight infuriated her so much that she severely beat them down with her tennis serves, terminating them from the tournament.
- Irony:
- In spite of Fiona's efforts to break up Yor with Loid and replace her as his wife, her actions have actually helped them grow closer together.
- Furthermore, Twilight indicates that Nightfall was actually considered unsuitable and passed up for the wife role for Operation Strix because of her general character. In other words, Nightfall ruined her own chances to be Twilight's fake wife due to being seen as callous and ruthless for the sake of proving herself to Twilight. In a further twist of irony, Yor has far more success in what Nightfall wanted from Operation Strix (Twilight's affections) because of being herself, despite Nightfall thinking she was ill-suited for being a wife.
- It's not her romantic obsession that can shatter her emotional wall and bring out more human reactions from Twilight... it's her rival Yor, and to a point, their handler Sylvia.
- She herself has picked up a Hopeless Suitor in the form of Dr. Gerald Gorey, who violates boundaries and attempts to engage in petty character assassination to get his "rival" out of the way so he can have her.
- It Began with a Twist of Fate: She would have likely been Twilight's wife for Operation Strix, but Ostania's crackdown on spies at the time had left <WISE> short-staffed, meaning she was already busy on another mission when Twilight needed a wife for the interview and missed her chance. However, it's actually played with, in that Twilight didn't exactly want to give her the opportunity by his comments to Yor; he is aware of her strict disciplinarian tendencies and didn't want to subject a child to them, and thanks to her seemingly utterly amoral personality was afraid of her trying to hijack the mission for the sake of her own career.
- It's All About Me: What she seems to care most about is being with Twilight, preferably as his wife. To that end, everyone else around him is an obstacle in her way for her selfish goals, believing that the result would be better than the family he already has created. Even after seeing how close Loid has become with his new family, that she still refuses to give up on making him her own only showcases how much of her "love" for him manifests as an obsessive desire to have him all to herself.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Harshly subverted. Even taking into account Nightfall's love for Twilight for his noble qualities, she cares only about being with him and having him all for herself. There is not a single moment does she take into account how he would feel about ruining the Forger family as a whole or even his own opinion in the matter other than her own selfishness.
- Jerkass: While she can be polite and well-mannered to Twilight, to others she's a cold, humorless, uncaring and selfish woman who has no qualms about how low she has to go to get what she wants, even going as far as to try to lie to Yor in an effort to take Twilight for herself or even consider abusing Anya in her school work for the sake of the mission.
- Jerkass Has a Point: During her introduction, she tells off Twilight for having lost his edge and that being a family man has made him go soft, with Twilight retorting she's not in a position to judge him. The WISE Traitor Arc proves her statement valid, as Twilight lets Yuri Briar live using his connection to Yor as an excuse to not kill him, being reluctant to do so in spite of the fact Yuri gained some dangerous intel on Twilight. By the end of the arc, Loid himself comes to accept that Fiona was right about him losing his edge.
- Jerkass to One: While Nightfall only cares for Twilight, she defaults to cold professionalism when dealing with most people. However, when it comes to Yor, Nightfall can barely contain her jealousy and contempt of the woman who has the role Nightfall wants for herself.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: At face value she is a Cold, Emotionless Spy who is abrasive towards others, but she is a member of <WISE>, one of the operatives helping Operation Strix and an ally of Loid Forger/Agent Twilight, whom she secretly loves. However, none of that changes the fact that deep-down Nightfall is a selfish, immoral, ruthless, and callous woman who doesn't give a rat's ass that her actions would harm others, and will do anything to get what she wants. She wants to be Loid/Twilight's wife, but she loathes Anya and Yor with a passion even though he's grown close to them and desires to break-up the family he created for the mission just to have him for herself.
- In one of her earlier appearances, Fiona/Nightfall returns Anya's Magnifying Glass at the Forger Household... just so she could A) get Loid/Twilight's approval, B) enter the household to learn Yor and Anya's weaknesses to exploit, and C) lie to Yor claiming that Loid regularly badmouths her behind her back, which she hopes will convince Mrs. Forger to divorce him.
- She is a bit of a Deconstruction of this trope. Because of her selfish and callous nature, the <WISE> Agents, including Twilight, unsurprisingly DO NOT think highly of her. Others are taken aback by her beauty... only to quickly dislike her after seeing how cold and ruthless she really is. Even Anya quickly begins to hate her after reading her mind and seeing both how she views her and how she intends to abuse her into becoming a good student.
- Kick the Dog:
- In her efforts to pressure Yor out of separating from Twilight, she makes up a lie about Twilight badmouthing Yor to his coworkers. Yor almost starts to believe it, but Twilight unwittingly squashes all of it.
- She regards Anya as nothing more than a tool for the success of <WISE>'s goals, and her inner thoughts reveal that if she were Anya's mother, she would mold Anya into an "efficient machine" with harsh, structured discipline despite Anya's young age. Twilight, unaware of her feelings for him, outright admits he never considered her for the role of wife and thinks she'd make an awful parent.
- Lack of Empathy:
- She's fully capable of emotions, but because she took Twilight's teaching too seriously, she always keeps a stone-cold poker face on at all times, even when in conversations with others. Worse is that because of how much she wants to be together with him, she has zero hesitation in trying to usurp Yor to be his wife or forcing Anya to devote herself completely to her studies using harsh treatment, showing no compassion towards how they would feel about this or even Loid's own opinion in the matter despite her feelings for him.
- While her antipathy towards Yor is perhaps understandable (albeit still unfair) as Yor is her romantic rival and consequently the most obvious obstacle between herself and Twilight (aside from her own lousy personality) and his growing feelings for Yor are still somewhat in turmoil, Nightfall's complete inability to recognise that that he already strongly cares for Anya and that she herself would also need to consider the girl as a daughter rather than a tool to have any chance of taking Yor's place is the ultimate nail in her coffin, as her total maternal unsuitability is the main reason that Twilight won't even consider giving her a chance.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- Upon meeting Yor for the first time, she tries to make up a nasty rumor about her that Loid talks badly about her behind his back. However, Loid inadvertently squashing those comments causes her to see that Loid is showing true emotions toward her and his family, and she leaves to cry in the rain. As sympathetic as it is to see the man she loves beginning to show affection to another woman, it's a little hard to feel sorry for her for trying to take Loid away for herself, regardless of how said man feels.
- She tries to upstart Yor again in a tennis match, but Yor's insane strength completely destroys both her racket and pride, causing her to run away, begrudgingly admitting Yor beat her while crying her eyes out.
- Loving a Shadow: Zigzagged. While Nightfall does harbor true affection for Twilight, she really only cares about being with him and as his wife, not even taking into account how Yor, Anya, or even Twilight himself would feel in ruining the Forger family he worked so hard to create. It also gets played with that ever since her introduction she only calls Twilight by his epithet and never by his Loid Forger name, showing that she only loves the spy Twilight and his numerous aliases and not the loving family man Loid Forger despite saying his family man persona is just as lovable, implied to be because she's resentful that Yor and Anya brought those genuine emotions from him. It's also telling that her view of what would make her a "perfect wife" to Twilight focuses more on the asset she would be to the mission rather than any emotional support. All of that being said, it should be noted that even at the current point of the manga, Loid still considers Twlight to be his one and only true self, so whether she averts this or plays it straight really depends on who you ask.
- Love Hurts: While her feelings for Twilight and her inferiority complex to Yor are played for comedy, her pain of realizing he's falling in love with someone else isn't. She ends up crying in her introductory chapter after seeing Yor bring genuine happy emotions out of him, something she's never been able to do.
- Love Interest vs. Lust Interest: In regards to Twilight, Yor serves as the Love Interest while Nightfall serves as the Lust Interest. Both women have shown to have an interest in the accomplished but troubled fellow, but while Yor slowly starts developing feelings for how reliable and hardworking he is, his strict but caring side when it comes to Anya, and being very supportive of her despite her shortcomings, all while insisting that he doesn't need to be perfect and worrying that he might be unsatisfied with her as a wife, Nightfall seems to only admire the idealized version of Twilight, viewing him as the embodiment of flawlessness and determined to prove herself the only one fit for the role in being his wife in Operation Strix. Also, while Fiona constantly imagines over-the-top romantic fantasies with him, the mere thought of sharing a kiss with him turns Yor into a blushing mess.
- Love Makes You Crazy: Beneath her stoicism is a woman who is in denial that she is a Hopeless Suitor to the man she loves. She has yet to fully act on most of her thoughts, but just a glimpse reveals that she is willing to cross some serious lines just to have Loid for herself.
- Love Makes You Dumb: While Nightfall is fairly smart and resourceful, her feelings for Twilight and utter inability to just move on cause her to run off into the mountains during a manpower shortage at her spy agency to childishly train with a racket tied down with rocks after witnessing Yor's inhuman strength and prowess.
- Meaningful Name: Nightfall marks the beginning of the night, overlapping with Twilight. Her civilian name also fits her stoic demeanor.
- Motive Misidentification: Most everyone at <WISE> thinks her goal is to replace Yor as the wife in Operation Strix to rise up in the ranks of the agency. Her true motive is that she's deeply in love with Twilight and wishes to be his real wife.
- Nightmare Face: Mission 84 ended with Nightfall having a really horrifying one, quite possibly the scariest one to date. Let's just say that she didn't take Wheeler beating Twilight and attempting to unmask him well AT ALL.
- Nominal Hero: She's a member of <WISE>, technically making her on the side of the heroes, but there is very little actually heroic about her. She will gladly accept any mission <WISE> gives her, especially those that involve Loid, but she's also extremely ruthless and willing to get rid of anyone who could stand between her and Loid, only holding back because of pragmatism rather than any standards. While she does seem to genuinely believe in <WISE>'s cause, it's nevertheless clear that her own wants and desires come first, to the point that she's willing to put Operation Strix at risk to obtain them.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: She's a top-class spy and agent overall, but pales greatly when compared to our borderline-superhuman main cast, both in terms of her own job (her methodologies and preparations are inferior to Twilight's, while Yor absolutely crushes her in combat strength). However, she's about equal to each of them in the other's specialization. Place her in "normal" situations for someone in her station, and she'll do her job perfectly, as shown when she dealt with the craziness of the underworld tennis tournament without missing a beat.
- No Social Skills: As a consequence of taking to suppressing her emotions too well, she is incredibly inept when it comes to traditional social graces outside of stoic politeness. Barring Loid, none of her colleagues remotely like her on a personal level because she just plain can't muster up enough physical emotion to appear friendly.
- Not So Stoic:
- When playing tennis with Yor in Mission 34, she's first utterly shocked upon witnessing Yor's Super-Strength, then grimly determined, then basically breaks down into Inelegant Blubbering after losing and storms off into the mountains to train.
- In a later arc, she goes berserk defending Twilight from Wheeler, and is visibly mortified to discover that Handler knew about her crush on Twilight the whole time.
- Oh, Crap!: Is shocked by Yor's display of strength during a tennis match when she manages to launch a ball at supersonic speed straight towards Fiona, causing her to briefly think she was going to die right then and there.
- One-Woman Army: Episode 36 reveals what Nightfall has been up to while Twilight is off on a family cruise. She was taking all the missions assigned to him, one of them being exterminating an entire group consisting of armed mooks, which she was successfully able to do so all by herself.
- Overt Operative: Nightfall's cold, asocial personality isolates her from the communities she's supposed to blend into. Since she works in a society where any sort of unusual behavior- especially not conforming to feminine norms- can get the Secret Police sicced on you, it speaks volumes of Nightfall's skill that she still managed to become the second most successful agent in WISE.
- The Power of Love:
- Attempts to invoke this when trying to win against Yor in a tennis match. It fails.
- Played straight when she fights Wheeler, when seeing Wheeler about to unmask an unconscious Twilight gives her the strength to tap into Uninhibited Muscle Power that lets her absolutely Curb Stomp her larger, stronger opponent without even caring about the damage she does to her own body.
- Purple Is Powerful: Purple and blue have been prominent colors in Fiona's outfits and appear to be her signature colors. She has proven to be a very proficient spy and a formidable one at that. Considering she was trained by the world's best spy, Twilight, this makes a lot of sense. She has shown to be very efficient in tennis, even during rigged matches. In her private training, she's faced off against bears, alligators, and mountain goats. And in a mission to capture a WISE mole, she completely dominated Wheeler in combat by landing blows so hard they even shattered her own bones.
- Psychological Projection: Nightfall sees the world through a lens of competitiveness, so she doesn't get that not everyone ruthlessly pursues their own interests. She also doesn't understand that there are things you can't achieve by being "the best", like another person's good graces.
- Rage Breaking Point: After finding Twilight at Wheeler's mercy, Nightfall finds herself in such disbelief Twilight would fall at the hands of the enemy that she tries to convince herself that it's actually Yuri Briar in an attempt to calm down. However, the moment Wheeler tries to remove his mask, Nightfall responds with a loud stomp forward, complete with a gun in her hand and argubly the most horrifying nightmare-inducing face in the entire series yet.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives an epic one to Wheeler in chapter 85 after he belittles her for being too emotional and weak because of it.Nightfall: You're weak. You're afraid to die. You're afraid of being betrayed. You're incapable of trusting anyone. You have no one to believe in. No one to gaze at and intently scrutinize. You've given up on the world. Now you're just an empty man meddling in it for no reason greater than your own amusement. But I'm not afraid to die. I believe in that man.
- The Resenter: Towards Yor; Nightfall despises her for "usurping" the role of Twilight's wife for his mission, believing that she could better assist him and be a superior caretaker in that role. Not helping is that she is also madly in love with Twilight and gets further driven to resentment when she realizes that Yor has managed to crack Twilight's defenses and gotten legitimately close to him.
- Say It with Hearts: Whenever her thoughts are shown to the audience, the speech bubbles often have hearts in them due to her lovey-dovey thinking about Loid. It even rarely bleeds into her actual speech when talking to him.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: She at first only liked Twilight the cool agent, but she finds his new identity as the Family Man Loid just as lovable, although she's still disappointed that she wasn't the one who could break through the barrier of his heart.
- Shipping Torpedo: She repeatedly tries to make Loid give up his relationship with Yor in favor of her. All it does is humiliate herself and drive Loid and Yor closer together.
- Single-Target Sexuality: She's pro-Twilight and has never shown any sexual interest towards anyone else.
- Skewed Priorities: In Chapter 30, Fiona wastes pretty much no time writing off Yor as an incompetent mother. How did she come to that conclusion? Because Anya spilled a cup of cocoa, and from Fiona's perspective, a true mother would have taught her to catch it before it fell. Meanwhile, Fiona's idea of being a mother is to force her to focus on her studies and nothing else, to the point that she would become, in Fiona's own words, a "Stella Star procurement machine", with seemingly no concern for the psychological damage this would have on a child. In other words, she's looking at raising a child from a purely practical standpoint, not getting that they have to be treated with love and care as well.
- Skip of Innocence: After Loid gives her a souvenir from the cruise he went on, Fiona is so happy that she clutches the bag to her chest and skips down the hallway when nobody can see her, while thinking, "Love, love, love, love, love!"
- Sore Loser: After losing to Yor in a tennis match, she storms off in a mess of Inelegant Blubbering and calls out of work for a while so she can begin to relentlessly train in the mountains.
- Statuesque Stunner: She's considered beautiful by many people who meet her and, at 172cm, is taller than the already well above-average Yor.
- The Stoic: She doesn't let her emotions show on her face. Part of it is thanks to Twilight advising Nightfall to keep her emotions buried, and Nightfall taking it too far and immediately vowing to never show any expressions ever again.
- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: An unusual example. On the outside, she has the emotional expression of a rock. On the inside, she's a love-struck girl who only wants to be Twilight's loving wife.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Her Unstoppable Rage moment after seeing Twilight beaten half-to-death and at Wheeler's mercy sends her adrenaline and muscle limiters through the roof, allowing her to reach Yor levels of strength that practically wipes Wheeler out... but unlike Yor who has conditioned herself to handle her strength with no repercussions, Fiona's body instantaneously ruptures itself doing such intense blows to Wheeler, losing all control (at minimum, if not outright breaking them entirely) of her arms and single leg used in the fight. An unconditioned human body is not meant to utilize that level of power except in extreme emergency cases, and she's as much in shambles afterward as her opponent is.
- Tastes Like Friendship: Invoked, as she tries to make Anya like her by offering to bring her delicious imported hot chocolate next time she visits. Anya, however, has already read Fiona's thoughts about beating her with a whip to turn her into a Stella-earning machine, and hisses angrily at her like a kitten.
- Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Hilariously contrasted with her ironclad poker face. Whenever Anya peers into her thoughts or the story lets her narrate, she constantly gushes over Loid like a lovestruck maiden while jealously and tempestuously guarding her "turf".
- Tsundere: Inverted to a degree. She's well-behaved and cooperative around Loid (which is as close to sweet as she can get with her excessive degree of emotional suppression), while she's incredibly harsh, cold, and demanding around everyone else.
- Undercover as Lovers: During the Campbelldon Tennis arc, she used a cover story that she and Twilight are a married couple when entering the underground tennis tournament, and didn't let Twilight know until after she had them registered for the competition. It was her hope that she could prove to Twilight that she would be a better wife than Yor during their mission. In Chapter 60, Franky convinces her into pretending to be his girlfriend so that they can get into a club for couples, much to her annoyance.
- Underestimating Badassery: She thinks that beating Yor in tennis will be no challenge whatsoever. Then Yor casually swings a racket hard enough to turn the ball into confetti and declares she's going to start holding back a little, shattering Fiona's emotional wall shortly before shattering her racket.
- The Unfettered: She's picked up a nasty reputation in <WISE> as an overachiever who's willing to even backstab her own allies in order to get ahead. Turns out, this is only in regards to claiming Loid for herself and making his missions a success. Her own career is of secondary importance.
- Uninhibited Muscle Power: After seeing Wheeler try to unmask Twilight, she gets so enraged that all her muscle limiters are turned off. This allows her to overpower Wheeler, at the cost of breaking her own limbs.
- Unknown Rival: She harbors nothing but hatred towards Yor for "stealing" the role as Loid's wife from her. Yor has no idea how Fiona feels about her and just acts friendly towards her unaware of her hatred of her (though she does feel threatened by the idea of Fiona replacing her). This is justified, since she suppressed her emotions to the point that people don't have a clue as to what she's thinking, while Yor has No Social Skills and has demonstrated being Oblivious to Hatred.
- Unstoppable Rage: Chapter 84 ends with her entering into one of these, as Wheeler starts to unmask Twilight in Yuri's disguise. Chapter 85 reveals the consequences, namely she has become so angry that all her body's subconscious muscle limiters are turned off. As a result she is able to beat the stronger Wheeler to a bloody pulp, though at the cost of breaking or dislocating every limb she uses to attack him with (ending by striking him with her dislocated arm like a whip). Her dislocated arm in particular ends up that way when she swings at him and misses, the sheer force of her movement alone dislocating the arm.
- Vocal Dissonance: Normally, her voice is deep, befitting her outward stoicism and professionalism, but her thoughts are voiced with a high-pitched, childish voice, especially in scenes when Twilight is involved.
- Walking Armory: In Episode 24, Nightfall loads herself to the brim with all kinds of guns and firearms during a mission she has taken up in Twilight's absence and proceeds to exterminate a whole entire mafia group in a One-Woman Army-styled fashion.
- Wasted Beauty: People who see her for the first time, including Yor, find her attractive, but those who know her well (i.e. her spy colleagues) are wary of her ice-cold demeanor and harsh mannerisms.
- White Hair, Black Heart: While not a villain, she definitely fits this. Fiona has light purple (close to white in the anime) hair and can be quite selfish and amoral to everyone around her except Twilight.
- Wingding Eyes: During Mission 67.1, the word/character for "love" (すき, suki) appears in a close-up on one of her eyes while she's talking with Twilight.
- Womanchild: Get past the poker face, and you'll find a teenage girl. Nightfall is self-centered, short-sighted, has one hell of a temper, and won't hesitate to manipulate or strong-arm someone to get what she wants. Most of all, she has planned out an elaborate fantasy around the life she will live once the object of her obsession Twilight chooses her.
- The Worf Effect: The tennis mini-arc showcases Nightfall's impressive physical prowess only for the next chapter to show she's absolutely no match for Yor.
- Would Hurt a Child: Played for Black Comedy. One look by Anya via telepathy into her mind sees Nightfall in a Gestapo-like dominatrix setup, rapidly and literally whipping Anya into a "Stellar Star Earning Machine" academic genius with a bull-whip, thinking that succeeding in the mission alone will earn Twilight's affection, Anya's own happiness be damned. Unsurprisingly, this has Anya hissing like a cat at Nightfall's further attempts to earn her affection, since she does not want to return to the Spartan physical and emotional child abuse she left behind escaping the laboratories, especially after finally finding a kind and loving mother like Yor.
- Yandere: Downplayed but present. She is keen on being Loid's real wife, loves him unconditionally, and goes out of her way to avenge the insults thrown at him. Fiona is also intensely jealous of other women in his life, including his coworkers, at one point considering ruining their lives just for having obvious crushes on him, hates Yor for taking her spot, and extends precisely zero compassion to Anya, the girl Twilight loves like his own daughter, seeing her entirely as a vehicle for completing the mission. Mission 67.1 also reveals that she easily considers ruining the lives of Twilight's many female admirers, and the only thing stopping her from doing so isn't any moral scruples but merely the fact that it would jeopardize the mission.
Garden
An organization that uses Assassins to keep the peace in Ostania, and the true employer of Yor.
- Always Someone Better: Heavily implied to be this to Ostania's Secret Police given the interactions of their respective leaders in Mission 115. Wilker makes it clear to his attendants that the Garden is the one group of people that SSS should not throw their weight around with unless they want to all end up dead. The main reason why the Garden isn't Ostania's go-to attack force is simply because their leader clarifies that the organization will take on missions to help their country and refuses to aid in the self-interest of any one politician or political party. Generally, this results in the Garden denying most mission requests made by the Ostanian government.
- Ancient Conspiracy: The organization is centuries old and has been around since the founding of the Ostania civilization. Although unlike most these types of secret societies, Garden's ultimate intentions are benevolent and they have remained firm in their mission for peace.
- Anti-Hero Team: Make no mistake: Garden sees itself as a peacekeeping force that prunes threats to peacetime stability and refuses to work with the local secret police unless they get a job that has no political affiliation or bias whatsoever. However, they're still a team of secretive, shadowy assassins with all the connotations that job title carries. If it aligns with their goals and interests, they can be recruited as the best bodyguard team on the market, as shown in the "Cruise Ship Arc" where Yor and Director take on and win against an army of assassins trying to kill their clients (this particular assignment being Shopkeeper repaying a personal favor). They are benevolence without mercy, kept to a code of conduct that not all members follow. The most "virtuous" members consist of a very naive but polite woman and a man who sees himself as a brutal soldier of peace, and its most blackhearted member shown to date seems only to align himself with Garden because it gives him a list of people he can kill without repercussion.
- Cleanup Crew: It's implied that Garden agents need to act as their own clean-up crew due to the extremely clandestine nature of their work with both Yor and the Director being shown to have excellent housekeeping prowess.
- Cool Old Guy: On top of Director being an extremely effective warrior, at least one of their ranks is an elderly person with a cane capable of being a One-Man Army according to the shadowy illustration of them.
- Deep Cover Agent: Despite being master assassins, all members of Garden do live normal civilian lives where they do not discuss their secret activities. Most notable is Yor and Matthew, who both pose as civil servants in Berlint City Hall and have their own families.
- Enemy Civil War: While the Garden is an Ostanian based organization, they are in direct opposition to the warmongering National Unity Party due to their desire to maintain the state of peace. The Shopkeeper even warns Yor not to get too close to anybody with conservative beliefs. They also are opposed to violent far left groups, with Yor at one point having been assigned to eliminate a cell of the Ostanian terrorist organization called the Red Circus. Chapter 115 details that they refuse to take sides in any issue in the government that is rooted in political ideologies, only going after things that they view harmful to the nation as a whole, as shown with Shopkeeper only taking an assignment to deal with poachers in a demilitarized zone between the countries since that could potentially raise tensions if handled poorly. The same chapter strongly implies the Garden's origins came from the time when Ostania was a monarchy by the SSS director's comment about Shopkeeper's loyalty being to "a dead empire" and the fact Shopkeeper's mansion was once a residence for the royal family (the room he meets the director in was one built in the 16th century by the emperor for his mother).
- Expy: The organization as a whole seems to be inspired by the Continental Hotels from the John Wick franchise, namely their strict code of rules and assassins for hire.
- Floral Theme Naming: Each of their assassins has a codename referencing a poisonous, stinging, or spiny plant. Examples include Thorn/Briar Princess, Yor's codename, and her colleagues Hemlock
, Thistle and Gympie
. The only exception seems to be Matthew who is instead referred to as the Director as he is a Handler rather than an active Garden assassin. - Good Is Not Soft: They are just as dedicated as <WISE> is to maintaining peace and keeping any wars between Westalis and Ostania cold. Their method of doing so involves separating the chaff of society from the rest of the wheat - permanently. Even on a member-to-member basis, attempting obviously lethal attacks on individual members of the organization is perfectly justified as an attempt to keep said members on their toes and ensure they're still fit for duty, even if members of the organization are typically civil or even outright friendly with each other.
- Necessarily Evil: As the name suggests, they see themselves as Ostania's caring gardeners who must prune and weed out the filth in order for the nation to prosper, and despite their murderous actions they are indeed a force for good, or at least a force who seeks to prevent war and eliminate the worst criminals who manage to avoid the law.
- One-Man Army: It is said that each member of their organization is worth 100 soldiers, or rather that it takes just one to wipe out an entire military troop. Given what Yor is capable of, it seems to not be an exaggeration (albeit she is considered exceptional even among Garden's members, given the respect the Shopkeeper treats her with and is regarded as the "sharpest pruner" among the assassins in the Garden).
- Passing the Torch: It is implied that each generation of the Garden's agents recruits and train the next generation of agents. Director Matthew is the current trainer for the newest generation of agents which includes Yor.
- Punch-Clock Villain: In as much as they can be described as "villains". Most of them maintain pretty regular social lives when they're not on missions, and they even have group picnics from time to time.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Beneath their justifiably fearsome reputation, Garden's agents are a rather quirky collection. Their current leader is a master botanist and agriculturalist, his second-in-command is an elderly office director with a passion for falconry, and their best agent is a socially-awkward office lady.
- Shrouded in Myth: Loid and Franky discuss the organization at one point, with Loid stating he thought half the stories about them were urban legends, given how almost anything "known" about the organization sounds too fanciful to be real. Franky assures him they are all too real.
- Team Switzerland: While they are an Ostanian organization, they are loyal to the ancient Ostianian monarchy rather than the current republican government. As such, they generally refuse to get involved in the Ostanian government's internal political struggles.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The Ostanian government and SSS are well aware of Garden's existence and only tolerate their presence since they are nominally loyal to Ostania, are willing to perform assassination missions for them if they deem it necessary, and because it would be too costly to try and exterminate them. The Garden for their part are willing to work with Ostania and avoid targeting whoever the SSS is protecting since they are the successors of the old monarchy, but only to protect the nation itself rather than the politicians.
- Weeding Out Imperfections: Their name refers to them pruning (in order words, killing) anyone who threatens the peace of Ostania, in the way one would remove weeds from a garden.

Voiced by: Jun'ichi Suwabe (JP), Jim Foronda (EN) Foreign VAs
The leader of Garden.
- Ambiguously Brown: His hair and skin colour imply that he's black, but his facial features are standard for the art style and there's no mention of race or ethnicity outside of Ostanian citizenship.
- Baritone of Strength: Junichi Suwabe brings his usual deep and booming vocals to the role of Shopkeeper, and his restrained, calm intonation does well to represent Shopkeeper's secretive image, gentle demeanor, and ruthlessly badass skill as an assassin, especially one that's the head-honcho of an organization where one slip-up can mean experiencing Assassin Outclassin'.
- Benevolent Boss: Being the head of Garden and a league of assassins doesn't stop Shopkeeper being a fair and reasonable man to his colleagues. He treats Yor like a friend rather than a subordinate and is willing to help her double life any way he can. Despite the clandestine nature of their work, Shopkeeper seems to desire his agents to have good work-life balance and develop organically as people like his own garden. From the conversation he had with Matthew and one of Gympie's remarks to Hemlock in the past, the Shopkeeper also enjoys cooking for his agents when appropriate using his own crops. He is rather forgiving to Hemlock for his actions of attacking Yor during the mission to hunt poachers, although he does voices his disapproval of Hemlock damaging the forest and delaying the completion of the assignment.
- Beware the Nice Ones: He's polite, even-tempered and a very dedicated gardener. Though seconds after his first appearance, he thrusts his pruning shears at Yor like a knife to test her awareness, showing that he's still a deadly assassin just like her.
- Big Good: On the other end from Handler, but serves more or less an identical role (if less prominent), being the leader of a league of assassins committed to maintaining peace between the countries. Yor also actively seeks out his opinions and advice, even when it's not strictly necessary to do so.
- Caring Gardener: He has no illusions about the nature of his organization's work, which is why he is strict but fair to all of his agents. It is implied that all active field agents have floral codenames because he views them much like the plants he lovingly tends to in his garden; filled with the potential to blossom into agents of balance.
- Civilized Threat: Casually tells Director Wilker he will remove the cigar and his head if he smokes in his home.
- Deadly Euphemism: It's quite clear that his description of tending to the garden is a euphemism of their assassination work.
- Everyone Has Standards: Chapter 115 reveals that while he does receive directives from the SSS, he also has the authority to reject any of them and is shown to refuse to participate in anything related to political infighting, eliminating rivals, etc. Of the assassination requests he is given in this case, he only takes on a request to eliminate poachers and corrupt guards assisting them, both because they are criminals Garden has pursued in the past and because the location (a demilitarized zone) means care must be taken to not provoke Westalis by accident while getting rid of the poachers, something he plainly does not trust the SSS to do. Suffice to say the SSS does not particularly like the Shopkeeper, as they have no direct control over him or Garden.Shopkeeper: The struggle for power does not interest me.
- Good Is Not Soft: Working towards a world free of major conflict is quite noble, and he has a gentle, friendly personality towards his allies and fellow peace-desiring acquaintances, but he heads an organization that gets its hands constantly bloody in order to achieve these well-meaning goals. Best exemplified in his meeting with the Director of the SSS, who is painfully aware that he and his men are walking a tightrope as long as they're on the Shopkeeper's property and is all too eager to leave.
- Improbable Use of a Weapon: He goes Shear Menace in a rather unorthodox way by thrusting them like a solid steel short spear.
- Meaningful Appearance: A twofer. Looked at normally, Shopkeeper looks just like the sort of shopkeeper you'd find at a plant nursery, maintaining his wares. Looked at upside-down, and his rather prominent hat and his bushy hair looks much like a fully-grown potted plant, with the hat as the pot. Either way, his appearance invokes gardening; fitting, given all we know about him so far is that he maintains a lovely garden while running the organization Garden.
- No Name Given: Only known as Shopkeeper.
- Non-Standard Character Design: His hair is longer than any other character's and appears to be extremely curly, to the point where it's drawn almost like sheep's wool or foliage. The lines under his eyes imply deep wrinkles from either age or weathering, and the eyes themselves are unusually shaped and strongly outlined with no shine or gradient in them at all.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: While he maintains a calm and friendly demeanor, when Yor brings up Loid mentioning Donovan Desmond and being interested in his National Unity Party, Shopkeeper turns with a serious look at this claim.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: He has no problems ordering the death of anyone who brings the threat of war to his country, and it's likely he's gotten his own hands dirty in the past.
- Perpetual Smiler: Usually seen with a smile on his face. When he's not smiling, you know something is up. Particularly noticeable in Mission 115 where he spends his meeting with Chief Wilker grim-faced but smiles warmly on greeting his assassins.
- Pillars of Moral Character: He owes a personal debt to a deceased mob boss (On), so he ensures his wife and son's safety by having them smuggled out of Ostania, and tells Yor that he will in turn consider it a great personal favor if she protects them.
- Rank Scales with Asskicking: He's the person that created and leads the assassin group Garden, and his formal introduction strongly implies he's close to the deadliest member of them besides Yor.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Makes accommodations towards Yor's double life along with being a married woman all the while doing what he can to ensure neither she nor her family is in harm's way of her job. Yor seems to be in the habit of checking in with him before making big life decisions, and he's happy to offer his thoughts without trying to control what she chooses.
- Shear Menace: The first attack we see him make is with a pair of garden shears, and he has them with him in his appearances so far.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With Director Wilker of the State Security Service. While the Shopkeeper is willing to help the SSS maintain peace in Ostania, he makes it clear to the leader of the Secret Police that the Garden acts in the best interest of the country and will not become "peons" of any one politician. It is also made clear any misstep on Wilker's part will spell his end as the Shopkeeper casually threatens to decapitate the director if he so much as smokes in the Shopkeeper's home. It's the longest the Shopkeeper's been on-panel without smiling.
- Undying Loyalty: He's said to be loyal to the 'dead empire' that preceded modern Ostania, and he's well-versed in that era. Downplayed in that his meeting with Chief Wilker is both the first and last we hear of it, implying that it's a front for the SSS.
- Unseen No More: Early on his presence in the story was limited to being The Voice, phoning Yor about new "clients", but Mission 44 finally has him appear in-person, after which he pops up more frequently.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: His agency doesn't work for profit but to eliminate those he perceives as threats to a peaceful world. Given the high tensions in Ostania due to past conflict with their neighbors, and the sheer number of politicians and criminals alike that Twilight thwarts the pro-war plans of, Garden's secret assassinations might well be a key reason why tentative peace has lasted this long.
- Wicked Cultured: Downplayed on the wicked part as the Garden's ultimate mission is stability for Ostania, but the Shopkeeper hosts the Garden's primary HQ in what was the palatial estate of the mother of a sixteenth century Ostanian emperor renovated and filled with exotic flora and fauna he personally cultivated and tends to. During the meeting with SSS director Wilker, the Shopkeeper personally offers his guest wine made from home-grown grapes. Played With in that this isn't how the Shopkeeper usually presents himself; he much prefers to meet with his assassins outside in his gardening clothes and might be trying to cultivate a specific image for the SSS.
- World's Best Warrior: All but implied to be, given the respect and/or fear every other member of Garden regards him with.

Voiced by: Kenyū Horiuchi (JP), Bill Jenkins (EN), Foreign VAs
Director of policy at Berlint City Hall, and Yor's boss in her cover job. In truth, he's Yor's manager in Garden.
- Actor Allusion: While replying to Zeb's question about them always being prepared, McMahon speaks about how humans are always predisposed for war, not unlike a certain antagonist from Naruto who viewed war in a similar manner.
- Alliterative Family: Matthew's married to Maureen.
- Alliterative Name: Matthew McMahon.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: He's this with Yor during their task in protecting Olka from the hired assassins. As Yor proceeds on with her killing spree on top of the cruise ship, McMahon covers her blind spots and disposes of the corpses she leaves behind while scoring a couple kills of his own.
- Badass Boast: Despite he and Yor being heavily outnumbered, he still claims that the assassins they are facing onboard the ship are still no match for them. Considering how easily most of them were disposed as soon as Olka and Zeb were out of harm's way, they certainly live up to their fearsome reputation.McMahon: These do appear to be a fairly talented bunch. Plenty of new faces with unfamiliar fighting styles among them. That said... they're hardly in the Garden's league.
- The Beastmaster: He's a master falconer and uses his partner, Keekee, as a scout in appropriate missions.
- Boring, but Practical: Along with Gympie, the Director embodies this trope within Garden simply by using hand-to-hand combat and modern firearms to handle assassination. Somewhat amusingly, these two are the closest to what a traditional assassin would look like in their organization, since they're the only two members of Garden so far not shown to specialize in archaic, eccentric weapons and devote themselves to practical means of removing people.
- Broomstick Quarterstaff: During the battle against the multiple assassins on top of the cruise ship, he uses a broom to clean up all of the dead bodies left behind by Yor, as well as blocking and attacking the remaining assassins.
- Charles Atlas Superpower:
- He's shown breaking bones with casual ease as he interrogates an enemy assassin.
- A little later, while noting the Garden's assassins are a cut above even the elite assassins he is currently dealing with, he proceeds to show Yor is not alone in superhuman strength as he tosses a dead body a good thirty feet off the ship with one arm and little apparent effort.
- Cleanup Crew: Part of his skillset, cleaning up corpses and the traces they leave behind, though in most circumstances there is an actual division from Garden that does this.
- Cool Old Guy: The director's getting up there in years, but he's still more than capable of kicking ass. He also doesn't tolerate petty squabbling like Hemlock's constant digs at Yor.
- Cynical Mentor: Matthew has practiced the business of death for so many decades that he tends to be very pragmatic. While he does follow it up with allowing Yor to spend the rest of the vacation with Loid and Anya as a reward for her efforts, upon observing Yor lovingly embrace baby Gram farewell and her sadness at him leaving with his mother Olga, he coldly reminds her:Do not be given to sentiment. We are disposable pawns on the chessboard of history, nothing more.
- A Day in the Limelight: Short Mission 16 follows Matthew and his wife Maureen before and after the Great Cruise Adventure.
- Everyone Has Standards: Despite the implications that Donovan Desmond and Garden are opposed to each other, he does defend him when Millie snaps at Melinda and slanders him for starting the war. He points out that Donovan wasn't prime minister when the war started, and he only took office after the war had begun. Granted, he probably said that for appearance's sake, but it nevertheless shows that he knows better than to put blame where it doesn't belong.
- Flash Step: When an assassin tailing them tries to pull a knife on McMahon, he dodges the slash with such speed that he leaves a smoky after-image.
- Funny Background Event: As Yor is killing all of the assassins on the cruise ship, he can be seen in the background cleaning up the bodies by sweeping them with a broom.
- Happily Married: He considers his family life normal, with no serious problems or complaints. When Yor asks about him and his wife kissing when he comes home, the context (especially Hemlock's tirade over how inappropriate the talk is) suggests they were quite amorous when they were younger. He has his doubts over whether or not his wife would be willing to accept what he does working for Garden, but credits his hope that she could accept it as the reason they are still together after so many years.
- Henpecked Husband: Played with. As far as the public is concerned, the Director says that he lives "the typical life of a husband dominated by his controlling wife", but they're as amicable as any old married couple in Short Mission 16.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Casually deflects one of Hemlock's kunais with a pebble in order to pursue a surviving poacher back to their base.
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Uses this on one of the enemy assassins to find out who he is and how many more there are.
- Jack of All Stats: Amongst Garden members, he appears to be this. In contrast to Yor's melee-focused Crippling Overspecialization, he's proficient with any kind of tool he can get his hands on and in any situation he's put in. He's stronger than most but not the strongest, faster than most but not the fastest, good at melee fighting but not the best. He also has excellent mental endurance (superior to Yor, even), but his advanced age means he's not as durable or agile nowadays.
- Living a Double Life: He's a director at City Hall, and a Garden operative. His wife's a civilian, so she does not know of his work with Garden, and he aims to keep it that way despite also hoping that if she ever did find out she would still stay with him. Interestingly, he joined Garden after getting married, so his double life only started then.
- Love Cannot Overcome: Firmly believes that his wife will leave him if she ever discovers his true identity as a Garden assassin, which is why he plans to continue to deceive her until the day he dies. Although, he does admit that he hopes that she will stay with him if she were to uncover his secret
- No-Nonsense Nemesis: As old as he is, the director does not mess around. When he sees a threat, he deals with it in the most professional way possible. Once he catches an assassin spying on them, he corners him and breaks an arm and then a leg coldly demanding everything he knows, then when he's finished kills him and dumps the body in the ocean.
- Number Two: To Shopkeeper, being his most experienced operative tasked with providing guidance to the younger assassins. Shopkeeper mentions he plans to let Matthew retire once he feels that the newer generation of assassins doesn't need his mentorship anymore.
- Old Soldier: At first he appears to just be Yor's elderly manager for Garden, handling things like supporting her cover and getting her into place for her missions, but it turns out he's also an assassin as skilled, if not more, as she is.
- Opaque Lenses: Most of the time, his eyes aren't visible behind his glasses, giving him a enigmatic look suitable for a assassin.
- Professional Killer: Unlike Yor, he doesn't appear to have a preferred method of killing, using both guns, melee weapons and his bare hands with equal proficiency.
- Spry Old Guy: He's over 66 years old, but Matthew is deceptively agile. He's able to hop through trees alongside Yor and Hemlock.
- The Strategist: When working with other assassins, Matthew seems to take this role among the group as he's more level-headed and intelligent compared to others. He's constantly instructing Yor in what their next move should be in keeping Olka safe during their mission on the Princess Lorelei and is frequently correcting Hemlock in their objective while stopping him from making reckless kills in their task to deal with poachers.
- Unusual Pets for Unusual People: Has a trained pet falcon, Keekee, who he uses to scout. She's not fond of Hemlock.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Rightfully chews out Zeb for calling his family three days prior to the cruise, as it allowed Hapoon's men to find them because they were able to trace the call, making things harder for them. He also coldly points out Yor's distracted state on this mission is leading to her making mistakes that will get them all killed if she doesn't shape up.
- He reprimands Hemlock for almost killing one of the endangered elk being targetted by the poachers they're hunting, which was getting in the way thanks to being provoked into a rampage. Even if the mission doesn't outright say it, the whole point Shopkeeper took the job was to protect the elk and thus they are an extension of the mission.
- The Worf Effect: He spends most of the Great Cruise Adventure arc casually eliminating several assassins among the Carnival of Killers sent after Olka and Gram, establishing himself as a powerful combatant. But at the climax of the arc, he ends up being dispatched and knocked unconscious by the swordsman assassin, making it pretty clear that particular killer is a Boss in Mook Clothing, and will be Yor's toughest opponent among the remaining assailants.
- You Fool!: Says this verbatim to Zeb after hearing about the latter's unauthorized phone call.
Yor's colleague in service to the Garden, noted for his no-nonsense attitude and use of a cane.
- All for Nothing: When Yor defeats him, he's absolutely shattered by the fact he basically spent years socially and physically isolating himself to become the strongest for no reason.
- The Aloner: Exaggerated. Hemlock is obsessed with isolating himself, on the basis that Love Is a Weakness and he considers any kind of connection to another person to be a weakness. He's got no friends, refuses to hang out with his co-workers even when he's invited out, eventually stopped even going to barbershops to get his hair cut by another person, and even goes to theme parks to go on rides by himself just to prove how isolated he is. One panel reveals he once congratulated himself for not talking to anyone for a whole month, and he celebrates his own birthday by himself (crying with loneliness)! Sadly for him, this is determined to be a detriment to his capabilities by his bosses, who assign him to the City Hall office, much to Hemlock's rage.
- Animals Hate Him: He's strongly disliked by Matthew's pet falcon, Keekee, as she's constantly pecking on his head.
- Arc Hero: He serves as the Deuteragonist of the Poacher Hunting Arc, having been assigned with Yor and Matthew to assassinate hunters who are after the endangered Miteran elks. Throughout his debut arc, we learn a lot about his background and motives. Although...
- Arc Villain: Much like Nightfall during the Campbelldon Tennis Arc, he also doubles as an antagonist during the Poacher Hunting Arc since he wants to kill Yor for being a perceived hindrance to his mission as well as secretly desiring to prove his strength against the "sharpest pruner" in the Garden. Even though he is supposed to be Yor's ally, Hemlock is the biggest and most personal threat to Yor during the mission whereas the poachers are defeated with little fanfare.
- Barbarian Long Hair: It's straighter than most examples, but it's symbolic of his severely lacking mental health and generally violent nature, as it only got that long in the first place because he stopped going to his barber so he'd have no emotional ties to anyone.
- Blood Knight: He seems to enjoy the thrills of killing people in his bouts, even the wildlife he was supposed to be protecting and a fellow assassin like Yor. He even suggests to Yor that they have a competition to see who has the most kills during the mission, which Yor immediately declines.
- Break the Haughty: He spends much of his introduction belittling Yor for supposedly having become weaker and bragging about how having no social connections have made him the better assassin. Then Yor thoroughly trounces him after he threatens to kill her family, and all he can do is dumbly mutter to himself as he tries to process having his entire world view destroyed. It gets to the point where in the following chapter, Yor has to move him around to keep him from getting killed while cleaning up the poachers until he snaps out of it. Following the debacle of that mission, he's assigned to Yor's office as it is clear that he needs to get some social interaction. He is not a fan of the idea.
- Bullying a Dragon: He frequently belittles Yor and is nothing but rude to her despite knowing that she is the "sharpest" pruner (i.e. assassin) in the Garden. Hemlock believes that Yor's time with the Forger Family has made her weak and thus assumes he can defeat Yor in her current state. When he tries to kill Yor during their mission to hunt poachers for being a "liability," it does not even cross his mind that Yor is holding back simply because she doesn't want to hurt her own ally. It is not until Yor fights seriously after Hemlock pushes her Relative Button that he comes to realize that the Thorn Princess hasn't lost her edge at all and is more than capable of killing him should she need to.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: In addition to leaping through trees like a ninja, he can behead two people at once with a single swipe of his Sword Cane and casually cut through tree trunks as well.
- Deadly Euphemism: Likes to refer to their missions as pruning tasks and their role in Garden to be "pruners".
- Deadpan Snarker: Seems to like to get on Yor's case, although Yor being Yor, his trash-talk proves somewhat ineffective.
- Devious Daggers: Carries throwing kunais and is precise enough to kill a ladybug on Yor's finger had she not reacted in time.
- Enraged by Idiocy: Yor's various quirks tend to set him off quickly, due to his belief that she has become soft and is engaging in "inappropriate" behavior for an assassin.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He's so deep in his delusion that Love Is a Weakness that it never crosses his mind that Yor would actually fight harder if her Relative Button was pressed, nor does he ever pick up that Yor was only on the defensive against him because she didn't want to kill a fellow Garden assassin.
- Facial Markings: His most distinctive feature is the pattern of dots (possibly bizarrely-symmetrical moles/piercings) on his face, two under each eye and one under each corner of his mouth. This may be a reference to his Japanese name, Otogiri, a plant known in English as St. John's wort and characterized by dots on its leaves and flower petals.
- Foil:
- To Fiona; Fiona is Loid's fellow spy who tries to hide her obvious love for him, while Hemlock is Yor's fellow assassin who does nothing to hide his open contempt for her. They also both try to be The Stoic, with varying levels of success at times, and are extremely skilled at their form of special operations, albeit not quite as good as their respective Forger family co-worker.
- Also to his coworker Gympie, who is his opposite in many ways, from their assassination styles to their builds and even their personalities.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: It's pretty clear his self-isolating has not done his mental health any favors.
- Got Volunteered: Clearly making note of how his isolation has had a negative impact on his mental health, McMahon slaps him with a civilian cover job at Berlint City Hall to force him to socialize more.
- Green-Eyed Monster: His strange fixation on Yor's "merry-making", particularly her seeming romantic ties with Loid, strongly imply that he's jealous of how well she's been getting along in her civilian life but doesn't want to admit it to himself.
- His Own Worst Enemy: While initially having No Social Skills seems to have been part of it, a lot of the grief in Hemlock's life seems to be self-inflicted in his deluded quest for power via social isolation.
- Hyper-Awareness: Much like Loid, Hemlock can sense when people are spying on him as demonstrated in Mission 119 as he noticed Yor's co-workers observing them through a telescope.
- Ignored Epiphany: After stirring from his Villainous BSoD, he looks back on his experiences... and decides to double down on isolating himself, though he is in very obvious denial that his resolve has been shaken and can't help noting some of the obvious contradictions in his own shoddy logic.
- Instantly Proven Wrong: Hemlock has a bad habit of ominously making assumptions only for one of his colleagues to prove that he's completely wrong. He attempts to kill a ladybug while aiming at Yor seeing it as a pest, but it's pointed out that ladybugs are not noxious pests note . He tries to insinuate that Yor's marriage to a "civilian" has dulled her edge, only for Director to immediately point out he's married to a civilian too and has been for years. He also tries to kill one of the rare endangered elk that's rampaging on the grounds that Garden was assigned to kill poachers and anything that impedes that is an obstacle, only for Director to reprimand him because they are also supposed to be protecting said elk as the whole point of the mission - indeed, Shopkeeper had even asked Hemlock to promise him not to accidentally hurt the elk prior to the mission. He then tries to kill Yor on the belief that social life has made her weak, and thus a detriment to their Garden work, only for her to defeat him handily after threatening to kill Yuri/the Forger family while he is the one being far more a detriment to the mission than her.
- I Work Alone: Exaggerated, but also Deconstructed hard. Hemlock has effectively convinced himself that isolation directly makes one a better assassin, to the point he not only rejects requests from his co-workers in Garden to hang out off the clock, but also from any human interaction at all. He even refuses to get hair cuts from other people on the basis it would give him a connection that would weaken him. Naturally, regardless of how this might've impacted his assassin abilities, it's also left him as an utterly stunted individual both socially and intellectually who's almost incapable of interacting with others even when he needs to as part of his job. Then Yor promptly defeats his entire argument by beating him in a fight, leaving him realizing he spent all those years making himself miserable through isolation for no good reason. Especially poignant is the fact that we've seen Yor become an even deadlier threat than she already is when there's something on the line: she comes out of the Cruise Ship arc alive because her desire to protect the society she loves, including Yuri and the Forger family, gives her the strength to overcome the one assassin who could fight her on an even level. As such, Mission 120 sees Hemlock assigned to the same office that Yor and McMahon work at to break him out of this mindset.
- Jerkass: Right off the bat, Hemlock reveals himself to be a deeply unpleasant fellow. He's nothing but a rude jerk to Yor, always dismissing her efforts and coming with hurtful jabs at her expense, and others are hardly exempt from his biting comments either, as he cuts off Gympie when she's speaking to their own boss. The moment Matthew leaves them alone to find the poacher's base by himself, Hemlock immediately declares his intention to remove Yor as a liability in his work. It's also noted that even before he went into self-imposed isolation he had few friends.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After trying to kill Yor to prove that his isolated lifestyle is the best course of action, not only does Yor crush him because of her connections giving her the resolve to win the fight, the very fact that he started it and endangered the mission with his poor behavior causes him to get assigned to Yor's office as a lesson in socialization.
- Logical Weakness: His obsession with isolation has had an obvious negative impact on his socialization, resulting in him becoming utterly useless for missions that require multiple agents working together. It's gotten to the point that the Garden has felt the need to embed him in Yor's office to force him to improve in this area.
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Although it turns out that he has long hair because he cut his barber out of his life. Millie calls him a "hottie" when she and her co-workers see Hemlock in Mission 119.
- Love Is a Weakness: He has a pathological obsession with isolation, believing it's the key to making him a better killer. Yor beating him because he threatened to kill her family so thoroughly disproves his mindset that he's left nearly catatonic afterwards.
- Loving a Shadow: Likely a platonic example, but he used to believe he and Yor were Birds of a Feather, two assassins made powerful by their lack of emotional connections, which he believes Yor ruined by developing a social life in her civilian identity. Of course, this assessment is factually wrong, as Yor only became an assassin in the first place to support her brother Yuri.
- Master Swordsman: Instantly decapitates two poachers with a single swing of his sword, and wields it with pinpoint accuracy even when hooking it to the end of his cane to extend his reach.
- Meaningful Name: In both Japanese and English.
- His Japanese codename Otogiri refers to the plant Hypericum erectum, one of the plants referred to as St. John's Wort. It's not particularly harmful on its own (it is considered toxic but not dangerously so), but its Floral Motif is. "Otogiri" means "Younger-brother-slashing," referring to a 10th-century legend of a falconer murdering his younger brother over the latter leaking the family's use of this herb to treat injuries in hawks.note As a result, this plant symbolizes grudges and superstitions among the Japanese, which fits well with his grudge towards Yor's (seeming) 'dulled edge' as an assassin.
- His English codename is based on a poisonous plant, befitting the flower shop Theme Naming of Garden. He's also the only member to be named after something so infamously toxic,note which fits his personality to a tee.
- Mirror Character: To Winston Wheeler, who similarly believes personal connections should be avoided in order to be a better spy, and ends up being defeated by another thanks to the Power of Love.
- No Social Skills: It's heavily implied that he used to just be socially awkward and struggled to get along with people. What he apparently took from that was that being isolated made him stronger and started actively avoiding socialization altogether. The Shopkeeper and McMahon agree that this has just made Hemlock a liability and put him in the City Hall office with Yor and her coworkers to at least hammer in the lesson that he has to be able to work with people.
- Overshadowed by Awesome: He is every bit the assassin McMahon is, and can fight with archaic weapons in a setting with all manner of firearms. When he goes up against Yor, he can even keep up with her - for a time, and Yor remarks on him as being very strong, someone she can't pull her punches with, etc. However, Hemlock's best is still only Yor's best when she's actively holding back. When she decides to cut loose and actually fight back with her full strength, Hemlock is beaten fairly quickly, his reach advantage the only thing keeping Yor from overwhelming him instantly. For all his effort, he is not as strong, pragmatic, or fast as Yor is, highlighting his flaws and establishing why Yor's the best in the business.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Hemlock is a remorseless assassin, but also a ranting, petulant child who insists he's the greatest when he's actually his team's biggest liability (such as almost attacking an endangered elk that was in the way, which he's not supposed to harm). Even his obsession with self-isolation is just a Sour Grapes spin on his own Friendless Background.
- Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Parodied and Averted; Hemlock not only neglects any social skills, he actively rejects them, believing that itself will make him stronger. It hasn't. At all. Yor beats him fairly handily, and him attacking her during a mission proves that he's unable to work in team-based scenarios to boot. The Shopkeeper and McMahon thus assign him to City Hall for some socialization lessons, over Hemlock's protests that it will weaken his "solitude powers".
- Shadow Archetype: To Yor, a fellow master assassin whose inhuman strength and prowess belies a fundamentally lonely person with a shy and insecure personality and a profoundly weird and spacey side. But at her very lowest and most isolated, Yor still had her beloved brother Yuri, and her major motivation in her civilian life was not to stand out. Conversely, <Hemlock> instead convinced himself that forming human connections was only holding him back anyway, and instead allowed himself to become an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy until he picked a fight with Yor, threatened her loved ones enough to give her an Heroic Second Wind, and had to eat some Humble Pie.
- Slasher Smile: He makes one of these at the mere thought of being able to kill someone.
- Sour Grapes: It turns out that Hemlock was originally just a shy person who had great difficulty making any friends, so he convinced himself that actually not having any connections in his life made him a better assassin (rationalizing that Yor's isolation back then is what made her the sharpest Garden assassin), even when some of his colleagues in the Garden tried reaching out to him. If his fixation on Yor's love life and unprompted mention of Gympie looking for a boyfriend are any indication, he might even specifically be love-starved and in denial about it. In Mission 118, he also mentions that his grandfather - a battle-hardened veteran, implying he fought in at least one of the countries' wars - spoke how "Those who stand above always stand alone", which likely led to this mindset.
- Sword Cane: As one would expect from an assassin, he has a sword concealed in his cane, first seen in action to dispose of the poachers. He does not appear to have any physical need of the cane itself, as he is shown keeping up with Yor while leaping through trees, suggesting concealing the sword is the main reason he uses a cane at all. He does make use of the sheath for his fighting style though, as he is able to hook the sword to it, extending his reach and spinning the blade like a buzzsaw.
- Token Evil Teammate: Most of Garden kill for the sake of protecting the fragile peace between nations and eliminating criminals and do so with stoic professionalism. Hemlock, however, to some degree actively enjoys killing people if he thinks he can justify it, outright suggesting he and Yor compete to see who can kill more targets. Once unsupervised, he's willing to attack Yor, claiming she is a hindrance to their mission while not caring about the actual mission, namely protecting endangered elk from the poachers.
- Villainous BSoD: He's left lying on the floor, dumbly muttering to himself, after Yor defeats him, trying to comprehend the revelation that social isolation didn't make him a better killer.
Another of Yor's colleagues in the Garden who is distinguished by her short build and mastery of stealth and poison.
- Ambiguous Situation: When she tells Hemlock that it would be difficult for someone like her to find a partner, what she means isn't elaborated upon. One could take it simply as her referring to her own looks compared to Yor's given the context of their conversation, but it may also have been her referring to her own interests, which would be a major turn-off for most unsuspecting parties.
- Boring, but Practical: Along with the Director, Gympie has the most direct and classical approach to assassination - via poison. Somewhat amusingly, these two are the closest to what a traditional assassin would look like in their organization, since they're the only two members of Garden so far not shown to specialize in archaic, eccentric weapons and devote themselves to practical means of removing people.
- Creepy Good: She's an owl-eyed assassin with a forte in deadly poison, but that doesn't stop her from being a cordial member of the team and even having tried to invite Hemlock to Garden picnics.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Implied. Gympie is noted by the Director to be more suited for covert-ops thanks to her skill-sets than outright combat, which was why she was passed over for the mission and why she suggested having Thistle come along instead.
- Death Glare: Gives a haunting one in Mission 119 to Hemlock when he tries to refuse a medication delivery to Yor. Gympie's usual stark-white design begins to fill with inky darkness on one side of her face as her inner-assassin rears its head.
- Foil: To her colleague Hemlock. She is a short boyish woman with a perpetual eerie expression while he is a tall, androgynous man. She is blunt but cordial to their colleague Yor, while he is abrasive and demeaning to Yor. There's also their personal assassination styles, wherein she prefers to use subtle and deadly poisons, while Hemlock's a Master Swordsman. Gympie was also inspired by Yor's happy family life to consider finding a boyfriend, whereas Hemlock loathes Yor for her sentimental connections and said inspiration to Gympie.
- Irony: She's Garden's resident Stealth Expert, but she seems fairly social by their standards, especially compared to Hemlock. Apparently she's even been inquiring about getting a boyfriend.
- Lady Looks Like a Dude: Those unfamiliar with Gympie could easily mistake her for a young boy at first glance.
- Master Poisoner: She's Garden's poison specialist, according to Hemlock, though she doesn't have the firepower to handle poachers.
- The Medic: Incidentally because of her experience with deadly poisons, she also has deep pharmaceutical knowledge, such as cooking up some salve for Yor's wounds following the elk mission due to her extreme poison resistance also preventing conventional medicines from functioning correctly, thus requiring a specific formulation.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The gympie-gympie
is a plant with a sting that can cause agony lasting for weeks or even months. - Shorter Means Smarter: About hip level to Yor and a master chemist/pharmacist.
- Stealth Expert: This is implied to be one of her specialties. Gympie is so skilled at stealth that she was apparently standing next to Yor the whole time she was admiring the flowers in the Shopkeeper's garden.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: Her pupil-less eyes are locked-in a vacant stare which exemplify her unnerving presence.
- Vague Age: It's hard to pin-point her exact age, especially since the Garden is known to recruit agents as young as preteens. Her short stature and fond-sounding but childish nickname for Yor in the Japanese version (いば姉note ) suggest she's fairly younger than the other named pruners.
- Weak, but Skilled: Gympie is an expert in utilizing poison for her assassinations but compared to the rest of the currently known members of Garden, she lacks the firepower for poachers, due to the poachers being heavily armed.
- What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: One of Hemlock's complaints against Yor is that her apparent happy family life has caused Gympie to consider finding a boyfriend.
Another one of Garden's agents.
- The Ghost: Gympie mentioned that they might be available for the poacher culling mission, however, Hemlock volunteered to take their place.


