Spy x Family Ch. 85: WISE Vs. SSS Part 5 [Manga Review]

Spy x Family Ch. 85 continues the clash of WISE vs. SSS, but Loid is out of the fight this time. This time, it’s “Wheeler” vs. Fiona Frost/Nightfall in this clash of secret agents. The thing is though? This chapter of the manga reveals that Nightfall is utterly terrifying when she’s furious. Now you too can find out why all those rats ran for it when Nightfall’s aura started showing up in the last chapter.

Spy x Family Ch. 85: Details

Spy x Family Ch. 85 is the latest chapter of this action, drama, and even with a touch of creepiness mixed in (you can read reviews of Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 here) of the action spy comedy manga series by Tatsuya Endo. Casey Loe once more returns as the translator, with Rina Mapa also making a return as the letterer. Shueisha originally published this manga in Japan under their Jump Comics+ imprint in their magazine Shōnen Jump+. Viz Media is the company publishing this manga in the NA region.

Spy x Family Ch. 85 debuted on July 23, 2023. You can read this chapter for free on Shonen Jump at Viz Media. Note that this chapter will remain free for 2 chapter releases after this one. Upon the release of the third chapter, Ch. 85 will go into the Shonen Jump vault. Once there, you’ll need a paid Shonen Jump subscription in order to read it and all previous chapters. That said, it is only $2,99 per month, so it’s not that big a hit to your wallet.

On a side note: an anime adaptation of Spy x Family premiered on April 9, 2022, and is currently ongoing as of this writing. In fact, season 2 of the anime will premiere sometime in October 2023. You can watch all currently available episodes of the anime on Crunchyroll or Hulu.

Warning: spoilers for Spy x Family Ch. 85 below. If you want to read about the epic clash between “Wheeler” and Nightfall for yourself, then stop here and come back once you too have been sufficiently freaked out by Nightfall’s love for Twilight.

Spy x Family Ch. 85: Plot Summary

Interestingly, Spy x Family Ch. 85 doesn’t quite pick up where we last left off in the previous chapter. Instead, the story switches to the perspective of Yuri Briar for a moment. As it turns out, despite his injuries, he still regains consciousness when his fellow SSS agents discover him. Alas though, he doesn’t have the strength to do anything more than try to hug the female SSS agent who wakes him up, thinking that she was Yor, and thus earning a karate chop to the head in the bargain. Thus, the SSS medevacs him as he ponders why Twilight spared his life.

Meanwhile, Twilight is in deep trouble after “Wheeler” managed to knock him out and is about to unmask him. As you can imagine, Fiona/Nightfall is furious. However, “Wheeler” quickly holds up Twilight to use him as a human shield, forcing Nightfall to drop her pistol. Alas though, “Wheeler” gets cocky. He drops the unconscious Twilight and stomps on him, and then taunts Nightfall over her obvious care for Twilight, proudly boasting about not caring about anyone or anything in his life. I don’t know whether it was the Twilight abuse or the villainous speech that did it, but Nightfall? She’s not having any of it.

Nightfall the Berserker

Nightfall completely loses it and goes berserker on “Wheeler”, rushing him like a mad bull. “Wheeler” thinks he has the edge…until he belatedly realizes that Nightfall is moving too quickly for him to dodge. So he blocks the incoming fist with an arm, thinking that such a light body is too lightweight to do much damage. Nightfall quickly disabuses him of that notion by punching so hard that it breaks his blocking arm and reaches his face hard enough to knock out a tooth. All at the cost of shattering her own punching arm.

As it turns out, Nightfall’s rage and love for Twilight has caused her to reach some kind of berserk state in which she can launch attacks at max power at the cost of self-destructive force. She quickly uses this berserk state to utterly wreck “Wheeler”, regardless of the damage she does to her own body, including shattering her arm after dislocating it with a missed punch. That particular blow looks like it probably broke “Wheeler” skull, so at least there’s that. But is he truly down though? Well, hopefully we’ll find that out in the next chapter of Spy x Family.

Spy x Family Ch. 85: The Good

Without a doubt, Fiona/Nightfall is the star of Spy x Family Ch. 85. She actually shows off a very interesting mix of personalities here. You know, aside from her furious and slightly insane berserker side. It’s both horrific and hilarious to see Nightfall mutter that madness mantra about watching Twilight as she’s fighting “Wheeler”. You wouldn’t think those genres would go well together in the same scene. And yet, Tatsuya Endo managed to pull it off very successfully.

Funny thing though, Spy x Family Ch. 85 wouldn’t have been that successful without “Wheeler”. I love how his smug self-confidence slowly crumbled as he realized just what an impossible monster he awakened in Nightfall. When your opponent is someone fully willing to sacrifice her body to take you out, you know that you’ve suddenly turned the battle into a boss fight.

Even Yuri’s brief appearance at the beginning of Spy x Family Ch. 85 has some interesting implications lore-wise. Will this help Yuri actually figure out that Twilight is someone close to him? Guess we’ll find out as the story of this manga progresses.

Spy x Family Ch. 85: The Bad

There’s nothing much I can criticize about Spy x Family Ch. 85. All this action and drama makes this chapter and this whole arc one of the best arcs in this entire manga. Even the comedy fans will get a kick out of this chapter due to the surprising amounts of comedy here. My one complaint is how the chapter ended on a cliffhanger just as Nightfall slugged “Wheeler’s” head with bone-breaking force. I suppose we’ll have to wait 2 weeks before we find out the conclusion to that fight. Although with the force Nightfall put into it, it’s probably a foregone conclusion.