(Shonen Jump: Spy X Family Header)
The world of anime and manga is unique when it comes to the stories they’re telling. My Hero Academia gives us a world where having superpowers is the norm instead of the unusual; Death Note has a book that can literally kill anyone whose name is written in it; Little Witch Academia has witches living and using magic to a knowing public in the modern world; and Assassination Classroom has an alien-like octopus creature genuinely teaching a class of students while said students try to kill him before he destroys the Earth. The list goes on. And in 2019, another crazy concept hit the web pages of Shonen Jump + called Spy X Family. This story (which I’ll summarize soon) is full of comedy, action, cute slice-of-life, and a hit of romance sprinkled throughout. Mix that with lovable characters and a compelling plot and you’ve got yourself a hit that rivals the sales of big names like One Piece and Demon Slayer. The anime came out back in early April 2022 and it’s become the talk of the community since. For good reason, of course! I’ve been reading the manga since (I think) 2020 and I’m fully caught up to the latest chapter. So, I’ll try my best to explain to you why this series has become such a hit!
Mangaka, Tatsuya Endo, starts Spy X Family with an interesting concept: Everyone has a secret; one that no one can know. Not to friends, not to lovers, not even to family. Behind lies and painted smiles, those secrets are the things that maintain peace within a world on the verge of an all-out war. The countries of Westalis and Ostania (based on Germany) are in a Cold War ready to fight each other at a moment’s notice. One of the things keeping that war at bay are spies. The spy agency in Westalis, WISE, tasks their best spy, Agent Twilight, to take on a mission that can end the war entirely. The catch? He has to find a wife and kid to infiltrate the prestigious Eden Academy to get close to the school's Chairman, Donovan Desmond, and stop him from starting a war. Twilight ultimately agrees to take the mission. He creates a new alias, Loid Forger, adopts a daughter, Anya, from an orphanage, and finds a woman, Yor Briar, to act as his wife. Another catch? Anya’s an experimented Telepath and Yor is an Assassin working for her country of Ostania. And the only one who knows about all their secret identities is Anya because she read their minds. The rest of the story follows this newfound “family” in their little adventures while also seeing how they gradually grow closer to each other as real people. Despite being a “fake family” they quickly feel real.
(Spy X Family Chapter 3)
Now, for the family members themselves. I’ll cover the core three here. There are two other members, but the anime probably won’t get to them until later, so I’ll hold off. First, theirs’s Loid Forger, A.K.A Twilight. He’s his country, Westalis’, top spy. His specialty is that he’s a master of disguise, so he’s able to pose as anyone to get important intel for WISE. It’s how he’s able to “act” as a good father and husband so easily. Acting as someone else is another day for him. His real personality is colder and more calculated, as expected of a spy. It’s not a bad thing since Twilight is actually a good person. He’s a spy because he wants to create a world where kids don’t have to cry anymore. It’s a noble cause that reflects on Anya a bit. And even though he’s “acting” as a father and husband, Twilight does show a more genuine softer side of him to Anya and Yor at times. He legitimately cares for these people and wants them to be happy while they’re living this life no matter how much he tries to deny it. There are times when he goes out of his way to do embarrassing stuff just to make Anya happy. There are also times when he worries about Yor and reassures her that she is a good “wife” and “mother”. Twilight is starting to see Anya and Yor as his real family. He catches himself calling them such and tries to revert to his “It’s for the mission” spy mentality. After reading Twilight’s backstory in the manga, it’s understandable to see why he tries not to get attached to people, but maybe that’s starting to change.
Next is Yor Briar, A.K.A. Thorn Princess. Yor is a city hall clerk by day and an assassin by night. As a normal person, Yor is airheaded and naive but a very sweet and kind person all around. When she’s given a task from her assassin job, her personality flips like a switch and she basically turns on kill mode. As an assassin, Yor is ruthless. She wears a beautiful black dress decorated with thorns and roses abound. She wields two icepicks to slash and stab people quickly and easily. Yor is also incredibly strong. I mean, like Superman strength strong. Yor has proven time and time again that her physical strength is unmatched. She took down a cow by hitting its pressure points, used her bare hands to punch straight through a solid pumpkin, and has kicked so many people into unconsciousness including a man driving a car at full speed. Despite all this, Twilight suspects nothing. Even when she fought him while she was drunk, he only asked if she was ok after. The world’s greatest spy, ladies and gentlemen. But really, Yor is an incredibly good person. She became an assassin to help support herself and her younger brother when they were orphans. She even takes the role of Twilight’s wife so she can put her brother's mind at ease (being single during the 60s-70s in her late 20s was concerning to others, apparently). She wants to be a supportive “wife” to Twilight by giving him advice and reassuring him of how good of a “father” and “husband” he really is. And it’s clear that she loves Anya. Anya might as well be her real daughter at this point because we’ve seen that Yor will literally nearly kill someone to protect Anya. Yor has done this several times since Anya tends to get herself into trouble. She wants to be the best "mother" she can be. Yor cares about her “family” a lot and it’s possible that she’s caught genuine romantic feelings for Twilight as well.
Finally, there’s Anya. The cute little gremlin who also happens to be a telepath. Anya’s powers were apparently created by accident from an experiment done on her. After some time, she escaped from the facility holding her and she’s been transferred to several orphanages since. It was then at one of those orphanages that Twilight found and adopted her. The interesting thing about Anya is that because she can read minds, she knows her father is a spy and that her mother is an assassin. To Anya, this is the coolest thing ever! Actually, she’s the only one privy to everyone’s secrets including her own, of course. But, she doesn’t tell anyone anything about said secrets because if she does, Anya’s afraid her family will break up and she will be abandoned again. It’s a sad thought for a 5-year-old (she convinced her “family” she’s 6, but she’s most likely 5 at best). It’s because of all this that Anya does her best to keep her family together when she can which also means doing well at Eden Academy so Twilight’s mission can succeed. Problem is that she’s a kid. She acts like a kid, thinks like a kid, plays like a kid, etc. She isn’t a genius or a prodigy of any sort really. Anya’s street smart enough to be aware of the world around her for the most part, but she’s not great academically, which causes problems at school. That’s one of the best things about Anya as a character, though. A lot of stories have these genius/special kids who have the mentality of a teenager or adult. Anya thinks and does things a little girl would do because that’s exactly who she is. She just happens to have telepathy. It’s great writing from Endo-sensei who makes sure that Anya is sweet enough to be lovable and not bratty enough to be annoying. It also helps that Anya is by far the funniest character in the series. Her antics and facial expressions alone get a great laugh out of me.
(Spy X Family Chapter 1)
Like I said before, Spy X Family has many elements to it that make it as great as it is. The idea of making a fake family out of a spy, assassin, and telepath is inspiring enough. Now, add in some insane day-to-day adventures with them and you got a recipe for a fun story. There are some chapters that are pure comedy that play off each of our core trio’s personalities and their reactions to the situations around them like the chapters where we see Anya’s days in school or when Yor tries to cook properly. Most of the extra chapters in the manga are light-hearted and full of comedy. My favorite is probably the one where Yor takes a bullet to the butt after her assassin mission and when she comes home in pain, Twilight thinks he angered her somehow, so he tries to go on a date with her which ends up as well as you can expect. There are also chapters later on that have a lot of action in them, most of them involving Yor and her assassin line of work. There are chapters that focus more on character development more than anything like the chapters where Twilight and Yor talk about how important they are to each other after spending time together as a "family". And then there are the more serious chapters that dive into heavy subjects like what one’s purpose is, PTSD, the loss of a loved one, and even war itself. All parts of Chapter 62, for example, focus on Twilight’s tragic backstory and how the war between Westalis and Ostainia caused him to become the man he is now. And some of the panels in this chapter hit extremely hard especially given what’s going on in the world right now as I’m writing this. Tatsyua Endo is talented at making sure all these different elements blend and balance each other out so that none of them overshadow the other. Spy X Family is a comedy at the end of the day, but the added action, romance, and drama are what make the story whole.
I have to praise the art style of this series as well. Tatsyua Endo’s characters are drawn in a way that’s soft, smooth, and appealing. It’s almost like a mix of how a child like Anya sees the world and how adults like Yor and Twilight see the world. The kids are cute and adorable with their own special features that make each one distinguishable, so you can pick them out from a crowd. The adults are well designed too; looking like they would be grown adults working day to day in their lives like most normal folk. They’re also very fashionable in their own ways as well. Throughout the series, the characters are drawn with stylish clothes from time to time, with one chapter focused on Anya and her best friend going shopping and some Volume Extras showcasing the different outfits Loid and Yor wear day to day. Endo clearly did his research on different types of fashion and it’s refreshing to see characters were different things from time to time. The action is also very well drawn. Each punch and kick are drawn in a way that holds a lot of weight so that you can almost hear the sounds of them in the panels they're showcased in. Most of these kinds of action scenes focus on Yor since she’s the assassin with the insane strength (she gets really great ones in the Cruse Arc), but Twilight and Anya get good amounts of action here and there too. Endo is also able to draw scenes that are dark and heavy so that the weight of the messages carries onto the reader. In Chapter 62.3, there’s a powerful panel showing a young Twilight during his days before he became a spy looking down at the ground surrounded by rifles thinking about how “Ignorance is a sin” and the foreground is completely shaded in black. I really want to show it to you all, but that would be considered a massive spoiler, so I think it’s better for you to see it for yourselves.
(Spy X Family Anime Promotional Artwork)
Overall, Spy X Family is a wonderful series. This essay is to try to convince you all to check out the series, so I really hope you do. Watch the anime or read the manga; It’s up to you. The anime has been a lot of fun so far! It’s been very faithful to the manga and has even built on the manga’s already existing plot. For example, pretty much half of episode 5 is anime-original built on a plot from a chapter that lasted about 6-7 pages. WIT and Cloverworks (the two animation studios working together on the anime) keep doing an amazing job. However, my recommendation is to read the manga. There are currently 62 chapters so far and each new one comes out every 2-4 weeks. The wait can be long and tiring (trust me, I know), but it really is worth it in the end because each chapter is peak quality. Also, the anime has 25 episodes scheduled to be split into two parts. The first one is currently airing until I think June and the next part starts in the fall (I think it’s October last I checked). So, you can catch up with the manga during that empty period during the summer. It’s a really fun read on binge since there’s no wait time for the next chapter. It’s one of those series I go to when I need a good laugh or some heartwarming moments after a hard day. As mentioned before, the extra chapters are light-hearted and can be read for fun without worrying about the plot. Though they are canon to the story, there’s no problem with reading them out of order. They really don’t detract from the main plotline. I think Spy X Family is a great series that really anyone can get into. The fact that it covers so many genres means that it can attract a very wide audience. The fact that it’s gained as much popularity as it has over the past few years definitely shows that Spy X Family has a very bright future ahead of it.
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