Title: Spy x Family Vol. 1
Author: Tatsuya Endo
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Digital
Pages: 213
Genre: Action, Comedy, Shonen
Publication Date: June 2, 2020
The Story
Spy x Family is a manga from Tatsuya Endo (Gekka Bijin, Rengoku no Ashe, Tista) that brings slice-of-life, action, comedy, and a splash of sci-fi into an entertaining manga series. The series follows a spy simply known as Twilight. He is asked to investigate a government official who is looking to bring two nations to war. Being a man of a thousand faces who has cast his personal emotions aside, Twilight must become Loid Forger, a married man with a child, in order to complete this mission!
Twilight starts by visiting an orphanage and securing a 6-year-old girl named Anya who just happens to have an ability to read people’s thoughts. Thanks to that ability, Anya is much smarter than your average child and she becomes the perfect choice for Twilight. The only thing is, Twilight has no idea she is telepathic!
Part of the mission involves Anya getting admitted to Eden Academy, a school for the elite of the elite. After barely passing the written exam, they ask to meet both parents of the child, no exceptions. This means that Twilight needs a wife. He conveniently runs into Yor, an assassin who is desperate need of a temporary boyfriend in order to prove that she is not single at her age to her family. After forming a pact that Twilight will be her pretend boyfriend in exchange for Yor pretending to be Anya’s mother for the admission interview, we have ourselves a nice little family who know nothing about one another’s true identities… except for Anya since she’s telepathic but she’s keeping her secret all to herself as well!
The result is a serious, yet, hilarious comedy with a great story and amazing characters!
Characters
First off, we have Twilight. Twilight has been on hundred of spy missions, each one he has carried out with extreme professionalism. Infiltrating the government in order to stop a terrible war is nothing to someone like him, yet, when he becomes attached to Yor and Anya, things take a different perspective to him. He is no longer just thinking about the mission at hand and there are even cracks in his armor where he realizes that he’s not acting like the spy he normally is. While he seemed hardened and a man who cares nothing more for his job at first, he shows a lot of human qualities all while being self-aware that he is doing so. It makes for a great main character however, the real star of the show here is Anya.
Anya is just absolutely adorable and amazing at the same time. She can read anyone’s minds but she still possesses the mentality of a 6-year-old kid. While she is very aware of the world around her, she still likes to eat yummy things and play daddy’s spy radio which alerts enemies to his location, thus putting his mission in complete and total jeopardy! She also enjoys playing tag with complete strangers and playing with her new pretend mommy’s poisoned knives! Like I said, just cute little things any 6-year-old girl would like to go! Seriously, though… some of her reactions to Twilight and Yor’s thoughts are priceless… especially the scene where Yor wants to hold her hand! Anya really commands your attention whenever she’s on the page and is probably the best part about this series so far!
Yor, on the other hand, has a dual personality. In her “normal mode,” she’s kind of a clumsy, absent-minded woman who should have had a boyfriend by now but is hopelessly single. In her “other mode,” she is a highly-trained and deadly assassin who is obviously just putting on an act as to not draw suspicion to her actual trade. She becomes a bit more “normalized” when she agrees to be Anya’s pretend mother but there are instances where her assassin skills come out. It’s okay though because she learned all of them in yoga class… she swears by it!
Final Thoughts
This manga was a delightful surprise! The volume starts off in a serious tone, luring you in a false sense of security. It makes you believe that you’re going to be following the life of a masterful spy, witness his death-defying adventures, and see those adventures on a volume-by-volume basis. Then you get a bit of a jarring experience when you meet Anya and realize she’s telepathic. At that point, you realize that the manga isn’t as serious as it let itself on to be. Then, things take an even more comical tone when Yor enters the picture.
The recipe works very well here and the result is nothing more than pure entertainment. The characters are well fleshed out, have great personalities, and play off of each other so well. The cohesion between the three of them is among some of the best I’ve read in a manga series and I’ve read a lot of manga in my time thus far. My only complaint with the first volume of Spy x Family is that it had to eventually end at some point. I was truly enjoying every page and I feel that this is a series you should definitely check out!
As HouseMaster Henry Henderson of Eden Academy says… This is true elegance!
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
