Title: Spy x Family Vol. 4
Author: Tatsuya Endo
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Physical
Pages: 192
Genre: Action, Comedy, Shonen
Publication Date: March 2, 2021
The Story
Anya steals the show once again in Vol. 4 of Spy x Family. Operation Strix shifts focus as they promised Anya a dog as a reward for getting her first Stella Star at school. While they are picking out a dog, Twilight is summoned away to be told of an assassination plot on Minister Barintz. The plan is to use dogs as suicide bombers to blow him up.
While looking for a dog, Anya sees a couple of the terrorists walking a dog past the dog show they were attending. She sees visions of the dog together with the family and runs off after it, leaving Yor behind. Anya stumbles upon their hideout and overhears their plans to assassinate the Minister. Anya is caught but the dog ends up saving her by predicting that the phone will ring. It used that as a distraction to get Anya out of there. This means that this dog can see the future!
The dog then shows Anya another future that makes her feel as if she needs to intervene. Without giving the plot away, Anya springs into action with her dog. Her assistance is both cute and hilarious as she tries everything she can to help change the grim future that her dog showed her.
After the mission is over, it’s time to name the dog. She does give it a name; however, if you’ve been paying attention to the things Anya loves in this series, it wasn’t really too hard to figure out what the dog’s name ends up being!
Characters
I wouldn’t say that there was much “development” here for our characters as the volume mainly focused on the assassination plot more than anything. Anya realizing the dog has foresight causes the two of them to bond rather well. This new relationship between the two of them serves as the majority of Anya’s “development” even though she really didn’t advance all that much, if at all, as a character.
Twilight, on the other hand, has a pretty prolific moment that doesn’t amount to anything now but it’s definitely a seed that’s being planted for the possible end of the series. Simply, Twilight realizes that once this mission is over, Anya, Yor, and the dog will all go their separate ways. He realizes that the organization will take amazing care of them but it’s quite obvious that this mission is more than just a mission for him. I think he’s actually getting used to being a family man. It was stated to never let the mission compromise your feelings; however, in this case, I think it’s going to happen. We could be witnessing Twilight’s final mission. If not, then that’s going to be one hell of a depressing ending to the series whenever it happens.
Final Thoughts
What I thought was going to be a filler chapter of buying a dog and flaunting it to “Sy-on” boy at school (which Anya tries to do and hilariously fails at), turned out to be an amazing, action-packed volume! There were some parts of the volume, though, that made it REALLY difficult to keep the whole “nobody knows about the other” story going. It was clever at first but, given everything that this volume threw at you, either our main cast is in complete and total denial, or they are dumber than they making us believe.
Anya suddenly running off, a terrorist plot, bombs, and Twilight realizing Anya had something to do with stopping it and not questioning it all seemed a bit weird for them to just ignore. Yor never questioned how Anya knew about the terrorists (she never told Yor but the fact that she ran off in the direction of the scene of the would-be crime was too odd not to question). Twilight not even wondering how and why the dog and Anya chose each other. A lot of the excuses the characters made to separate themselves were a bit too contrived; however, things aren’t exactly normal in this series.
I mean, we have a mind-reading girl and a dog that can see the future. As much as the convenience of everything that happened struck me oddly, I’m not actually complaining about it. It’s stuff like this that fits this series perfectly which is why I found this volume so entertaining!
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
