Don’t you hate it when, as the top spy of your country, you are given the task of having a kid and then marrying someone, all in the span of a week, to get close to the target you are supposed to be spying on?
Well, this is the absurd problem the spy known as Twilight faces in Tatsuya Endo’s wickedly funny and wholesome manga Spy x Family.
Taking on the identity of psychiatrist Loid Forger, Twilight, through a series of increasingly hilarious events, manages to procure a wife, Yor, and child, Anya.
Twilight’s mission is to enrol Anya at Eden Academy, the school where his target Donavon Desmond’s son, Damian, is enrolled.
There, Anya will attempt to befriend Damian so Twilight can get close to Desmond, all while he and Yor play at the perfect husband and wife and parents.
There are just two issues, the first of which is that, unbeknownst to him, Yor is actually an accomplished assassin known as the Thorn Princess.
The second issue is that Anya is actually a telepath who escaped from the organization experimenting on her.
She is the only one in the entire family aware of her parents’ secret identities… and she thinks it’s amazing.
Que an ever increasing hilarious set of events where Twilight takes on spy missions, while trying to keep his family oblivious, Yor assasinates people, while also trying to keep her family oblivious.
All of this is taking place while a fully aware of everything Anya does everything she can to make sure that her parents don’t find out the truth about the other, so she can keep her newfound family.
These scenarios only get funnier and funnier as the story goes on, with constant great gags, such as Anya’s signature “heh,” which was the image I saw that got me interested in readying Spy x Family in the first place.
As well as being hilarious, the manga is also quite wholesome.
Although Twilight and Yor both enter their fake relationship with the intent of using it for their own personal gain, Twilight to complete his mission and Yor to hide from suspicion of other people over her being single, they slowly begin to grow closer in their relationship.
They actually feel like a real couple, and real parents to Anya.
It got to the point where Yor actually screams at some criminals that she is Anya’s mother and I literally shouted, “damn right, you are!”
Some of the best moments in the manga are just of the family hanging out being wholesome.
It’s not just them, though, because even the side characters are pretty great, from Twilight’s friend Frankie, Damian, Twilight’s fellow spy Nightfall, Anya’s teacher Henderson, and Yor’s brother Yuri.
Some of these characters even provide the biggest laughs of the story so far.
All of this is brought togethor by some great illustrations by Endo, with his paneling doing quite a great job at bringing the humor across.
Currently at 57 chapters, Spy x Family is a comedic and wholesome blast, one which will probably gain more fans when the anime adaptation by Studio Wit and Cloverworks releases in 2022.
If you have not read Spy x Family already, then I highly recommend it.
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