Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump is defined by its battle manga; both of the mystical epic and tournament saga variety. But every now and again, something truly special cuts through the noise in the legendary magazine -- a Death Note or a The Promised Neverland. Tatsuya Endo's Spy x Family is one such special title. In fact, the only bad thing about the first collected volume, newly released in English by Viz Media, is that there isn't more of it.
Set in a Cold War-styled, fictitious version of Berlin, Endo's titular family is the creation of "Twilight," a debonair James Bond type with the rubber masked disguise skills of Mission: Impossible's Ethan Hunt. In order to prevent the rocky relationship between the East and West sides of his homeland splintering even further, Twilight is tasked by his espionage agency to get close to an important diplomat via his son, who is soon to attend a prestigious academy. The best way to do this, his agency advises, is to get a child of his own enrolled at the academy. Taking the mantle of Loid Forger, becoming a faithful husband and dutiful father to a wife and daughter is his greatest and most challenging peacekeeping mission yet. Little does he know that the woman and small child he's enlisted -- "Thorn Princess"/Yor Forger and Anya Forger -- are secretly a world-class assassin and a telepath; both of which invariably contribute to and mitigate his professional and domestic strife.
Though broadly a comedy, Spy x Family's fast-paced action, along with the superheroic skills of its central trio, means it more than earns its keep among Jump's more typical titles. And when the pace does pick up, this heightened sense of reality offsets the more grim and gritty moments of violence perfectly. Action-comedy is no mean feat even in animated or live-action mediums. To pull it off so well in still images takes real artistic talent.
Visually, Spy x Family is as slickly and stylishly produced as its immaculately-presented patriarch. Endo's clean and confident linework is the perfect framework to contain some of the story's more ludicrous scenarios. Easily overlooked behind it all is the architecture of the Forgers' world -- rendered with enough fully-formed, meticulous attention to detail to make the European cityscape look like a real one you could step into. Without a doubt, however, Endo's fantastic range of facial expressions is the secret weapon he deploys to win over the hearts and minds of readers. The majority of these belong to Anya, whose cherub-like face can effortlessly mold itself from sparkly-eyed smiles to sinister grins to derpy stares. Twilight might be Volume 1's cover star but its Anya, the orphaned psychic with barely an ounce of common sense, who steals every page she appears on.
Credit should also go to Endo's editor at Shueisha, Shihei Lin, who guided Endo toward a "bright and cheer[full]" tone -- one that helps the manga stand out in landscape currently overcrowded by dark and overwrought titles. The role of the editor in manga production is too often sorely overlooked by fans, but in an interview for Manga Plus, it's clear that the longevity of Lin and Endo's professional relationship serves Spy x Family well. "With Endo-sensei, we have a good level of closeness with one another," Lin says. "We can be direct with each other. We rely on each other. It’s not just that we just simply get along. Endo-sensei treats me with decency. We’ve known each other for over 10 years now, and yet the vibe is the same as when we first met. I’d love for it to stay this way forever."
Underlying the story's charming silliness is its supremely kind-hearted center. There are traditional black-and-white heroes and villains to be found, but no joke is made at the cruel expense of them or someone else. The genius of Spy x Family's characterization is in its flexibility: Twilight, Yor and Anya are caricatures when a gag calls for it, but they're each underpinned by real human desires: Twilight wants to build a world in which children (like he was) are no longer victims of war; Yor wants to live a life free from antiquated sexist expectations on what a woman should do with her life, while Anya simply wants what any child does -- unconditional love and a stable home. The inevitable payoff for the "fake family" gimmick will be when playing house becomes less of a game and more of an actual way of life for the three of them.
But even with that clear endpoint on the horizon, Endo provides plenty of evidence in this first volume that the journey toward it won't be a predictable one. Much of the comedy is derived from gentle subversion: Twilight's efforts to present the ideal "normal" family are carried out with the kind of clinical, delicate precision he devotes to any of his other spy missions. By creating the illusion of the perfect, nuclear family, Endo exposes the artificiality of conventional, domestic bliss.
