Spy x Family Shed a Joyful Light on Dark Times in My Life (2024)

Spy x Family is a unique series to me, a blend of multiple genres I enjoy as a reader, but also with a special connection to a career I once pursued during, of all things, an M.A. History program. Fresh off graduating from my B.A. degree in the same field, I pursued an advanced degree and endorsem*nt for work in the intelligence sector. Naturally, the flair of popular spy fiction appealed to me like it does to anybody. Still, eventually, I fell away from that pursuit, only to have that passion reignited unexpectedly by Spy x Family.

Working in the intelligence sector is a common pursuit for history graduates for a pretty straightforward reason: they must verify and analyze their information sources, something that is very far from the glamor and excitement of Spy x Family. Having to eventually back out of the program amicably due to mental health and financial concerns started a years-long rough period for me where I reassessed myself in the professional sphere.

But in rediscovering my passions, the opportunity to cover Spy x Family as a budding anime journalist arose, so I latched on as it restored some of my missing joy.

Spy x Family Is a Gateway Manga, and It Helped Me During Dark Times

Spies, Assassins, and Telepaths Unite to Draw Public Interest

By the time I had left my M.A. program, it was 2017, and I was barely watching any anime, fresh off the disappointment with the recent Berserk adaptation. I had to adapt without an advanced degree in the business city of Waterloo, Ontario, which was a challenge. My time over the next five years would be spent gaining real-life experience as I fell in with a massive movie theater chain, climbing the ranks to Theater Manager. Still, my boredom and regrets began to set in, exacerbated further by multiple pandemic lockdowns, until I found my gateway back into manga with Spy x Family.

It was an unexpected development, as I leveraged my history degree and live-streaming experience for a game journalism job a full year before I ever got to cover Spy x Family. But as our site grew and I created their entertainment vertical, I would soon break into the anime coverage, my first series being Spy x Family. Tracking the escapades of a deep-cover WISE agent and his farcical family enticed me out of my shell and into anime and manga enthusiast journalism.

In a way, Spy x Family is my way of coming to terms with the past as a former history student, especially since my focus was on Cold War-era Soviet interlopers crossing the Canadian border into the United States. I find an eerie amount of commonalities between this series, FX's The Americans, and the thesis I was drafting about that exact type of infiltration happening in the reality of the twentieth century. The fact that I now get to study a heavily fictionalized approximation of that concept while enjoying Tatsuya Endo's comedy is cathartic.

Spy x Family's Creator Is Relatable to Fans

Tatsuya Endo Got Back on the Horse With a Global Smash Hit Manga

While Spy x Family is considered Tatsuya Endo's most important work at the moment, for him, this was a way to rehabilitate himself, to "get back on the horse" after numerous one-shots. As discussed in the official Spy x Family guidebook, Eyes Only, this series was meant to be a therapeutic experience for him to reignite his joy as a creator. Still, with it becoming a massive success, this would soon change, as Endo found himself in the driver's seat as a mangaka and not simply an assistant, as described below:

The original idea was "Let's get to a place where I can enjoy drawing manga." For a long time, I found making manga painful. And I mean that at a deeper level than just "It's painful not being able to draw manga that my readers enjoy and I can be satisfied with." Just the act of sitting down to draw manga was itself emotionally painful.

However, I was really enjoying working as an assistant. There wasn't the pressure of working on a project with my name on it, and getting to talk to other creators was very stimulating. And in the process, I was gradually healing on a mental level. But as soon as I had to confront a creation of my own, I ended up turning inward again and lost all that.

-Tatsuya Endo

The creative and intellectual process of writing and composing art is hard; ask me and my zero published novels, and I've had nowhere near the gangbusters success of Spy x Family. Working as a game journalist was sometimes rewarding. I would essentially sink into writing guides and occasionally enjoy it, like with Elden Ring, or writhe in frustration with more contentious projects expected of me, like Hogwarts Legacy coverage. But covering Spy x Family was liberating, reminding me of the joy of spy fiction while seeing how Endo's meticulous research could pay off.

Tatsuya Endo and Other Mangaka's Research Is Inspiring for Young Creators

Research Isn't Just for Academic Papers

One of the most grueling processes of my time in the M.A. program was that my chosen field's research often meant waiting months for documents to be declassified and physically mailed on DVD-Rs. The main drawback was that I had completed my coursework to go along with this, so there was only my thesis left, and I'd be paying tuition only to wait and endure the stress, draining any of my remaining interest in the work. The fact that Tatsuya Endo performs his research so meticulously is exciting and lets me live vicariously through his work on Spy x Family.

Creative types are no strangers to research for their work, such as Makoto Yukimura's travels to Scandinavia for research when starting to create Vinland Saga. Research breathes credibility into academia or journalism and authenticity into biographical or fictional work. It doesn't have to be extreme cases like Charles Bukowski's prolific depictions of people at their lowest points in life; it just has to be about a subject where the audience can grasp and appreciate the effort put into it. Tatsuya Endo is known for his meticulous dedication to detail and research on Spy x Family and beyond.

Spy x Family Thrives Thanks to Compromise

Growing as a Creator Means Accepting Change

In creating Spy x Family and earlier works like Blade of the Moon Princess, Endo continuously bucked at the idea of creating a conventionally attractive male character, even though it'd surely boost the series' popularity. While discussing his work with Kazue Kato and Amu in Eyes Only, he noted that he had previously purposefully made male characters less attractive almost on principle, but the handsome Loid Froger was an instant hit. It's a compromise, Endo noted, claiming that he doesn't get attached to his characters because of how often they're changed.

Artists and creators of all stripes must be willing to accept and adapt to criticism and professional advice when looking to be published in a periodical as popular as those under Shueisha's umbrella. Spy x Family has sold 35 million copies across thirteen volumes as of March 2024, as reported by prtimes.jp, so Endo's willingness to accept compromise has paid off. However, readers still find a twinkle of "suffering from success" mentality, such as in his fourth-wall-breaking Spy x Family Volume #10 moment, where he jokingly laments that the series would need eighty volumes at its current pace.

Spy x Family's Fandom Craves the Joy of the Series

The Thrill and Suspense of a Spy Novel and Whimsy of a Slice-of-Life

Spy x Family delicately traverses the tightrope of razor-sharp tension and zany comedy thanks to the juxtaposed straight man that is Twilight (Loid) with his goofy family. Yor Forger is hopelessly clumsy and inept at communicating with Loid about their marriage arrangement. At the same time, Anya is keenly aware of Loid's thoughts yet is doomed to bumble through her days at Eden Academy as she is still an ordinary kid. It creates tense sagas like the Red Circus and Mole Hunt Arcs, yet it also results in heartwarming moments like Henry and Martha's recent flashback chapters.

Readers and viewers of Spy x Family media don't necessarily have to follow the story closely to gain immense enjoyment from the plot, as each arc is well-defined and relatively self-contained while building the world outwards. In the most recent Research Mission chapter, a tease of London is introduced to the series worldbuilding, mainly focusing on Westalis and Ostania, stand-ins for West and East Germany. There's so much excitement around the corner, yet it's a wholesomely shared joy among the reading community.

Unlike contentious fandoms like Oshi no Ko or My Hero Academia, Spy x Family has a delightful fan base that eagerly consumes even the smallest installments. I am part of one of the most vocal SxF discords and enjoy that passion alongside them because I crave the same joy they get from the series. It's gotten to the point where VIZ Media's PR team has now shipped me three different review copies of Spy x Family books for review. While their intuition is correct about my adoration for the series, they still don't know how important it is to me.

The Spy x Family Manga Let Me Embrace a New Career Path

Enthusiast Coverage of Manga is a Dream-Come-True

While my initial coverage of Spy x Family was modest and focused on release date guides, I would eventually grow my authority on the series while enjoying it purely for pleasure. In this field, it can be challenging to enjoy a series when you're constantly dissecting it for research and content, but it means a source of joy that can offset the doldrums of the job. Instead of worrying about leaks and spoilers, with Spy x Family, I could let the joy of the manga's latest releases propel me to conceive new content angles, diving into fan theories and analysis.

When I backed out of the M.A. program, it was a dark period; I drank and smoked far more than I should have, feeling like a failure while clinging desperately to whatever work I could do. I couldn't afford to pay tuition to wait for the resources to trickle in, and work became a chore with the goal of survival. I felt I had outgrown manga, but rediscovering it in my thirties, with Spy x Family being bizarrely tailor-made for my interests, saved the last embers of joy in my heart, and for that, I say thank you, Endo-sensei.

Source: PR TIMES

Spy x Family

TV-14

Animation

Action

Adventure

Comedy

Created by Tatsuya Endo, Spy X Family is an action-adventure comedy anime that follows the misadventures of a found family with unique quirks. The story follows spy Twilight (known as Loid Forger), who, while on assignment, builds a fake family to get closer to his target. Unbeknownst to him, his new family carries their quirks. His wife, Yor, is a kind but deadly assassin, while his daughter, Anya, has telepathic powers - and is the only one who knows their secrets.

Cast

Takuya Eguchi , Atsumi Tanezaki , Saori Hayami , Alex Organ , Megan Shipman , Natalie Van Sistine

Release Date

April 9, 2022

Seasons

2

Streaming Service(s)

Crunchyroll

Franchise(s)

Spy X Family

Writers

Kazuhiro Furuhashi , Ichirō Ōkouchi

Directors

Kazuhiro Furuhashi , Takahiro Harada

Creator(s)

Tatsuya Endo