Why You Should Read/Watch Spy X Family
Spy Family has concluded and quickly risen to become the biggest spring anime of 2022 and if you are part of the anime community you have heard of it. It has taken the seasonal anime world by storm. In the three weeks since it premiered, it’s caused a scoring war with FMA fanboys over on MAL (My Anime List) and racked up more viewers than Kaguya Sama season three and even the Rise Up of the Gamer Hero.
It has captured every post on r/animememes, Twitter, and Instagram. It had all its manga volumes in the Oricon top 20 sales chart and the first episode pulled in the most viewers of any anime that week.
You can also check anime similar to Spy X Family: https://animeloved.com/blog/top-anime-like-spy-x-family/
Characters
The interesting characters of the anime are its heartbeat and the carrying force
Twilight
This elusive spy suffered under the constant war between his homeland, West Allis, and its opposing country Ostania. Abandoning his entire identity and became a spy for West Allis in the name of creating peace between both countries.
He is sent on an important mission to infiltrate Eden Academy to gain access to Donovan Desmond. He is the serious guy in the anime. He is focused on his mission and it is up to Anya to do the opposite of whatever he wants.
Anya
The reason why most stated this anime. She is the new Baby Yoda, as much as I hate to compare him to Anya. She without a doubt has some of the best expressions in anime as well as voice acting. This poor girl is on the struggle bus the entire anime.
Twilight is the serious guy in the anime, focused on his mission. He has infiltrated a terrorist organization but still is afraid of Tanya’s stupid actions.
Just like Rock Lee, she is the Master of the drunken fist as well as the flashback training arc master. She appears whenever Anya needs her the most as a flashback to help her on her journey to become the King of the Pirates.
Jokes aside, She is beautiful, shy, and a world-class assassin code-named Thorne Princess. She is married to Twilight and is the mother to Anya in a pretending family.
Relations between these Characters
The basic concept for the series’ core trio of characters is an absolute comedic goldmine. An emotionally detached, pathologically professional secret agent is forced by the dictates of his mission to share a home and sometimes bed with Yor.
Yor is secretly a professional murderer. If this wasn’t complicated enough, they both have to care for an agent of pink-haired chaos, Anya.
Tanya happens to be a telepath and knows the secrets of both Twilight and Yor. She is six years old and addicted to Inspector Gadget and thus thinks of the roles of Twilight and Yor to be cool.
When the trio is put in the same room, they instantly begin dragging each other out of their comfort zones. They get into a space where comedy happens.
Comedic element related to Twilight
Loid has lived his entire life in a world of shadows unbound by human attachment. Relying only on his own wits to survive. So, simply being in the same room with other human beings who like and need him is unfamiliar to him.
On top of that, he is assigned an extremely important mission to stop the Cold War. His interaction with two untrained strangers causes a lot of comedic consternation.
What really throws him off his game is that he actually likes and cares about Anya. Twilight likewise finds himself irresistibly drawn to his fake wife Yor.
Common Thread between Lloyd and Yor
They both have a lot in common. They lead secret double lives in an effort to avert the sort of war that left both of them as orphans. Also, as a result of those backstories, neither of them has any real experience with romance or normal family life.
They often are hilariously bad at normal family life.
Anya’s Cuteness
Anya possesses the bluntness of a precocious child, confident, direct, and frequently wrong about almost everything. Except for the things that she gleans from her telepathy. It might be a big power for most people, but Anya sits in that same character build sweet spot.
She is objectively the funniest kind of character you can put in a shounen anime. In the anime, Anya acts as the glue that binds the whole Forger family. She is the one that nudges the show in a positive direction
Her decidedly average intellect also makes her an ideal, relatable POV character for the younger audience. She is the one voice in the room that can ignore the fraught political intrigue. She is away from all the complicated moral dimensions of the pot that’s happening.
Side Characters
This is a story with variety. Each member of the Forger Clan has their own group of equally well-designed supporting characters. They are purposely built to play off the trio’s unique character quirks.
They also have some fun interactions with the rest of the family.
Twilight has his side agency contacts and his real friend Frankie. Frankie happens to be the only character in the cast who can match Anya’s wit for wit.
There are various rivals and enemies in the world of espionage at large.
Yor’s co-workers at her fake job are catty, chatty cast straight out of an office sitcom. Yor does not know how to deal with them which leads to many hilarious scenes.
Yuri is an interesting character, the little brother of Yor Forger. He has a bit of a sister complex thing. This creates tension between him and Loid.
Eden Academy
It is the snooty rich kid’s school that Anya must infiltrate. She has to conquer it academically if Operation Strix is ever to succeed. Her low intelligence stats already make her an unlikely prospect.
On top of that, she has to navigate a social web of selfish and spoiled brats. The kids in Anya’s orbit all have extremely colorful and entertaining personalities.
The Overall Humor
Spy X Family accomplishes humor through a narrow balance between absurdity and realism. It narrows between absurdity and realism. It stays believable enough to take seriously but frequently dips into ridiculousness to achieve comedic or memorable moments.
Family Aspect of the Anime
To me, it’s not how the anime revolves around the usual wholesomeness or comical atmosphere that can exist in a family, but more on how it plays this idea of deception and lies under one roof.
The story opens with this feeling: “Everyone has a secret self they don’t show to other people”. Not to friends, not to lovers, and not even to the family. They hide who they are and what they want behind lies and painted smiles.
The deception here involves not just the father’s spy work as the Spy Family title might suggest. But each of these family members hiding their identities from each other, while continuing to play their family roles.
In that sense, much of what keeps the story interesting is simply just the possibility of someone finding out about someone else’s true identity.
Much more of the family comedy in the show comes from Loid trying to be a good dad to Anya despite the fact that she’s only his daughter for this mission. In fact, he repeatedly says, I shouldn’t care so much about this kid, because I am sending her right back to the orphanage after this mission. Yet he tries to be a good parent and when Anya gets kidnapped, he recklessly goes to save her even though he knows he can just find a new kid and restart the mission.
Conclusion
Wit Studio and Clover Works co-producing and Dororo and Gundam Unicorn’s Kazuhiro Furuhashi directing. There was no way this adaptation would disappoint and the source material it’s based on is solid gold. It is some of the best-executed comedy ever put to print with an absolutely inspired premise.
Spy X Family is nothing short of the complete anime package. 100% Grade A gag anime goodness mixed with genuine action thrills and even more genuine moments of pathos.
In all, as dysfunctional as this family gets, you might see flashes of your own, or pieces of what you would like yours to look like one day. That’s where the beauty of the Spy X Family comes from.
It does what a family comedy genre does best, show that a family is not a place where lies or deception don’t exist, it’s where everyone briefly puts that individuality aside to connect. To feel like they’re part of a home
It is certainly the show to beat for the anime of the season and the one to watch.
Check Top 40 Funny Anime: https://animeloved.com/blog/top-40-funny-anime/
