Welcome to This Week in Shonen Jump, our weekly check in on Viz’s various Shonen Jump series. Viz has recently changed their release format, but our format will mostly remain the same. We will still review the newest chapters of one title a week, now with even more options at our disposal. The big change for our readers is that, even without a Shonen Jump subscription, you can read these most recent chapters for free at Viz.com or using their app.
This week, Vince checks in with “Spy x Family.” If you have thoughts on this or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Spy x Family – Mission 45
Written & Illustrated by Tatsuya Endo
Review by Vince J Ostrowski
“Spy x Family” has settled into a really nice rhythm, as of late. The series is still coasting off of its original charming premise, nearly unchanged: that a family composed of 2 exceptional spies and 1 daughter with telepathic skills have been cobbled together to make a makeshift family of convenience to suit the needs of their espionage agency. This rhythm, though familiar, makes for some really nuanced and understated character work that becomes the heart of the series. This is a shonen manga that has enough “plot” to go around, but the mechanics of the mission aren’t as important as how the mission makes the characters feel.
In “Mission 45”, Anya, the psychic kid, darts around the massive cruise liner they’re boarding, expressing her childlike wonderment at even the most mundane aspects of the ship (“It’s even got an ocean!”). Her de facto father Loid humors her as she does this, while also not taking his eye off analysis of the ship they’ll be spending some precarious time on. You almost forget that Anya is a psychic (it feels like she almost forgets too) and that they’re not just a family taking a vacation cruise. The thing that “Spy x Family” does so well is blur the line between the idea of a family put together as a facade for exciting spy missions and a found family that just enjoys being with one another.
Yor, the mother, is separated from them for this mission, tasked with helping protect the recent survivor (a mob wife named Shaty) from a gangland purge while business is conducted between some political bureaucrats and the crime family. If you didn’t follow that, it doesn’t matter. Yor quickly empathizes with the gangster’s wife, seeing herself in someone else who is living a life of constant peril. When Shaty expresses her desire to retire away to a quiet life with her child, Yor can’t help but think about her own found family and how things could be different. But reality sets in that she has to execute the mission above all else and, after all, she’s reminded her family is just a facade anyway. It tugs on the heartstrings a little.
The art has similarly settled into a rhythm that, unfortunately, features little surprise, action or espionage this time around. The characters are handsomely rendered and the luxurious cruise ship setting is well-executed, if lacking a little in detail. This chapter feels like it’s more about teasing out the emotional connections in these characters more than it is about the setting or the mission, but the characters are intentionally so understated (Anya aside) that there isn’t much room for emotion either. It’s hard to criticize “Spy x Family” for doing this, as the staunch and emotionless facade of the spy is a tried and true genre trope, it just doesn’t leave a lot of room for experimentation.
All that is to say that “Spy x Family” continues to string together a pleasant and tight-knit saga of a fake spy family, even if it’s settled into a somewhat conventional visual rhythm.
Final Verdict: 7.0 – “Spy x Family” is a solid character exercise with clean, quality art, that has perhaps become a little too comfortable with its status quo.
