Tatsuya Endo (1) (1980–)

Still humorous with its parallels between the drama of everyday family life and the cut-throat world of espionage and assassinations. The anxiety you feel when your daughter gets wait-listed for a new school -- where you hope she'll do well, be happy, and make friends -- is amplified when your job, lives, and the fate of your nation could depend on it. And what if that tiger mother has an actual bodycount under her apron?

The pace did seem a little slow this time around as the creator spent a show more lot of time introducing characters and getting all the pieces in place to play out in future volumes. A self-contained side story is tucked into the rear of the book shows how much faster and more fun everything could be once we're past this pilot arc. show less

A cheesy fun comic spy thriller along the lines of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. A spy code-named Twilight must gather an instant family to give him access to a target who only goes out in public to attend events at his child's exclusive, elite school. A lot of the comedy comes from the fact that Twilight is not the only one in the family with a secret. His new wife works days at city hall, but is using the quickie marriage to provide cover from her overly-protective brother as well as her show more moonlighting job as an assassin (of course). The daughter, whisked out of a sleazy orphanage, is a telepath (Sure! Why not?) who knows everyone's secrets, but is keeping it to herself because she's having so much fun watching the action and hearing the lies.

Over-the-top entertainment sure, but even amongst the extremes there is some insight into how people cope with married and family life. show less

The spy known as Twilight has been given his most difficult mission yet: get close to the leader of the National Unity Party, Donovan Desmond. Desmond's only public appearances are at the elite private school his son attends, so Twilight (now Loid Forger) has seven days to somehow acquire both a child and a wife.

The child is easy - all he has to do is find a terrible orphanage and get the brightest kid they have. A wife is harder, but he manages to find one of those as well. What show more Twilight/Loid doesn't realize is that his new wife, Yor, is an assassin (who needed a boyfriend in order to reassure her beloved brother) and his new child, Anya, is a telepath (who thinks her new parents are the coolest).

I pre-ordered this one because I'd heard it was really good and funny. Although it didn't make me laugh as much as I'd expected, I still enjoyed the humor. Most of it was centered on the fact that the only person in this little family who had any idea what was really going on was Anya, who not only knew that her new papa was a spy and her new mama was an assassin but who also considered those things to be a plus. Although Yor was extremely good at killing people, she tended to take people's statements at face value and believed Loid's paper thin lies about being a psychiatrist. Loid, meanwhile, was too happy to have found a good fake wife candidate to spend much time thinking about what her amazing athletic ability might mean.

They made a surprisingly sweet family, and I hope future volumes give them more quiet time together, even if Loid has to tell himself it's practice for his mission. I got a kick out of the fact that Anya was the one who arranged for Loid and Yor to find out how perfect they were for each other, and I wouldn't be surprised if Loid and Yor's relationship eventually morphs into romance.

A lot of comedy manga series start off with a nice premise but then struggle to keep things fresh for more than a couple volumes. I don't think that's going to be a problem here, because the comedy isn't the primary focus. All of the main characters have backstories that could be spun out into something interesting (Twilight and whatever event left him orphaned, Yor and her brother, Anya's escape from the people who experimented on her), so between that, their relationships with each other, and Twilight's mission, there's a lot of material here for the author to explore.

I definitely plan to read the next volume, and I look forward to seeing how this series progresses.

Extras:

A few full-color pages, a bonus manga in which Loid buys Anya a blind box toy, some behind-the-scenes sketches, and Twilight's redacted-to-the-point-of-uselessness character profile.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

I loved this first volume of Spy x Family by Tatsuya Endo. I really like the art of this manga series, the vaguely sci-fi but also kooky plot, the 1960s-70s-esque political attitudes, and the Cold War paranoia of the citizenry. It's a lot of fun.
In this first volume, the three quirky characters soon gelled into a wobbly newfound family, and they shakily progressed in their individual missions to act as a family and get Anya into an elite school. Each of them has a secret that dominates show more their lives, and as they try to accomplish their mutual goal to masquerade as a family during the entrance interview, they start to feel softer emotions for each other. I like the often cute artwork in this manga, and the violence of the action scenes acts as a contrast so that the reader doesn't forget what is at stake and how skilled the "parents" are usually.

Four and a half stars, rounded up. show less