pedanther

Spy x Family is a comedy manga by Tatsuya Endo, which I've been hearing about for a while and decided to try out when I noticed the local library has the first few volumes.

The premise: Loid and Yor are a newlywed couple with a six-year-old daughter, Anya, from Loid's first marriage. Loid is a clinical psychologist, Yor does clerical work in a government office, and most of this description is lies. Loid is actually a foreign spy on a deep cover mission, and Anya is an orphan he adopted as part of his cover. (Yor doesn't know this.) Yor is actually an elite assassin. (Loid doesn't know this.) Anya is the product of a black-ops genetic engineering program, and can read people's minds. (Neither Loid nor Yor knows this.) Loid and Yor are each convinced that sooner or later it's going to become necessary to end the charade and ditch the other two, and as always happens in these cases, both are developing increasingly conflicted feelings about that. (Anya is not conflicted; she thinks both her new parents are awesome, and hopes they stay together forever.)

Spy x Family does that thing Buffy used to do of taking everyday events that feel world-shakingly important and giving them external stakes to match. In Buffy, it was things like "the school bully is literally a monster" and "you broke up with your boyfriend, and now the world is literally ending"; in Spy x Family, it's things like "winning over your new brother-in-law is a matter of life and death" and "world peace depends on your daughter getting good grades and making friends at her new school", plus the overarching metaphor about being afraid of what the people closest to you would think if they knew about the secret parts of yourself that you've never revealed to anyone.

And, having now read two and a half volumes... I have mixed feelings about it. The parts that I found funny are very funny - I don't remember the last book that made me laugh as hard or as often - but there are also bits that are clearly supposed to be funny that don't work for me at all. The bits where the characters have real emotions and real emotional connections are great, but are undermined by happening in a sitcom world where wacky shenanigans are always on hand to undo anything that might change the status quo, and so all the things the characters are having emotions about don't translate into the story having actual stakes; nobody's ever going to figure out that Loid is a spy or that Yor is an assassin no matter how many times they let their masks slip, and the big mission Loid's so invested in is always going to have just enough successes and just enough setbacks to keep the series spinning on.

To be fair, a lot of the bits I don't like are bits where I can see how they fit into the metaphorical thing I mentioned earlier. All the times when Loid or Yor or Anya inadvertently does something extremely suspicious, then immediately disarms suspicion with a hasty excuse, recall the moments we've all had where you inadvertently say something inappropriate to the situation that makes everybody stare at you until you mumble a hasty excuse or apology and life goes on. The time Loid summons every secret agent in the country for an urgent mission that turns out to be helping entertain his six-year-old presumably resonates with any parent who's pulled out all the stops to keep their child happy. The sequence where Loid's work intrudes on his first date with Yor is recognisably an exaggerated version of something that many people have experienced and many more have feared is going to befall them. On a metaphorical level, they're fine, I guess. But on the level where this is ostensibly a story about a secret agent working in hostile territory where any slip could have lethal consequences, the fact that all these moments have no consequences whatever takes me out of the story every time. Showing up to your first date with blood on your face could happen to anyone, but blowing up a vanload of gun-wielding thugs on your first date feels like it should get a bit more of a reaction.

(Incidentally, I notice I'm talking about Loid a lot. So far, his mission has been driving the plot, so he's been getting a lot of the focus. Anya is also the protagonist of some chapters once we get to the parts of the mission that required Loid to acquire a six-year-old. As the family member who doesn't have any part in the mission except protective camouflage, Yor's role has, so far, been smaller and more reactive. I don't know if that changes later.)

Part of me wonders if the real problem is just that I want this to be a drama with comedic elements (like, say, Buffy) rather than an outright comedy. I presumably wouldn't be making these complaints about Get Smart. But Get Smart never tries to persuade you that you should be seriously worried about Max getting killed by enemy agents, or interest you in how Agent 99 feels about how her spy work is affecting her relationship with her brother. And it's not just about dramatic weight: Loid's position as a spy in enemy territory, with limited resources and backup, isn't only dramatic, it's also the source of some of the funniest moments. The author is perfectly capable of crafting funny moments that lean into or arise from the story's constraints, so it bothers me every time a gag cuts the story adrift from those constraints instead.

So, to sum up, I have enjoyed a lot of what I've read so far, but there are also things that really bug me and make me reluctant to sign up for the long haul. I've just reached what feels like the end of the initial story arc: The family's been accepted by the various people who need to believe they're a real family, Anya's beginning to settle into her new school, Loid and Yor have just had a sweet little heart-to-heart about the challenges of living up to the role society places you in (in which neither was really talking about the thing they both pretended they were talking about), and the family is celebrating with cake. That seems like a good place to leave it and move on. If the series ever ends, and I hear that the end is worth the journey to get there, I might come back and try it again.

All that said, I'm seriously considering checking out the anime adaptation. There were enough moments reading the manga where I found myself thinking "I'm definitely not buying this, but I might feel different if was being acted persuasively" that it seems worth the test. And some things I've heard about what the anime did to flesh out the story and make it work in a continuous medium seem like they might have addressed some of the things that kept throwing me out of the story.