Spy x Family’s Real Star of the Manga Isn’t the Spy

Warning: This feature contains spoilers for the manga series Spy x Family

The real star of Spy x Family isn’t who you’d think! There are three main characters in the manga series Spy x Family. The first is a spy named Twilight who is currently on a secret mission to stop a war from breaking out. As part of his cover, he’s posing as a psychiatrist named Loid Forger, but this feature isn’t about him. The second main character is his wife, Yor Forger, who married Loid out of convenience to keep from arousing suspicion from the secret police. What she’s keeping a secret from Loid, however, is the fact that she is actually an assassin with the nickname Thorn Princess, but this feature isn’t about her either. The last main character is a young girl that Loid adopted as part of his mission named Anya who is hiding that she is actually telepathic… and that’s who this feature is about because, without Anya, there would be no series.

Spy x Family is an action-comedy created by Tatsuya Endo, which began serializing on the Shonen Jump+ manga app in March 2019. It has been collected into six volumes so far in Japan and is licensed in English by Viz Media. The primary story follows Twilight as he undertakes a mission that is unlike anything else he’s ever done… he must pretend to be a family man (complete with a fake wife and child) in order to get close to a government official and stop a war from breaking out. Sounds simple on paper but when you add in the fact that his wife can’t do anything around the house, his child is well-meaning but still rather lacking in wits and intelligence, and he is clueless about how to act around either of them, and you have the recipe for a hilarious disaster of epic proportions.

Now, admittedly, this series is an ensemble comedy and everyone plays their double lives to perfection for the sake of comedy. However, Anya is the real standout star of the entire series. Everyone in the manga has a secret to hide from everyone else (even the family dog has a hidden secret) and they all have their reasons for hiding their second life from the people who are now the most important figures in their lives. For Twilight, he doesn’t want to reveal anything because his mission is top secret. Yor doesn’t want to put anyone else in danger unnecessarily and also doesn’t want to be taken away by the secret police. Anya hides her secret, however, because she just doesn’t want to be alone any longer. She was tired of the orphanage where Twilight found her and genuinely loves her new family, which is why she’s terrified to reveal her secret to anyone. She just doesn’t want to lose what she’s found, which is the real heart of the series.

In the early chapters, when Loid and Anya are first getting acquainted with each other, he sees Anya as merely a tool that he will use for his mission. He doesn’t think about the fact that he’s now the parent of a living being until she gets into trouble and he has to save her. He even has thoughts that maybe he should switch her out with another child, which are thoughts that immediately haunt Anya and make her attempt to prove her worth and value to his mission. Eventually, she comes to love Loid and her soon-to-be mother, Yor, and puts an even stronger emphasis on proving her worth to the family on a near-constant basis.

This can prove to be troublesome, to say the least, for Loid and Yor. Being that she’s only six (or so she claims), Anya doesn’t fully grasp the nuances of her parents’ respective missions. She loves a spy cartoon so she kind of sees their quest for world peace as an elaborate game, but when you cut down to the quick, Anya just wants to be loved and protected like other children and that’s her primary motivation throughout the entire series thus far.

Anya is not a bright child due to her history (which won’t be discussed in detail here because of spoilers) and she’s terrified of being expelled from the most prestigious school in her country, Eden Academy. She wants badly to see her father’s mission succeed though, so she always tries her best to study hard in order to pass her exams (sometimes by reading the other kids’ minds to get test answers) and make friends with the class bully (who also is the son of Twilight’s target). She doesn’t do any of this because she’s genuinely interested in world peace, she just wants to make her parents happy and praise her, which is something she never got before joining this family. That’s not to say that Anya can’t be a brat at times. When it comes time to adopt a family dog, she chooses her favorite and threatens to never go to school again if the family won’t agree to her choice (which is certainly not an option when it comes to Loid’s mission).

While there is plenty of comedy to go around thanks to all the characters working together when Anya isn’t the center focus, the story just doesn’t have the same punch. It would be a little overboard to say that Spy x Family should be “All Anya, All the time,” but it’s difficult to argue that the chapters that don’t feature her at least a little are lacking in the same emotional weight as the ones that feature her prominently. 

Spy x Family is a series that has captivated audiences since its earliest chapters, thanks to the steady introduction of solid characters and a compelling story. It didn’t really take off until all the pieces were put into play, though, with Anya being the final piece of the bigger picture that made things take shape. With any luck at all, fans can only hope that her story continues on the same upward trajectory that has shot her into superstardom in only a couple of years’ time.

SPY x FAMILY © 2019 by Tatsuya Endo/SHUEISHA Inc.

About The Author