MANGA REVIEW | "Spy × Family" - Volume Eleven
I’ll say this: Volume Eleven of Spy × Family is a lot. And by that, I mean that this particular collection of chapters is chock filled with the things that have made Tatsuya Endo’s creation one of the current top Shonen Jump series. It has loads of the action and comedy that we’ve come to love from it, but there’s one added aspect that might make this one of the most jaw-dropping volumes of Spy × Family yet: tension.
Said tension doesn’t arrive right at the beginning. We first have a couple of side stories to deal with. For starters, the clinic Twilight works at has a jealous higher-up, one who may be keeping top clients from the so-called “Dr. Forger”. His means of trying to sabotage Twilight’s reputation are pretty funny, ranging from putting laxatives in his coffee to forging a love letter to Fiona (AKA Nightfall). However, it’s when the doctor gets desperate and calls the SSS when things reach hilarious levels.
From the look on Twilight’s face while being arrested to the way the SSS teases him throughout the process, this chapter manages to make our spy the funny one for once. Yes, he’s had his own comedic moments, but only when Anya is involved. Here, Twilight and his reactions to the arrest and the doctor’s “cunning” trickery show that even our most serious character, all without the aid of the pink-haired gremlin. The story wraps up humorously, with our hero getting one step closer to completing Operation Strix.
One chapter involves Yuri Briar competing against Twilight for title of…Yor’s Best Helper. Cooking, cleaning, and shopping are all done in the hopes of Yuri making a fool out of Twilight. As you can imagine, that’s not the case, with our spy managing to one-up Yor’s little brother every step of the way. He does get an endearing win out of it, with the aid of a certain classic candy.
And then, we get to the tension part of Spy × Family’s eleventh volume. What starts out as a field trip to the museum for Eden Academy turns into a full-blown hostage situation. All of the kids have their lives threatened on the bus, with a terrorist organization threatening to kill them all if their demands aren’t made. Neither Yor nor Twilight have any idea this is going on, meaning that the only hope for these kids’s survival is among them: Anya.
It’s a story that made me go back-and-forth between laughing and shivering. From the terrifying aspect, the thought of putting any kids through horrifying danger would make anyone worry. The villains here are first seen as the unsympathetic kind, going so far as to hurt a child to get what they want. And they’re brutal, as they strap bombs around the necks of both Anya Forger and Damian Desmond.
On the other hand, it’s what Anya knows and the others don’t when it leans back into the comedy. The sight of Anya playfully tapping her bomb to the sheer horror of the other kids made me laugh hard. Her using her telepathic powers to figure out the villains’ plan and topple over the head honcho is also done with a good mixture of smarts and humor. Although Anya has every right to be terrified of the situation she’s in, we all know that she’s been through much, much worse in previous stories.
But then, we learn about why this is all happening. A father whose daughter dies during a protest pushes him to do an unspeakable act, with much of the blame placed on the current government. And standing there now in front of that father is a little girl who could be the mirror image of his departed child. It’s a moment that goes to great lengths to show the bravery of Anya, and why she is the most important part of Spy × Family.
I wish I could say it all wraps up with everyone in smiles, but I cannot. There’s a pivotal moment at the end of Volume Eleven where we see the true face of a certain somebody. And after Anya reads their mind, it’s clear that she’s going to do her best to be a legit friend to one of her classmates. How it’ll affect her part in Operation Strix remains to be seen, but one thing’s for certain: outside of the children, nary an adult playing a part in this mission is innocent in the slightest.
Spy × Family ups the tension greatly in Volume Eleven. Anya is the big star here, thanks to her bravery and cunning ways of defeating terrorists. It has its humorous moments early on, but for it to make me almost forget one of the series’s funniest chapters mere minutes after reading it says a whole lot! I’ll end it with this: I cannot wait for WIT Studio and CloverWorks to animate these pivotal chapters.
FINAL GRADE:
Promotional consideration provided by Chantelle Sturt of VIZ Media.
