If you’re a fan of clever storytelling and you’re not reading the manga series Spy x Family, what are you even doing with your life?
In an announcement that hit the Internet on Monday, May 17th, it was revealed that this series will reach the monumental milestone of ten million copies in circulation in an amazingly short amount of time and without the aid of an anime adaptation. This doesn’t necessarily mean copies sold though. The announcement notes that the milestone hasn’t been reached quite yet but we’ll get there with the release of volume seven, which will hit store shelves on June 4th. To celebrate this, a special edition of volume eight (on shelves in Japan in November 2021) will include four different rubber straps.
Honestly, though, this comes as little surprise as this series has been gaining popularity at a rapid pace. Originally serialized in March 2019, Spy x Family had sold its first million copies by November of that year, and by December 2020 that number had increased to eight million copies sold. So great is the demand for this series that the first printing of volume six had one million copies alone and new chapters are viewed over 1.2 million times each on the Jump+ app, making it a signature title of the brand!
Created by Tatsuya Endo, Spy x Family is a shonen manga series that has been serialized on the Shonen Jump+ app since March 2019. In the series, the main character is a spy named Twilight who operates in a fictional European country. A master of disguise, no mission is too difficult for him… that is until he receives the mission to create a fake family in order to infiltrate the inner circle of a powerful politician. Taking on the assumed identity of Loid Forger, Twilight adopts a daughter (that he doesn’t realize is a telepath) and gets into a fake marriage with an office worker (who he doesn’t realize is an assassin) in order to accomplish his mission.
It’s impossible to understate how amazing it is that this series found its audience so quickly and it’s fantastic to see it doing so well, even before it gets an anime adaptation (which hasn’t happened yet, but hope springs eternal). Ten million copies in circulation is not an easy milestone to reach but Spy x Family did it with style on the backs of its clever and often downright hilarious storytelling and incredibly likable characters.
Spy x Family is currently one of my favorite manga series to read and I look forward to every other Sunday morning when it is released by Viz Media in English so that I can get my fix of Anya (who might be one of the most adorable child characters since Renge in Non Non Biyori). If you’re not reading Spy x Family and you enjoy funny shonen action series, you’re only doing yourself a disservice.
Source: Mantan Web
