Spy x Family vol. 7
While the “Spy x Family” manga has been a best-seller up until now, it has taken its first proper steps towards world domination with the premiere of its anime adaptation a few weeks ago. Which means that vol. 7 arrived just in time to catch this new wave of popularity. Is it a good representation of the series up to this point? More or less. The most interesting stuff in this volume happens at its beginning and ending with a lot of fluff in between. It starts off by following up on the encounter Twilight had with the target of Operation Strix, Donovan Desmond, at the end of vol. 6. It’s his, and the audience’s, first real look at this plot-critical character and the man makes an impression as a psychotic personality with the way he switches between cheerfulness and condescension. The volume wraps up with Yor getting the fabled One Last Job from her assassin handler, and it’s going to involve protecting the last remaining members of a mob family from a group of professional assassins. On a cruise ship. That her husband and daughter have also won a trip on.
That right there is a setup that leads me to believe vol. 8 could turn out to be a winning blend of action and comedy (with a side of murder bad people getting what they deserve). It does stand a good chance of being better than what we got in the middle chapters of this volume, which was a grab bag of stock plots elevated by mangaka Tatsua Endo’s sense of style and comic timing. We’ve got one where Damian Desmond and his friends go on a nature outing, another where Bond foresees his death (due to Yor’s cooking) and tries to find a way to change it, and one where Anya and her friends try to get their hands on a school snack that will increase their intelligence. Reading these, you get the feeling that Endo was finding ways to kill time while he worked on the title’s next major storyline. He’s in such a groove on this series that the results are still pretty fun; though, the setup for the family trip has me expecting better from vol. 8.