A review by pedanther
Spy x Family, Vol. 1 by Tatsuya Endo

adventurous emotional funny lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

It's cute. It's funny; I laughed out loud multiple times. It's also very cartoony; the worldbuilding is barely sketched in, most of the characters are clearly defined types, and the situations are highly exaggerated. There are a lot of scenes where one of the leads inadvertently does something extremely suspicious, but manages to smooth things over with a flimsy excuse. (It's frankly a miracle that neither Loid nor Yor had sussed the other's secret out by the end of their first date, let alone by the end of the volume, and it continues to be a miracle that both are still regarded as normal and unsuspicious by the people around them.)
What won me over is that the emotional moments, when they happen, land well. Wacky shenanigans aside, it's a story about three people who are each, in their own ways, isolated from the world and yearning for a human connection that they've found in each other, and by the end of the volume I cared enough about them to want to see what happened next. (I don't know if I'm going to stick out the whole series, though; I suspect my tolerance for the wacky shenanigans may have its limits.)
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