With the popularity of Spy x Family right now, it’s no surprise that there are a bunch of spy manga. So, let’s do a little comparing and contrasting of them all…

Before we begin: I’m only looking at manga on the English Shonen Jump website because that’s more than enough to talk about by itself, but there are surely other spy manga elsewhere. These series may be available to you through Manga Plus or other services.

I’m also not saying these are copycat series of each other – I’m just noting a general trend.

Spy x Family

This series is arguably the biggest name of the lot at the moment in the anime space, having collaborations with even the likes of Uniqlo and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning: Part 1. (That said, it is a Jump+ series, so it doesn’t run in the proper Weekly Shonen Jump magazine.)

The spy elements create a throughline for the series through having Twilight’s mission be integrated into the formation of the title family and the “spy” style of thinking, common to a lot of thriller and action series, runs through both Twilight and Anya’s storylines…even though sometimes Anya is just emulating her favourite cartoon, Bondman.

Mission: Yozakura Family

I used to think this was the closest series to Spy x Family before the arrival of the other manga I list later in this post. It can be quite obvious as to why on the surface – both series trade on the platonic bonds of a spy family and integration into one. However, Spy x Family tries to be more balanced between family members, while Yozakura‘s mostly focussed on Taiyo and Mutsumi, the sixth child of the title family. Yozakura is also a lot more “typical anime” where pretty much everyone is superpowered but also a spy, whereas Spy x Family has more of an influence recognisable to Anglophone audiences, due to it being set in an analogue to Cold War Germany (I mean, Berlint???). Both series also include a manic sister-lover in Yuri for Spy x Family and Kyoichiro for Yozakura, although Yuri is the younger brother while Kyoichiro is the elder brother.

Sakamoto Days

Sakamoto Days doesn’t trade in its gimmicks so much – the title character in this case has to “become badass” through shedding weight, which can be a bit annoying (because it says “chubby people can’t be spies”), but otherwise does have the spies, assassins and espers who aren’t aware of a secret also present in Spy x Family. However, Taro Sakamoto is the only one who is a spy outside the central family “unit” – all other espers and assassins exist outside the Sakamoto family.

Kill Blue

Kill Blue superficially resembles Spy x Family in that there’s a spy and there are action hijinks, but…that’s it. It actually resembles an older Detective Conan more than other manga in this post, even though it has a badass (former) spy and was created by the Kuroko no Basuke mangaka, Tadatoshi Fujimaki, who’s won me over before. (That said, it does have the “former spy” bit in common with Sakamoto Days as well, hence why I included it here.)

Sidenote: Why is its name Kill Blue, you ask? The “blue” refers to youth (seishun in Japanese, where the “sei” kanji by itself means “blue”). By the way, this is why there are series that talk about “blue spring” – “seishun” = “blue spring” (“spring” being the season, not a mechanical coil).

This is hardly the end of this list – since I’ve only covered Shonen Jump manga, I’ve only just scratched the surface! Did I miss any recent manga which can be reasonably compared with Spy x Family?

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