“Spy x Family” Ch. 70: Anya Vs. Sudden Death Round Part 2 [Review]

Spy x Family Ch. 70 sees Anya‘s sudden death round against some very angry and violent bus hijackers continue. Her friends and classmates help out in the fight, but the stakes get even higher here.

Spy x Family Ch. 70: Details

Spy x Family Ch. 70 is the latest (as of this writing) chapter of the action spy comedy manga by Tatsuya Endo. Casey Loe returns as the translator, with Rina Mapa also returning as the letterer. Shueisha originally published this manga in Japan under their Jump Comics+ imprint in their magazine Shōnen Jump+. Viz Media is the company licensing this manga for its NA release.

Spy x Family Ch. 70 was released on October 30, 2022. You can read this chapter of the manga for free on Shonen Jump at Viz Media. The chapter will remain free for 2 chapter releases after this one. Upon the release of the third chapter, this chapter will go into the Shonen Jump vault, and then you will have to pay a $1.99 per month subscription fee to read it and all other chapters of the manga in the vault. So if you wish to read this chapter for free, then I would suggest you do so soon.

On a related note: Spy x Family now has an anime adaptation that premiered on a split cours (unit of Japanese TV programming equivalent to 11-13 episodes) basis. The first cours premiered on April 9, 2022; while the second cours premiered just recently on October 1, 2022. You can watch both cours only on Crunchyroll, which basically requires a paid subscription to access anyways nowadays. However, the first cour is available on Hulu if you have a subscription for it as part of that Disney+ bundle.

Warning: spoilers for Spy x Family Ch. 70 are below. If you want to read about part 2 of Anya’s sudden death round against terrorists for yourself, then stop here, and come back once you’ve finished deciphering Anya’s dreadful handwriting. Or attempting to, at any rate.

Spy x Family Ch. 70: Plot Summary

Spy x Family Ch. 70 picks up where we left off in the last chapter, when members of the Red Circus terrorist group hijack a pair of buses full of kids belonging to Eden Academy. While the adults of the school panic and try to maintain a media lockdown on this bit of news, Anya and her friends and classmates are now stuck with a bunch of gun-toting professionals who want to use the kids as bargaining chips to fulfill their political demands. Fortunately for Anya and co., there’s one thing the terrorists don’t know and can’t possibly guess: Anya is a telepath.

Unfortunately, the telepathy actually doesn’t actually help Anya at first. On the contrary, all the negative emotions of the kids around her actually make her sick. Surprisingly though, Bill Watkins (the super-tall and buff kid from the dodgeball match chapter) steps up and manages to calm the kids down, giving Anya a bit of a breather in the process and finally allowing her to think about a way to get all of them out of this mess.

Anya Saves the Day?

The lack of negative emotions from her schoolmates acting as telepathic interference finally allows Anya to read the terrorists’ minds. She finds out from the driver that the buses are all headed somewhere called Papier Palace Park, and quietly informs Becky of this, hiding her telepathy by claiming that she learned how to read lips from her spy cartoons. With that info now in their hands, the 2 of them hatch a cunning plan. They simply write the info on a piece of paper along with a codeword Becky’s family uses for emergencies, attach it to Becky’s student ID, and then throw it out the window to let someone know of their predicament. With Becky doing the writing of course, since Anya’s handwriting looks like a squirrel tried to practice calligraphy.

However, if they just open a window and toss the message out, the terrorists are going to notice. This is where Damian comes in though. He takes the risk, and distracts the terrorists with a desperate plea of “I am, like, right now about to crap my pants.”. With a bit of annoying stupidity thrown in to boot. As ridiculous as the performance is though, it gives Anya and Becky the opportunity to throw their SOS message out. Someone even picks it up and realizes it for what it is, so it’s a mission success!

Except not quite. They couldn’t do it quickly enough for the terrorists to not notice. The Red Circus members may not know exactly what the kids did, but they know that they did something to try and foil their plans. Hence, the leader decides to punish them by…strapping a bomb collar around Anya’s throat?! Suddenly, things are even more deadly serious than before. Even worse, Loid is away from town on a mission at that moment, so he can’t help. How will Anya and her friends get out of this without Anya’s head being blown off? We’ll find out in the next chapter of Spy x Family.

Spy x Family Ch. 70: The Good

Spy x Family is at its best when things get deadly serious. It was so in the last chapter, and this chapter only doubled down on the deadly seriousness part. It started with the Eden Academy faculty’s panicked reaction to the hijackings, to the Red Circus leader’s calm declaration to the kids that they will be killed if they don’t follow orders, and then finally culminated in the terrorists strapping that bomb collar on Anya. Everything about the drama in this chapter is just more and more buildup to the final high of that cliffhanger. If you ever needed a reminder that Tatsuya Endo wrote really dark manga stories before this, this is it.

That said, Spy x Family Ch. 70 isn’t all doom and gloom. The moments of hilarious comedy like Anya’s complete inability to do legible handwriting help break up the drama, and prevent it from completely overwhelming the readers. It reminds me of Fullmetal Alchemist in many ways, given that manga by Hiromu Arakawa also did a wonderful job balancing drama and comedy.

The artwork of Spy x Family Ch. 70 still contributes greatly to it. Especially in the facial department, since that’s Tatsuya Endo’s strength for this manga. Anya’s faces in particular are still the best. Her wide-eyed, slightly panicked look is as hilarious as it is appropriate for this chapter. It then is completely contrasted by her genuinely terrified expression at the end of the chapter when the terrorists strapped that bomb collar on her. It’s this contrast of facial expressions that make Anya the star of this chapter.

Spy x Family Ch. 70: The Bad

Honestly, my only complaint was that Spy x Family Ch. 70 ended on that bomb collar of a cliffhanger. Waiting 2 weeks for the next chapter is going to be tense, but given Tatsuya Endo’s excellent work so far, I’m confident that the wait will be worth it.

Source: Viz Media