Agents of paranoia – Weekend – Kommersant
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Stories about spies – one of the main mass cultural monuments of the Cold War – have long become commonplace, but sometimes they do not contain reflexes of the genre, but something completely alive. On Western television, the series Killing Eve told about how difficult it is for national security agents to separate work and life. In Japan, the difficulties of a double life are portrayed by The Spy Family, popular both in the manga format that Tatsuya Endo has been drawing and writing since 2019, and in the anime version of Wit Studios (three seasons of Attack on Titan) and Cloverworks (Rock Quiet !”). The touching family hit, already in print with a total circulation of 29 million copies and collecting bundles of diplomas of animation ratings, unobtrusively demonstrates why the echoes of the Cold War will sound for a long time to come.
The Forger family lives at 128 Park Avenue in West Berlint. Loyd works as a psychiatrist in a hospital, Yor works in the mayor’s office, and little Anya goes to the elite school “Eden”, which is attended by the children of the first persons of Ostania (literally – the future of the country). Of course, the idyll has a downside.
In reality, Loyd is a super spy, Dusk, who works for the neighboring state of Vestalis and has arrived in the capital of the Remaining to prevent the coming war. The leader of the ruling party, Donovan Desmond, plans to unleash it – and it is as difficult as possible to get close to him: the shortest path is parent-teacher meetings in Eden, where the sons of the politician go. For this purpose, as part of the Tawny Owl special operation, the Forger family was formed: Anya Twilight was found in a local orphanage, and Yor met in a dry cleaner and asked to play the role of his wife (allegedly, the late wife really wanted her daughter to study at Eden, where being a widower for the admissions committee – immediately minus a point).
The joke is that the rest of the Forgers are also not what they seem: Yor is a high-class serial killer, in the world she is clumsy, shy and sweet, and Anya, distorting words, is a telepath who was subjected to the experiments of Berlin scientists. Even the dog Bond, who later joined the family, has a secret: he can see the future (also, of course, as a result of cruel experiments).
Rising star of the manga industry Tatsuya Endo explains this concentration of conspiracy theories by the fact that from childhood he loved stories where characters lead a double life. In addition, the Forgers’ specialization allows the plot to balance between spy thriller, school comedy and political thriller, occasionally diverting to other genres – like sports drama (playing dodgeball and tennis) or everyday life (Japanese know-how focused on household chores).
It would seem, what does the Cold War have to do with it, which is only reminiscent of the landscapes of Berlint (and its name), two opposing (super?) powers and an atmosphere of paranoia hiding in the pretty lanes and dark offices? Even assuming that the 40-year-old Endo is using popular culture’s World War III anxiety solely for the sake of showy fashion, this opens up a wide field for reflection. Is it so quickly overgrown with grass that place where the wall rose for many years, and the daily habits of people from total distrust are transformed into a perception of a world without borders?
It is no coincidence that the covers of the “Spy Family” flaunt chairs that Endo carefully selected for the character of each of his characters. So, the inflexible Loyd Forger – not just a super spy, but a little superhuman – sits in the LC2 Petit Modele, designed by Le Corbusier in 1928. Like a modernist construct, the Twilight is always focused and focused on work, and LC2’s date of birth – between World War I and World War II – echoes the past of a spy who was orphaned by war and swore that no child in Vestalis would shed another tear because of the invading neighbor policies. Always hovering in the clouds and other people’s thoughts, Anya Forger settled down on the Marshmallow Sofa (1950-1960), which already fit into the cheerful post-war interiors. Yor, whose killer nickname is the Princess of Thorns, sits in the elegant, shell-like La Chaise that the Eames brothers designed in 1948 for an exhibition of mass furniture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The idea failed: La Chaise turned out to be too spectacular, bulky and expensive to meet post-war needs. So Yor in ordinary life feels like an elephant in a china shop, for which an agreement with Loyd is also a salvation from the judgmental looks of others (“Not married yet? Suspicious!”).
Actually, this is where the attention shifts from interiors and posture to more pressing problems. The “family of spies” fits too well into the general narrative of the relationship of the individual with society, the total problem of “being or seeming” and the strictest social expectations that drive generations of Japanese crazy. The elitist structure of the Ostania, where the future of children is programmed almost from the first grade, is similar to a retroversion of the reality of the Land of the Rising Sun, where schoolchildren sometimes cannot cope with stress and commit suicide, believing that the future has already been lost. Loyd and Yor’s formal relationship is also too much like a patriarchal spectacle, in which husband and wife play the best versions of themselves, and household chores are perceived as strict assignments for which an invisible judge assigns marks. Finally, the transformation of a serious mission of the Twilight into an intense simulation of the layman switches the salvation of the world into the logic of Japanese workaholism, formed precisely by the need to rebuild the country and raise the economy after a lost war.
It is possible that “The Spy’s Family” does not pedal the political line too much, but the more clearly the influence of background processes on the life and worldview of people, on their life and even interior is seen. No wonder Anya’s favorite show is a cartoon about Bondman, a super spy in a mask a la Zorro, and brother Yor works in the secret police, making state paranoia a family affair. There is no big dividing wall in Berlint, but small copies of it rise between all the characters: at work and at home, at school and in the kitchen. So Endo casually highlights the common matrix of the logic of the polar world, the narcissism of small differences inherent in neighboring states (see the case of North and South Korea), and the fear of showing the true face in everyday life – therefore, Twilight often resorts to plastic masks, like Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible to get the information you need.
There are enough historical echoes in the manga and the series – for example, the good-natured Bond settles with the Forgers after a story with radical students who also stood up for the former greatness of the Remaining – but the correspondence confrontation between Forger and Desmond does not go along an ideological line. In the end, two timeless methods are opposed: exhausting competition (even for the attention of the father) and readiness for cooperation, partnership, openness. And even though the latter is not easy for Loyd, Yor and Anya, it is the joint activity, the willingness to support and enrich each other that make them not only a productive team, but also, it’s scary to say, a real family. Everything else – and not in vain is the name of Anya’s favorite toy – a chimera.
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