SPY x FAMILY has undoubtedly been one of the most hotly anticipated anime titles of the year and with the commencement of the broadcast of the anime earlier this month, the hype for the series has never been bigger, especially in Japan.
According to Video Research Ltd., the series debuted as the Most-Watched Anime broadcast of the week with Live+7 DVR figures and scored a viewership of 6.919 million viewers with an individual rating of 5.5% amongst 4.468 million households. SPY x FAMILY was the 4th Most-Viewed TV Show on DVR in the week of its debut and was also the only anime broadcast to rank among the Top 10 TV Shows on DVR for the week.
With the anime off to a flying start and the release of Volume 9 of the manga series this month as well, SPY x FAMILY has entered the Top 5 in Oricon’s Yearly Manga Sales for 2022. The series has sold over 1.3 million copies in the last two weeks adding to the 1 million copies it had already sold prior to April this fiscal year without releasing a single new volume between December and March.
All the previous volumes of SPY x FAMILY have also ranked in Oricon Top 50 Weekly Manga Sales Chart for the last two weeks, with the very first volume now having sold more than 1.77 million copies. The series has over 16 million copies in circulation in Japan and is already one of the Most Popular Manga Series in the country right now. SPY x FAMILY also ranked 8th in last year’s Oricon Charts for Best-Selling Manga of 2021 selling over 4.9 million copies, so it certainly wouldn’t be a stretch to say that the series is well on its way to crossing 10 million copies in sales for 2022 by the end of this fiscal year.
The latest volume has sold 783,200 copies within the first two weeks already as the series is ready to surpass Demon Slayer for this fiscal year by next week. You can check out the list of the Top 25 Best-Selling Manga of the year by following the link below.
READ MORE: Top 25 Most Popular Manga of 2022 So Far, Spy x Family set to surpass Demon Slayer
Meanwhile, Sazae-San remains as consistent as ever and was the Second Most-Watched Anime broadcast of the week in Live+DVR viewing, a very close second at that. The episode scored a live rating of 5.4% with 6.793 million viewers tuning in to the latest episode. The household viewership for the episode was 3.955 million households.
It should be noted that with Sazae-san having an evening primetime broadcast on Sunday and being a rather family-friendly anime than a late-night series, the anime has little to no DVR viewership.
SPY x FAMILY saw a live viewership of 2.138 million viewers amongst 1.592 million households in its late-night Saturday broadcast.
One Piece returned from its hiatus and scored an individual viewership rating of 1.7% as more than 2.138 million viewers tuned in to the first new episode of the series in over a month. The viewership however is down 0.8% (1.007 million viewers) from Episode 1013 which scored a rating of 2.5% with 3.145 million viewers last month.
On a surprising note though, the latest sports anime “Love All Play” debuted close to One Piece with 2.012 million viewers on Nippon Television Network and scored a rating of 1.6% in its Saturday evening timeslot.
READ MORE: Most Popular Anime of Winter 2022 in Japan, Demon Slayer Ranks First
SPY x FAMILY is based on the Shueisha-published manga by Tatsuya Endou, which began its serialization in 2019 on the Shonen Jump+ app and has been collected into nine tankobon volumes as of April 2022.
The anime follows a spy named “Twilight” aka Loid Forger, on an undercover mission where he must investigate Ostanian politician Donovan Desmond by infiltrating his son’s school: the prestigious Eden Academy. In order to do that, Loid must take cover with a wife and a child, so he quickly adopts the unassuming orphan Anya to play the role of a six-year-old daughter and prospective Eden Academy student. For a wife, he comes across Yor Briar, an absent-minded office worker who needs a pretend partner of her own to impress her friends. Little does he know, his wife and daughter have secrets of their own, and under the guise of “The Forgers,” the spy, the assassin, and the esper must act as a family while carrying out their own agendas.
The anime is being done in collaboration by WIT Studio (Attack on Titan) and Cloverworks (My Dress-Up Darling) and also sees Saori Hayami and Takuya Eguchi reunite once again after Oregairu (My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected).
The series has been licensed in the US by VIZ Media with the latest English volume set to be released sometime in the Summer of this year. You can stream the anime on Crunchyroll, and on Netflix and Muse Asia (Free) in Southeast Asia.
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What are your thoughts on the first three episodes of SPY x FAMILY? Who’s your favourite character from the anime so far? Comment below and let us know.