The first cour of SPY x FAMILY ended last month with more than 8.1 million viewers tuning in to the final episode. The series has become the Second Most-Watched Anime of the year, only behind Demon Slayer Season 2.
What SPY x FAMILY has been able to accomplish over the last three months has been nothing short of remarkable. The anime is in its own league as the series has quickly made its name as one of the biggest anime to have come out in recent years and has been insanely popular not just in Japan but globally as well. 
The success this anime has witnessed right from its debut is unlike anything we have ever seen from a Slice of Life series. The anime is currently the Second Most-Watched Anime of 2022 in Japan, only behind Demon Slayer, but Demon Slayer is undoubtedly the biggest anime title of the modern era in Japan. And even in the case of Demon Slayer, it certainly took more than half of the series before it blew up, but both the SPY x FAMILY manga and anime have gained massive traction right since the very first episode aired.
The hype for the series is more prominent than ever, especially in Japan, and the series has become the talk of the anime community around the world.
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SPY x FAMILY Part 1 ends with more than 8.18 million viewers tuning into the final episode.
According to Video Research Ltd., the final episode of the first cour of SPY x FAMILY saw more than 8.18 million viewers in 5.14 million households with Live+7 DVR figures. The viewership was down ~250,000 compared to the penultimate episode of the first cour, which is also the Most-Watched Episode of the anime so far. More than 8.43 million viewers across 5.34 million households tuned in to the penultimate episode.
It’s noteworthy that the series has gained more than a million viewers on average since its premiere. SPY x FAMILY debuted in April with Live+7 DVR figures of 6.92 million viewers amongst 4.47 million households.
The anime has also been Japan’s Second Most-Watched TV Show on DVR for the last five weeks.
Within the last two decades, only a handful of TV anime have scored more viewership than what SPY x FAMILY is pulling off right now, and those are mainly the classic titles such as Detective Conan and Sazae-san, which have had years to build a loyal fanbase. SPY x FAMILY’s television ratings in the age of streaming are more than just remarkable, as Shonen Jump adaptations continue to thrive everywhere.
SPY x FAMILY manga series has sold more than 6.5 million copies this year.
With the anime off to a staggering start and the release of Volume 9 of the manga series coinciding with the premiere of the anime as well, SPY x FAMILY has now become the 3rd Best-Selling Manga of the fiscal year in Japan, surpassing One Piece. It has also been the Best-Selling Manga Series for the last three months consecutively, according to Oricon.
The manga series has sold over 6.5 million copies this year; over 2.3 million copies just in April, over 1.7 million copies in May, and over 1.2 million copies in June. Volume 9 has sold over 1.4 million copies already, more than any of the three individual volumes of Tokyo Revengers released this year.
All the previous volumes of SPY x FAMILY also charted amongst the Top 20 Manga in Oricon every week during the anime’s first part run, with the very first volume now having sold more than 2.1 million copies.
The series currently has over 22 million copies in circulation in Japan, and with its humongous success, 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 and even surpassing Tokyo Revengers by the end of this fiscal year.
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Sazae-San has seen a slight boost as of late and since the conclusion of the first part of SPY x FAMILY, has retaken its position as the Most-Watched Weekly Anime Broadcast in Japan. Last week’s episode scored a live rating of 5.6%, with more than 7.04 million viewers tuning in to the latest outing of the anime.
It should be noted that with Sazae-san having an evening primetime broadcast slot on Sunday and being a rather family-friendly anime than a late-night series, the anime has little to no DVR viewership.
One Piece has also remained steady ever since its return from hiatus. Episode 1023 of One Piece scored an individual viewership rating of 1.8%, with more than 2.26 million viewers tuning in to the episode live.
Jujutsu Kaisen’s rerun has been scoring impressive viewership as well, with more than 1.77 million viewers tuning into the Kyoto Goodwill Event Arc. Meanwhile, the latest Doraemon broadcast scored more than 2.52 million viewers.
Detective Conan did not air any new episode this week.
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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 his 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 manga 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.
The anime will return with its second-cour in October.
Source: Video Research Ltd.
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