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The opening for Spy x Family Part 2 was revealed on Wednesday ahead of its October 1 premiere. The opening features the theme song “Souvenir” by Bump of Chicken and is directed and storyboarded by Tetsuro Araki.
Tetsuro Araki
For those of you who may not know, Araki has a reputable history of directing and storyboarding widely popular openings. He storyboarded openings for Attack on Titan Season 1 and Season 4, including the iconic opening “Shinzou wo Sasageyo!” for Season 2. Other series that Araki was in charge of storyboarding the openings for include Guilty Crown (OP1-2), Highschool of the Dead, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress (OP2), and Kurozuka—also the director for each series as well.
Araki was the director for Attack on Titan Season 1 and the chief director for the next three seasons. Other works of his include the ever-so-famous Death Note, for which he was both in charge of directing and storyboarding, including the opening. More recent directorial work of his includes the widely popular anime movie “Bubble”, which was released on Netflix earlier this year receiving praise for its gorgeous artwork and animation. He also worked as an episode director and even storyboarded a few episodes of the hit seinen anime series Black Lagoon.
Spy x Family Part 2
Spy x Family Part 2 was announced shortly after Part 1 ended earlier this spring with episode 12. The teaser trailer hit 1 million views in two days and currently has close to 3 million. You can watch that teaser trailer below. The second cour will begin with the Doggy Crisis Arc of the manga, which starts in chapter 18 and ends in chapter 23. With part 1 of the anime covering the first five arcs of the series, with either two or three episodes for each, fans can anticipate part 2 will be adapting the Midterm Exam Arc and the Campbelldon Tennis Arc.
The theme song “Souvenir” by Bump of Chicken will add to the groups growing list of opening theme performances. The group also performed the theme song for big titles such as Gotcha!, One Piece: Dead End (movie), and the hit series March comes in like a lion.
Spy x Family Anime
The anime adaptation of the hit manga written and illustrated by Tatsuya Endo has become one of many hit series of 2022. After the anime began airing earlier this year during the Spring 2022 season, Spy x Family as a whole has become one of the most popular anime series of today. Part 1 of the first season dominated in the spring polls. The official Twitter reached over 1 million followers. And now the series is making its case for a possible anime of the year award.
Spy x Family is co-animated by the widely popular WIT Studio and Cloverworks animation studios. Director Kazuhiro Furuhashi, most notably known for his directorial work in Hunter x Hunter and Rurouni Kenshin, and the rest of the Spy x Family production staff have turned the series into a modern spectacle.
The opening for the anime, directed by Masashi Ishihama, has over 12.5 million views on the official TOHO Animation Youtube channel and ended up becoming the #1 anime opening of the Spring 2022 season.
And now with Spy x Family Part 2 joining the absolutely stacked Fall 2022 lineup that includes titles such as Chainsaw Man, Bleach, My Hero Academia, and Mob Psycho 100, this will be the real test to see how the hit series fares against other heavy-hitting anime in the polls.
In Spring 2022, Spy x Family finished at #3 for “Anime of the Season” at Anime Corner and #2 at Anime Trending. The series was also rated the third highest for Spring 2022 on MyAnimeList (8.78/10) and is currently the second highest-rated anime of the entire year on Anilist (87%) behind Kaguya-Sama: Love is War Season 3.
Spy x Family Manga
The manga began bi-weekly serialization on the Shonen Jump+ app in 2019 and currently has 9 volumes published. The series is Endo’s 4th serialization and by far and large his most popular and decorated. Since it began serialization, Spy x Family has been nominated for 13 awards. The series began its decorated journey by winning in the “Web Comic” award at the 2019 Next Manga Awards, which has a pretty nice list of past winners including My Hero Academia (2015, print category), Kaguya-Sama: Love is War (2017 print category), and most recently Kaiju No. 8 (2021, web category). And it doesn’t end there.
A year later, Spy x Family went on to win the “Next Hit” award at the 4th Tsutaya Awards. Previous winners of the same award include Jujutsu Kaisen (2019), Blue Period (2018), and The Promised Neverland (2017). Since then, Spy x Family has become a two-time nominee at both the prestigious Eisner Awards and Harvey Awards. Most recently, the manga received the award for “Best Manga Series” at the 2022 French Babelio Readers’ Awards. All this isn’t even including the sales.
The series exceeded 2 million copies in circulation by volume 3 and then another million copies more by the next. Volume 6 of the manga actually became the very first of Jump+ to ever receive an initial print of 1 million copies. One year after being serialized, Spy x Family garnered a total of over 8 million copies in circulation and became the ninth best-selling manga of 2020 (4.5 million copies).
The following year, the manga became a New York Times Bestseller in the comic category. Then, in April of this year when the anime premiered, the series had over 15 million in circulation. And just one month later, that number skyrocketed to a whopping 21 million.
As of August 2022, Spy x Family has 25 million copies in circulation.
Source: Official Twitter
