Anime Lectio: Spy x Family Seasons One and Two

                                                            1. Why do Anime Lectio? 

Anime Lectio is a time for us to stop and take a breath. Between work, activities, family life, and social media, our minds are always moving. We rarely take time to contemplate and ask, why am I watching this anime? What’s the point of all this? And, how is this making me feel? 

2. Put away all distractions 

(phones, work, etc.)

We are so enslaved to things that stimulate our minds. Let this be a moment for us to free our minds, look inside of ourselves, and be at peace.

3. Deep Breathing

Take several deep breaths. Let your mind relax. If you’ve had any questions, desires, or struggles that you’ve been hiding or stuffing away, let them rise up to the surface. 

4. Open yourself to God’s Presence

Remember God places all our thoughts and desires inside of us, and He uses them to draw us closer to Himself. God gives us a community to help us understand who we are and what He is calling us to do. The faces of other people you know and don't know are like signs of God’s presence.  

5. Think About What’s on Your Mind in Relation to the Anime

Think about what’s been on your mind in relation to the anime.  The following is an example of such thoughts written by me.  

We usually can't choose our family, but we can choose what to do about our family.  Even when we do have a choice in the matter, we get what comes with the choices we make.  For example, if we want to spend the rest of our lives with a certain person in marriage, then we also have to accept the family that this certain person that we want to spend the rest of our lives with brings.  If we want to spend the rest of our lives in a certain place as a monk instead, then we also have to accept who else wants to live in that certain place as a monk too.  An interesting example of this can be seen in the first two seasons of the anime series Spy x Family.  

6. Brief and written explanation of the anime

Pay attention to how the brief and written explanation of the anime seen on this blog, or seeing the anime for yourself since that's better than any explanation, might “speak” to you or shed light on the things that have been on your minds.

The anime series Spy x Family starts off when the best spy for a certain organization is given an important mission that can hopefully create peace between two different nations. An important part of this mission is to meet up with a certain person at a certain place, which involves enrolling in a certain school that this certain person's son attends. In order for this spy to get into this school, and in turn to get closer to his target, he needs to find someone who can act as his child and enroll this child in this school. The spy ends up adopting a girl who can read minds without him knowing it, which he never finds out since she keeps it a secret from him, and enrolls her in this school. Despite not being as smart as he thought she was, as well as not as well-behaved, she manages to stay in this school. Several antics ensue in order to keep his daughter motivated for school, like the spy getting a fake wife to also be a mom for his daughter, eventually adopting a dog for his daughter, and doing other things to keep her daughter motivated for school and for the sake of this mission. All of this pays off for the spy as he's able to find a way to talk with the person he's looking for, even if it's about something else that involves the person's son.

7.  Reflect on the anime

Has this brief and written explanation of the anime shed any light on what's been on your minds?  The following is an example of a reflection on the anime from me.

What interested me a lot as a watched the first season of Spy x Family was the idea of how a fake family could easily be seen as a real family. Even if we can choose our family, we still have to accept whoever else is involved in these choices. That isn't the case for the daughter since she was adopted, but the fake wife and the mother figure for his fake daughter that the spy ends up with has family and friends that the spy also has to deal with, as well as the fake daughter and wife/mother he ends up choosing since they can also be a handful. Another interesting element in all of this is that everyone in the family keeps secrets from each other. For example, in addition to the father and husband of the fake family being a spy and the fake daughter a telepath, the fake mother and wife is also an assassin and the dog they eventually adopt has the ability to see into the future. The only one who knows all of these secrets is the telepath. Everyone knowing each others secrets could make the family seem more real than fake. It also seems like the spy doesn't want to get too attached to his family despite the fact that it's happening anyway. He claims that everything that he does with and for his family is for the sake of his mission, but what is his mission really? In other words, is it possible that he was given more than one mission, meaning create a fake family to get close to his target, but in the process, have this fake family become something more? The fact that he gets additional missions while also continuing his mission of getting closer to his target with a fake family could mean that this spy really does have more than one mission.

8. Final Prayer

Please voice any prayer intentions for friends, family, or people around the world that relate to this anime.  The following is an example written by me.

Let us pray that we understand the mission that we are given, including the idea that this mission we are given could involve several missions.