mission: yozakura family vol 1 by itsuji gondaira

High schoolers Taiyo Asano and Mutsumi Yozakura have been friends since childhood. She's an aloof girl with few friends, but she was supportive of Asano through the loss of his family in a tragic accient. But, Mutsumi has a pretty over-protective family, and when her older brother notices them getting too close for his comfort, he tries to eliminate Asano. Other family members save him and bring him to the Yozakura family home, where they reveal Mutsumi is actually the head of a secret spy family, where everyone but she has supernatural powers and a knack for killing. The family uses their powers to keep Mutsumi safe from other spy families, and they have an important question of Asano - in or out? Asano decides to build his skill and fight to keep Mutsumi safe, but to do so, he has to marry her!

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This story starts off with a pretty ridiculous premise and a jump into a marriage that is hard to believe. The beginning feels very much like Gondaira really needed to shoe-horn Asano into Mutsumi's life and couldn't think of another way to do it. But, if readers suspend disbelief for about forty pages, then the action and story get a little better. Asano starts to train with the Yozakura family members, and he steadily progresses in his skills of observation, speed, cunning, and strength. His journey is difficult, though, because he doesn't have a special ability like the rest of the Yozakura family, so he isn't as perfect as them at executing missions. Hopefully, the storyline progresses away from just keeping Mutsumi safe, or this premise could get pretty stale pretty quickly.

There is some violence, with a few characters bleeding on the page, and frequent fight scenes with guns. Otherwise, there's nothing that would make this inappropriate for teen readers.
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Sara's Rating: 7/10
Suitability Level: Grades 9-12

Publisher: VIZ Media
Publication Date: October 18, 2022
ISBN: 9781974734665 (Paperback)

​Tags: Rating: 7/10, Suitability: High School, Manga, Action Adventure, Family, ​VIZ Media