Ionliosite2

We all have seen Cinderella, but have you ever seen it in a setting with super powers? Well, that's basically what Watashi no Shiawase na Kekkon is. There are blatant problems with this show, and the most obvious one is the protagonist Miyo, it is understandable why she would behave and think the way she does after living almost her whole life being abused by her family, so she came as extremely passive, submissive and apologetic, this in itself is fine, the bad part comes when she starts developing and switching back to how she was before. We saw her standing againts her family and rejectingwhat they said, actually trying to act individually and taking into account her own feelings above the ones from others, however this doesn't last long as she returns to having no confidence for no reason, it's not like she got tortured again or anything after that, in fact, she was treated better, even getting more people to know like Kudou's sister who was helping her, but Miyo suddenly regressed back, no matter if Kudou told her that she could trust on him and tell him about any problems she has multiple times, she thinks she is a burden to him despite everything he tells her and already being a long time ever since she started trusting him. It's almost like the Miyo who stood againts her family dissapeared and returned to step 1 despite having no reason for doing so, she isn't getting mistreated anymore, she has people who actually love her around and she had accepted that fact before, but she still regressed and that is pretty much frustating. This isn't helped by the fact that she herself is boring, characters with trauma can be done right and sadly Miyo is not one of them, you can tell that she is submissive, scared, incapable of expressing herself, the problems isn't having these traits, the problem is that those traits are her entire character, she's pretty bland outside of her trauma, I'm not saying she should do a big change of personality almost instantly but at least keep her consistent with what she managed. Talking about Kudou is talking about every shoujo ikemen ever, really. He was said to threat all of her bride candidates while being cold and intimidating to the point no one was able to stand him, but little after Miyo comes, poof, that thing that was said before? It is all gone, he researches about Miyo and becomes this cool and loving fianceé, that will do anything for her, he is also very rich and comes from an important household where he is the head of the family. He is also so incredible with his super natural abilities that he is hailed as the best, and it shows, this guy is basically the Avatar, master of the four elements, of course, I'm kinda exagerating there, but it is almost how it feels. I was thrown out of the loop when Kudou shoot a lightning from his finger in episode 2, because it somehow took until episode 2 to know that the series has super natural powers and that's the reason Miyo was abused by her family in the first place, despite having it as one of the most basic points of the series, it surely took its time to introduce it. After the series stopped being the 3785th copy of Cinderella, it relied on the super powers far more when evil spirits appeared, and it was far less focused in romance. This creates a mismatch in what it is doing, as the first half focuses far more in the romance and drama aspects and how the relationship between the two leads develops with almost no focus on action except on episode 6, and while it is still focusing on drama the romance aspect gets reduced in the second half as the couple becomes more distanced and spend less time together while also having more action scenes. This series got me more stressed about it the more I wrote about it, and I mean, this series is a pretty basic shoujo romance when you think about it, a shy girl that was mistreated by her family after losing her mother being rescued by an absolutely hot, tall, rich and perfect ikemen that will stop being the mean guy that he supposedly was and will protect her, treat her well, love her no matter what and solve her trauma with his looks, richness and, in this case, literal fire. Despite the problems of the show, the animation is beautiful, the series looks really gorgeous as you should expect from Kinema Citrus, the colors are so vivid and it is always clean, when the fights with super powers come it becomes really great to watch, it is pretty weird when I'm more interested in seeing the visuals of the opening than hearing the song, not like the song is bad mind you, so you will be seeing a very beautiful series in case you want to sit and watch it, if you can ignore the basic premise and glaring problems with the "wholesomeness" then go ahead, but this is basically Cinderella with Avatar's bending arts. Thank you for reading.

Mcsuper

My Happy Marriage, at the outset, feels like the 1000th remake of Cinderella. It has the evil stepmother, the family abuses the MC, and she gets “saved” by a strong, powerful man. It’s a bit more than that though, as it’s a largely character driven story with the main female character, Saimori Miyo, trying to find her self worth after years and years of people telling how useless she was, as shallow as the reasons were, in that she supposedly lacked the abilities that her family members had. She is married off to a man named Kudou Kiyoka, who was known to be a cold-hearted,insensitive man who dismissed his previous fiancées, likely in an attempt to get rid of her and have her suffer more. Obviously, as you would expect, Kiyoka treats Miyo in a way she doesn’t expect, and the relationship builds from there. Then what makes this anime stand out, if it just feels like another Cinderella story? The first thing would definitely be the visual presentation. The animation overall is very fluid, while being rather simple in its designs. There are great looking action scenes, the character expressions are worthy of praise, and the soundtrack by Evan Call, who worked on Violet Evergarden, complimented it a lot. Virtually no issues from the production side of things. I dare say it might have been one of the best produced shows of the summer season. It has strong attempts at characterization, with directing and symbolism that I really enjoyed, as there was a level of nuance there to develop Miyo and Kiyoka’s relationship throughout the story. What unfortunately holds it back from being in the upper echelon of shows from this season for me is the shallow writing, especially outside the main duo. In that way, it might feel more like Cinderella, in that the characters are very “fairy-tale” like. They’re evil for the sake of being evil, with malicious intent that goes over the top at times. Sure, there are a lot of political aspects in play especially in this setting, with families all thirsting for power, doing whatever it takes to gain reputation, but some of the actions that the Saimori family took early in the season just felt a bit much, perhaps a bit melodramatic at times. The supernatural aspects were interesting for sure, and I’m sure will be developed in the future, with the upcoming OVA or perhaps in future instalments of this series if it ever happens, but I felt it somewhat took away from the more grounded relationship with Miyo and Kiyoka. The supernatural parts do give the series more flare and pizzazz, but I question whether all of it was necessary, as especially in the second half, where I felt the lore and the presence of Grotesqueries, besides being haphazardly implemented at points, also limited the time that could have otherwise been spent on developing the romance aspects a bit better, as well as Miyo’s character. The cast of characters was fine, but besides a couple characters outside the main duo, the rest were forgettable. A lot of scummy characters for sure, and I do see that popping up a lot in shoujo series. Miyo’s character was frustrating at times to watch, but she had some very good developments as well at the climax of the first half, and the aforementioned symbolism really helped with that. Kiyoka I had more interest in, especially in his abilities. I liked how he treated Miyo, and how his attitudes changed towards her throughout. You can basically say that Miyo and Kiyoka bring the best out of each other, as Kiyoka helped Miyo break out of her self-deprecating nature and stand up for herself, while Miyo helped Kiyoka open up more as a person. My attention was always there when the relationship was being developed, but like I said, outside of that, it was an up and down ride. The first half was very strong and at that point had the potential to be the best anime airing this season, but the second half was markedly weaker in that I felt the romance could have been prioritized a bit more, and the supernatural aspects executed in a more meaningful way. Overall, it was still a high quality anime, but just missed the mark a little bit for me to say it was truly incredible.