My Happy Marriage

This is a very high quality production with lovely art design, fine animation, and excellent English voice acting. It was made for Netflix. The title is somewhat misleading because her marriage will be in the future after a one year engagement and will not happen in season one of the series.

The initial setup is Cinderella-like with the eldest daughter Miyo raised as an abused servant by her step-mother and step sister. Miyo's father views her as worthless because she shows no magical ability. To get rid of of Miyo, she is sent to be the fiance of an icy noble, Kiyoko. Miyo is expected to be rejected and become homeless.

Miyo is emotionally crushed and considers herself to be worthless and quietly accepts the cruel abuse. The power of the story is Miyo's gradual journey toward self-worth and her desire to find happiness in spite of her upbringing.

Miyo works hard with a humble determination to prove her worth, to both herself and to others. There will be challenges, threats, and surprises ahead as the story evolves in its own unique way.

There are 4 volumes of novels translated to English and #5 comes out October 2023. I highly recommend both the anime and the novels.

My Happy Marriage started off with high marks all around. The art was detailed, the music was haunting, the emotions portrayed were delicate... I think I got teary eyed almost every episode in the first half of the series.

If this had been the main premise, I would have rated almost 9!

The premise is a girl, abused by her family, was bequeathed to another family as a bride. The romance that began subsequently was gentle and touching.

However, there is another angle. In this universe, there are people with superpowers. These superpowers are inherited genetically. The girl is from a long line of powerful genes that everybody apparently wants. The second half of the series focuses on this. As a result, the powerful love story turns into a dragonball type fantasy fighting story. Sorry to say, but I suffered through the final episodes only to complete the series. The romantic drama at the beginning was enough to make the story... the action fantasy towards the end seems to be an entirely different genre/story... a little of a pity.

A GREAT romance anime is somewhat rare and this is one of those rare instances. This was a touching story with strong protagonists, heartfelt moments and a brilliant character arc.

This is one of the stories where, after watching the finale, you can't help but remember how the characters were at the beginning and how far along they've come. The story is a journey, especially for the character of Miyo. We all experience this journey with her. That connection with the characters made this anime very satisfying.

I love Miyo's character arc. If you see the 1st episode, her character setup isn't exactly unique. It's something we see in many shoujo anime, and it's similar to Cinderella's back story. But if you keep that aside and just think about her character, it's a very complex character to progress. That's why I'm so impressed, because this anime did it almost perfectly. I never felt that Miyo was acting out of character, I could always sympathize with her actions, and still I can feel how far her character has come after the finale.

I also really cared for Kudo's character. That's another strong point for this anime - the fact that I cared for BOTH these characters. That's what makes a great romance - when a viewer is invested in BOTH the characters, can understand BOTH their perspectives, and that's why they want them to be together so much.

This story also had a surprise factor to it - the supernatural world building. I know fans are saying it's unnecessary and I thought of it as a flaw initially too. But when I thought about it, every situation that this supernatural part of the story created, eventually made me root for our protagonists' marriage, which is what the story is about.

The story does get repetitive at times in the middle though, when every family is coming after Miyo.

The animation might be the best this season (at least out of non-sequels). The soundtrack from Evan Call (composer of Violet Evergarden) wasn't that notable in the 1st watch, but I might catch it in a re-watch.

Overall, this was a great anime and a great romance. It's on Netflix worldwide.

Season 2 fails to continue the engaging storyline that Season 1 established. Instead, it introduces a dull and uninteresting plot. While the deliberately slow pace of Season 1 provided depth and a calming ambiance, here it merely drags the narrative down, making it feel tedious.

The season's conclusion comes off as cringeworthy and unsatisfactory, and although the villain's motives initially appeared promising, they end up being poorly executed. There are occasional moments of romance that manage to add a spark to the story, but these brief highlights are not enough to redeem the overall experience.

Ultimately, I found Season 2 barely worth a one-time watch. I feel empty, unsatisfied, and disappointed by the drastic transformation from Season 1. I also wish there had been more thoughtfully developed romance scenes. Given the current direction, I highly doubt I'll return for Season 3 if it ever comes out.

A Cindrellaesque story that tries way too many things at the same time but still wants itself to be simple in its essence. The music of the show, the animation and the way the show is paced, all of it is in line with the main character Miyo's gentleness. The show has more than enough instances that can make you frustrated with her indecisiveness and make you want her to be assertive but at the same time, the portrayal of the effects of years of abuse is shown in a way that would still make you empathize with her despite the disappointment in those actions. These are the positive aspects of the show which works greatly but at the same time, the show is riddled with everything else that it doesn't really want to focus on but is also an integral part of its storytelling. The fantasy aspect and the alternate Meiji era depictions, the respect given to certain constitutions that are part of Japanese culture all work as an affliction to everything good in this. As it doesn't really want to indulge more on anything other than the two main characters, the whole conspiracy going on behind, feels rushed and convoluted where those characters don't have any space to grow, which makes eventual decisions not making sense. Nonetheless, the positive aspects worked immensely well for me, so the stuff that didn't make sense didn't bother me too much.