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lunelis 's review for:
Happy Marriage?!, Vol. 01
by Maki Enjōji
As with all my manga reviews, this is an overview of the entire series and may contain spoilers as a result.
Hapi Mari (original Japanese はぴまり〜Happy Marriage!?〜; where "Hapi Mari" is a shortening of the phonetic transliteration) is a josei manga (targeted at adult women) that has a pretty typical "contract/arranged marriage leads to true romance" type of plot.
If you've ever watched any media where a regular girl is forced by circumstance to marry a man (usually wealthy or famous) who she barely knows and doesn't want anything to do with, you basically already know this manga in its entirety--as in, you know all the story beats.
It really doesn't offer anything new, I assure you.
In fact, the main reason why I rate this manga so low is because it's just very basic and tired. It's a considerably conservative, heterosexual relationship with a subtle--but nevertheless unrelenting--sexist air that enforces stereotypical modern gender roles on its characters in practically every situation.
The crux of the story is that our female lead, a 22 year old woman named Chiwa, is one day given an unusual proposal: marry the president of the company where she's a temp worker and all her family's debts will be settled. The president, a 28 year old man named Hakuto (our male lead), presents this arrangement to Chiwa because by marrying her, his grandfather, the company chairman, will step down and allow Hakuto to take over in his stead. Thus, despite not particularly liking each other or wanting to do this, they eventually agree to marry one another in order to achieve their respective goals and, over the course of living and working together, find that what began as a means to an end has given way to real feelings and a desire for their marriage to genuine.
It's all pretty standard stuff. In fact, it has a lot of the usual tropes you see in "we're marrying for some reason that isn't love" stories.
For example:
For me, all this sort of stuff could be overlooked. I actually rather enjoy forced-marriage plots because it's interesting to see how people react in unfavorable circumstances and how romantic attachment can bloom once those initial feelings of unwillingness and mistrust are replaced by familiarity and understanding as they go about their daily lives, helping one another overcome problems together.
What really got me was how Chiwa and Hakuto behave as people once they're married and how the progression of their "romance" ultimately sends a really outdated and unhelpful message about romance, relationships, and marriage.
Chiwa initially starts out as someone who seems pretty independent and isn't losing her mind over men like her coworkers, since she has a deadbeat dad to babysit and clean up after like he's a kid and she's his mom. She's burnt out on men because of this and her focus is on working hard, paying bills, and keeping her life in order.
I liked that she had this kind of weary, annoyed attitude towards dating and men. It made her more interesting and offered a character who seemed like she was more mature and had more snark to her because she's lost all those starry-eyed fantasies about romance despite being a young, inexperienced woman.
You'd think with this sort of start , Chiwa would reject the whole "a wife is basically a surrogate mom that a man can also have sex with and order around" thing, yet she throws away all previous character and quickly becomes a wife in a very traditional sense.
Not only does Chiwa have to basically become a housekeeper and cook because Hakuto, despite being a 28 year old man who has lived on his own for ages, is both unwilling and incapable of properly taking care of himself and his own apartment, she abandons her own goals in life and lives simply to ensure that Hakuto achieves his and that he appreciates her for being a good, dutiful, supportive wife who keeps the house cleans, cooks dinner, and is ready for fucking whenever he wants.
I gotta say it, that's gross and sad.
She's basically doing exactly what she had to for her dad, except this time the man-child she has to baby gets to have sex with her and gave her his surname, so she somehow can convince herself the situation is better than what she had living at home with her dad and that it's not just that sad, ancient transference of a woman's enforced obligation to take care of the men in her life shifting from father to husband.
Sure, you can argue Chiwa wasn't especially ambitious to begin with, but it's really unsettling how quickly her identity is swallowed up and becomes little more than that of "wife." She doesn't have any hobbies or wants besides domestic chores and trying to convince Hakuto to spend time with her as a married couple. So... her personality quite literally becomes "being Hakuto's wife." Big yikes.
Even when she leaves Hakuto's company and starts working for some guys she knew in college, she doesn't do it for the right reasons. It's mostly just to spite Hakuto because of a spat they have, not for her own career's sake or to show Hakuto that she's her own person with a freewill or anything like that. It's just... a petty stuck up middle finger she does because of an argument and it remains a constant source of strife between them because Hakuto is also petty and immature, harboring jealousies towards her former classmates and fearing she's cheating on him with one of them.
I will say right now that Hakuto isn't really abusive. He never hits Chiwa, he doesn't sexually assault her, he doesn't subject her to harsh mental abuse, and he does experience some growth throughout the story, HOWEVER, he isn't all that great of a person either. The bar for passable is just that low.
His attitude is better than a lot of other manga love interests I've seen--he does say he loves her and will defend her... sometimes--but then, like all the bad ones, he just turns around and yells at her, makes her feel bad, and then refuses to address anything until Chiwa is in tears, so it's like... we took a step or two forward, only to take three back, so, no true progress was made, it's just that he's less worse than some.
A lot of the ways be behaves aren't likeable. He's moody, he's mean, he's selfish, he's thoughtless, he's stubborn, he's bigoted, he's petty, he's controlling, he struggles to handle having feelings (i.e. has the emotional intelligence of a small child), he can't take care of himself despite being an adult, and he never tries to communicate with his spouse.
He's super prone to overreacting to the things Chiwa does. If she makes a mistake or her attempts at helping don't go as planned or she tries to take the initiative in some way to ask him on a date or do something with her, odds are he's going to yell at Chiwa and treat her like a nuisance or problem, rather than appreciate what she was trying to do and help her do better next time around.
And you'd think with him constantly regarding Chiwa like she's baggage he puts up with for a greater purpose, he wouldn't be jealous and possessive, but, he is. Very much so. Some of the things he says and does are very much in line with that old-fashion male possessiveness and arrogance where he thinks himself so great and so owed by Chiwa because of their marriage that he can't abide by her interacting with other men for any reason.
In other words, Hakuto is a very boring, stereotypical male love interest that's outdated and has the qualities and values of heroes from a bygone era where a conservative man's man was considered incredibly sexy and desirable.
And what's even sadder is that despite his "growth" his entire arc of development essentially boils down to that tired, overused, and unhealthy notion that he just needed a woman to make him want to act like a man and be a functioning adult human that can take care of themselves, process their feelings, and not be a cranky douchebag.
Hakuto very much epitomizes the archtype's development of, "Wow, until my wife made me think about acting better, I was a man-baby jerk who couldn't keep his house clean or have any meaningful connections with others emotionally! A woman really fixed everything!"
Which is so sad and boring and terrible and I hate that Chiwa is relegated to being his life coach, inspiring him to finally act right, on top of all of the other shit she's had to become for him.
These qualities of Hakuto's constantly trigger countless fights and misunderstandings and petty spats, and it's beyond exhausting to watch a grown man struggle to do something as basic as communicate with his wife so that they can proceed through things together as two adults who are married to each other. It's like he expects Chiwa to just mindlessly bobble her head without question, have as few emotional needs as possible, and understand his every want and need without being told.
Speaking of the fights and misunderstandings... they got real old, real fast.
For real, there's way too many instances where she's like "Oh no, his mom is dead, I can't believe I stopped doing his laundry to make him appreciate how I'm contributing to the marriage because he keeps invaliding my thoughts and feelings! I need to go home and be a meek wife for him right away because he's mad and has a dead mom! I'm such a bitch to want him to respect and value me! His mom is dead so he's allowed to be selfish and childish and expect me to do all these things for him! I'll go do the laundry right now and then beg for forgiveness and then suck his dick for hours in repentance for my wrongdoing!"
Like, what the ever loving FUCK?
I can't stand stories that have a woman get reasonably mad and then IMMEDIATELY she's made to regret being upset over an injustice done to her and it's framed as her being thoughtless/selfish/stupid/petty towards her otherwise undeserving male partner, so her feelings are invalidated and discredited and she's responsible for reconciling and admitting wrongdoing.
It's even worse because when a story does that, it'll then give focus to petty grievances because it's easier for a man to appease a woman's childish problems than to address the actual flaws in their relationship and still get that veneer of "look how good I am and how hard I try to make peace with my wife!"
Hakuto gets to be made into a good guy when he settles some trivial problem of Chiwa's, so the focus is taken away from all the times she had a legitimate concern that he ignored or invalidated because it's too much effort to address actual problems and try to grow as a person. I guess it would also mean he'd have to admit to an actual, important wrongdoing and we can't have that because... I don't know, his fragile masculinity couldn't take it?
Essentially what this sort of tactic does is trivializes and discredits women's feelings when they're legitimate and reasonable, instead shifting to push forth the outdated and frankly insulting belief that if a woman raises a concern, it's just some small, stupid, emotional thing that can be easily remedied by the man in her life, who is all logic and sense and rationale, like an adult giving candy to a small child who's crying for no reason.
Honestly, as I read this manga, I was angry. Like, wow thanks for infantilizing and invalidating women's feelings when they're serious and painting us all as crybabies whose emotions are all senseless things with no foundation.
I absolutely hate seeing this portrayal of adult women as children that men must graciously manage and put in their place, lest they hurt themselves because they're helpless and stupid.
Like, Hakuto is as emotionally developed at an eight year old boy with how he handles everything in his life, yet the manga wants me to believe Chiwa, who has been managing her deadbeat father all her life and took the initiative to not only take care of the household but hold down two jobs, is the one who ought to be handled with kid gloves like she's just a fussy baby???
It's insulting that it's framed like Chiwa should be glad a man would deign to put up with her feelings and want to take care of her basic needs while actively ignoring and denying her complex emotional and mental needs. Like, she's a human, to be happy and fulfilled she kind of needs to be seen as a person, not an easy-to-subdue child in an adult body that can be fucked on demand.
If you're more into standard, outdated ideas of marriage and romance, this manga will probably be a good read, but if you're more progressive and appreciate adults who like... talk about things and work through things calmly and openly without anger or judgement or pettiness or bigotry, then this manga will just read as kind of sad because it could have been a nice, tidy, but fun read about two people coming together in their unique circumstances and finding genuine love and companionship.
Chiwa is only 22 and has limited dating experience, so a lot of her behavior isn't especially weird to me, it's just a little rash and naive, which makes sense, whereas Hakuto is a 28 year old man who runs a freaking gigantic company and has dated countless women, so his behaviors are much less forgivable because he should know better than to act the way he does.
I'm not sure if the characters were modeled in a way intentionally for comedic/dramatic purposes, but they really just kind of grated on me and I felt disappointed in how contrived so much of this was. I think the author could have done something worthwhile, but allowed old traditionalist views to get their filthy claws into every aspect of the story.
Ultimately, I leave the manga feeling tired and irritated. I'm really quite over it.
Hapi Mari (original Japanese はぴまり〜Happy Marriage!?〜; where "Hapi Mari" is a shortening of the phonetic transliteration) is a josei manga (targeted at adult women) that has a pretty typical "contract/arranged marriage leads to true romance" type of plot.
If you've ever watched any media where a regular girl is forced by circumstance to marry a man (usually wealthy or famous) who she barely knows and doesn't want anything to do with, you basically already know this manga in its entirety--as in, you know all the story beats.
It really doesn't offer anything new, I assure you.
In fact, the main reason why I rate this manga so low is because it's just very basic and tired. It's a considerably conservative, heterosexual relationship with a subtle--but nevertheless unrelenting--sexist air that enforces stereotypical modern gender roles on its characters in practically every situation.
The crux of the story is that our female lead, a 22 year old woman named Chiwa, is one day given an unusual proposal: marry the president of the company where she's a temp worker and all her family's debts will be settled. The president, a 28 year old man named Hakuto (our male lead), presents this arrangement to Chiwa because by marrying her, his grandfather, the company chairman, will step down and allow Hakuto to take over in his stead. Thus, despite not particularly liking each other or wanting to do this, they eventually agree to marry one another in order to achieve their respective goals and, over the course of living and working together, find that what began as a means to an end has given way to real feelings and a desire for their marriage to genuine.
It's all pretty standard stuff. In fact, it has a lot of the usual tropes you see in "we're marrying for some reason that isn't love" stories.
For example:
- They try to establish boundaries/rules, but these rules ultimately are rendered worthless for some reason or another, so that by crossing them, the leads grow closer.
- They fight over a lot of petty things to try to showcase how, at least on the surface, different and unsuitable they are for one another and create tension, casting doubt on whether the marriage will ultimately work out.
- They have instances where potential rivals for their partner's attention urge them to express/confess their love or detour burgeoning feelings from being acted upon/expressed.
- They get dumbly jealous of their partner in any situation where they interact with someone of the opposite sex because as people who are married, but not for love, they must constantly experience jealousy during the tenuous "falling in love" period.
- They have problems in their relationship because of family matters.
- Their jobs and/or goals intersect with and disrupt their ability to be a spouse.
- They constantly fail to communicate with one another, usually because of something that amounts to "I'm just a means to an end, not a true spouse, they don't actually care about me, so I can't be open/vulnerable with them."
For me, all this sort of stuff could be overlooked. I actually rather enjoy forced-marriage plots because it's interesting to see how people react in unfavorable circumstances and how romantic attachment can bloom once those initial feelings of unwillingness and mistrust are replaced by familiarity and understanding as they go about their daily lives, helping one another overcome problems together.
What really got me was how Chiwa and Hakuto behave as people once they're married and how the progression of their "romance" ultimately sends a really outdated and unhelpful message about romance, relationships, and marriage.
Chiwa initially starts out as someone who seems pretty independent and isn't losing her mind over men like her coworkers, since she has a deadbeat dad to babysit and clean up after like he's a kid and she's his mom. She's burnt out on men because of this and her focus is on working hard, paying bills, and keeping her life in order.
I liked that she had this kind of weary, annoyed attitude towards dating and men. It made her more interesting and offered a character who seemed like she was more mature and had more snark to her because she's lost all those starry-eyed fantasies about romance despite being a young, inexperienced woman.
You'd think with this sort of start , Chiwa would reject the whole "a wife is basically a surrogate mom that a man can also have sex with and order around" thing, yet she throws away all previous character and quickly becomes a wife in a very traditional sense.
Not only does Chiwa have to basically become a housekeeper and cook because Hakuto, despite being a 28 year old man who has lived on his own for ages, is both unwilling and incapable of properly taking care of himself and his own apartment, she abandons her own goals in life and lives simply to ensure that Hakuto achieves his and that he appreciates her for being a good, dutiful, supportive wife who keeps the house cleans, cooks dinner, and is ready for fucking whenever he wants.
I gotta say it, that's gross and sad.
She's basically doing exactly what she had to for her dad, except this time the man-child she has to baby gets to have sex with her and gave her his surname, so she somehow can convince herself the situation is better than what she had living at home with her dad and that it's not just that sad, ancient transference of a woman's enforced obligation to take care of the men in her life shifting from father to husband.
Sure, you can argue Chiwa wasn't especially ambitious to begin with, but it's really unsettling how quickly her identity is swallowed up and becomes little more than that of "wife." She doesn't have any hobbies or wants besides domestic chores and trying to convince Hakuto to spend time with her as a married couple. So... her personality quite literally becomes "being Hakuto's wife." Big yikes.
Even when she leaves Hakuto's company and starts working for some guys she knew in college, she doesn't do it for the right reasons. It's mostly just to spite Hakuto because of a spat they have, not for her own career's sake or to show Hakuto that she's her own person with a freewill or anything like that. It's just... a petty stuck up middle finger she does because of an argument and it remains a constant source of strife between them because Hakuto is also petty and immature, harboring jealousies towards her former classmates and fearing she's cheating on him with one of them.
I will say right now that Hakuto isn't really abusive. He never hits Chiwa, he doesn't sexually assault her, he doesn't subject her to harsh mental abuse, and he does experience some growth throughout the story, HOWEVER, he isn't all that great of a person either. The bar for passable is just that low.
His attitude is better than a lot of other manga love interests I've seen--he does say he loves her and will defend her... sometimes--but then, like all the bad ones, he just turns around and yells at her, makes her feel bad, and then refuses to address anything until Chiwa is in tears, so it's like... we took a step or two forward, only to take three back, so, no true progress was made, it's just that he's less worse than some.
A lot of the ways be behaves aren't likeable. He's moody, he's mean, he's selfish, he's thoughtless, he's stubborn, he's bigoted, he's petty, he's controlling, he struggles to handle having feelings (i.e. has the emotional intelligence of a small child), he can't take care of himself despite being an adult, and he never tries to communicate with his spouse.
He's super prone to overreacting to the things Chiwa does. If she makes a mistake or her attempts at helping don't go as planned or she tries to take the initiative in some way to ask him on a date or do something with her, odds are he's going to yell at Chiwa and treat her like a nuisance or problem, rather than appreciate what she was trying to do and help her do better next time around.
And you'd think with him constantly regarding Chiwa like she's baggage he puts up with for a greater purpose, he wouldn't be jealous and possessive, but, he is. Very much so. Some of the things he says and does are very much in line with that old-fashion male possessiveness and arrogance where he thinks himself so great and so owed by Chiwa because of their marriage that he can't abide by her interacting with other men for any reason.
In other words, Hakuto is a very boring, stereotypical male love interest that's outdated and has the qualities and values of heroes from a bygone era where a conservative man's man was considered incredibly sexy and desirable.
And what's even sadder is that despite his "growth" his entire arc of development essentially boils down to that tired, overused, and unhealthy notion that he just needed a woman to make him want to act like a man and be a functioning adult human that can take care of themselves, process their feelings, and not be a cranky douchebag.
Hakuto very much epitomizes the archtype's development of, "Wow, until my wife made me think about acting better, I was a man-baby jerk who couldn't keep his house clean or have any meaningful connections with others emotionally! A woman really fixed everything!"
Which is so sad and boring and terrible and I hate that Chiwa is relegated to being his life coach, inspiring him to finally act right, on top of all of the other shit she's had to become for him.
These qualities of Hakuto's constantly trigger countless fights and misunderstandings and petty spats, and it's beyond exhausting to watch a grown man struggle to do something as basic as communicate with his wife so that they can proceed through things together as two adults who are married to each other. It's like he expects Chiwa to just mindlessly bobble her head without question, have as few emotional needs as possible, and understand his every want and need without being told.
Speaking of the fights and misunderstandings... they got real old, real fast.
Basically every bit of conflict followed the formula of:
1) Chiwa has a rational, reasonable concern to raise over something Hakuto did or said.
2) Hakuto proceeds to have a fit and/or yell at Chiwa, claiming she's causing trouble.
3) Chiwa gets upset and does something in retaliation like not talk to him or stop doing the laundry.
4) Hakuto, in turn, stays huffy and angry like a whiny child.
5) Chiwa, after being upset for a little while, suddenly abandons her feelings because she remembers that Hakuto has a dead mom or had a rough childhood or something to that effect, which is accepted as a coverall excuse for all his terrible behavior.
6) Chiwa starts doing housework again and essentially begs for Hakuto to forgive her and stop being mad at her, essentially framing herself as wrong for everything and solely to blame.
7) Hakuto learns no lessons and makes no efforts to not cause similar problems in the future.
8) The cycle repeats again shortly after.
For real, there's way too many instances where she's like "Oh no, his mom is dead, I can't believe I stopped doing his laundry to make him appreciate how I'm contributing to the marriage because he keeps invaliding my thoughts and feelings! I need to go home and be a meek wife for him right away because he's mad and has a dead mom! I'm such a bitch to want him to respect and value me! His mom is dead so he's allowed to be selfish and childish and expect me to do all these things for him! I'll go do the laundry right now and then beg for forgiveness and then suck his dick for hours in repentance for my wrongdoing!"
Like, what the ever loving FUCK?
I can't stand stories that have a woman get reasonably mad and then IMMEDIATELY she's made to regret being upset over an injustice done to her and it's framed as her being thoughtless/selfish/stupid/petty towards her otherwise undeserving male partner, so her feelings are invalidated and discredited and she's responsible for reconciling and admitting wrongdoing.
It's even worse because when a story does that, it'll then give focus to petty grievances because it's easier for a man to appease a woman's childish problems than to address the actual flaws in their relationship and still get that veneer of "look how good I am and how hard I try to make peace with my wife!"
Hakuto gets to be made into a good guy when he settles some trivial problem of Chiwa's, so the focus is taken away from all the times she had a legitimate concern that he ignored or invalidated because it's too much effort to address actual problems and try to grow as a person. I guess it would also mean he'd have to admit to an actual, important wrongdoing and we can't have that because... I don't know, his fragile masculinity couldn't take it?
Essentially what this sort of tactic does is trivializes and discredits women's feelings when they're legitimate and reasonable, instead shifting to push forth the outdated and frankly insulting belief that if a woman raises a concern, it's just some small, stupid, emotional thing that can be easily remedied by the man in her life, who is all logic and sense and rationale, like an adult giving candy to a small child who's crying for no reason.
Honestly, as I read this manga, I was angry. Like, wow thanks for infantilizing and invalidating women's feelings when they're serious and painting us all as crybabies whose emotions are all senseless things with no foundation.
I absolutely hate seeing this portrayal of adult women as children that men must graciously manage and put in their place, lest they hurt themselves because they're helpless and stupid.
Like, Hakuto is as emotionally developed at an eight year old boy with how he handles everything in his life, yet the manga wants me to believe Chiwa, who has been managing her deadbeat father all her life and took the initiative to not only take care of the household but hold down two jobs, is the one who ought to be handled with kid gloves like she's just a fussy baby???
It's insulting that it's framed like Chiwa should be glad a man would deign to put up with her feelings and want to take care of her basic needs while actively ignoring and denying her complex emotional and mental needs. Like, she's a human, to be happy and fulfilled she kind of needs to be seen as a person, not an easy-to-subdue child in an adult body that can be fucked on demand.
If you're more into standard, outdated ideas of marriage and romance, this manga will probably be a good read, but if you're more progressive and appreciate adults who like... talk about things and work through things calmly and openly without anger or judgement or pettiness or bigotry, then this manga will just read as kind of sad because it could have been a nice, tidy, but fun read about two people coming together in their unique circumstances and finding genuine love and companionship.
Chiwa is only 22 and has limited dating experience, so a lot of her behavior isn't especially weird to me, it's just a little rash and naive, which makes sense, whereas Hakuto is a 28 year old man who runs a freaking gigantic company and has dated countless women, so his behaviors are much less forgivable because he should know better than to act the way he does.
I'm not sure if the characters were modeled in a way intentionally for comedic/dramatic purposes, but they really just kind of grated on me and I felt disappointed in how contrived so much of this was. I think the author could have done something worthwhile, but allowed old traditionalist views to get their filthy claws into every aspect of the story.
Ultimately, I leave the manga feeling tired and irritated. I'm really quite over it.