my happy marriage

By Akumi Agitogi and Tsukiho Tsukioka. Released in Japan as “Watashi no Shiawase na Kekkon” by Fujimi L Bunko. Released in North America Yen On. Translated by David Musto.

I seem to have run into an awful lot of short story collection volumes lately. This is another one, as after finally getting to the ‘happy’ and ‘marriage’ part of the title, Miyo and Kiyoka are taking the time to have some leisurely microstories that were online web exclusives, or else more serious titles written for this volume specifically. You can probably guess what I’m going to be talking about the most. Still, overall it’s a good, solid volume, with a tragic flashback at the start followed by some romantic schmaltz. There is a suggestion we may get a darker present-day story later on, but even that ends up being a romantic schmaltz sort of thing. Which is great, frankly. I’ve been complaining forever about the fact that these volumes are too damn dark, particularly in the last one, and it’s nice to just see these two do things like accidentally get drunk, or get scared by a thunderstorm and a power outage. Couple goals.

The first story is written for this volume, and takes up almost half the book on its own. It’s a flashback showing Kiyoka’s college years, as he struggles between his powers and the destiny everyone wants him to grasp and his own dreams of being a research nerd. We then get a series of microstories arranged in a chapter, showing things that happened when Kiyoka was sick (mostly Hazuki fangirling over Miyo), Miyo showing off her skill at cooking and distracting Kiyoka from work, Miyo accidentally getting drunk by eating a liquor-laced sweet, in the best anime tradition; etc. The other story written for this collection has our happy couple staying at the main estate for a bit, only to have to deal with a moody Fuyu, who is upset over a broken gift from her husband. We then get a second series of microstories, which is actually mostly one story, showing Kiyoka and his subordinates going out to drink and running into Kazushi.

Every story with a strong, powerful spirit-user who always seems in control and together needs a doomed mentor somewhere in its backstory to explain how he got that way, and it’s now My Happy Marriage’s turn. It’s easily the best story in the book, showing how sometimes tragedies are not really the fault of one person, but also that sometimes, yes, the fault can indeed be spread around. And, honestly, it also shows that this is the sort of world where it’s for the best that Kiyoka did NOT become a research nerd. His mentor, Itsuto, is exactly what you’d expect the moment I said “doomed mentor”, but that’s not a bad thing. The other original story has a lot of Miyo and Kiyoka being adorable (and almost having wake-up sex, but they’re interrupted), but it’s also about interpretation. Kiyoka sees his father as controlling his mother and spying on her every move, while Miyo sees the fact that his mother is aware of it as meaning the gesture is about protection and love. Both interpretations are, in a way, correct – Kiyoka’s family is pretty messed up – but it’s clear Miyo is the best thing that could ever have happened to Kiyoka,

The 9th book in the series is scheduled but not out yet in Japan, so it will be a while till we get more. Despite being a short story collection, every fan of the series should enjoy this.

By Akumi Agitogi and Tsukiho Tsukioka. Released in Japan as “Watashi no Shiawase na Kekkon” by Fujimi L Bunko. Released in North America Yen On. Translated by David Musto.

Every so often, I hot a point in a book where a plot point bounces off me so hard that I just go “NOPE” and throw the book away. Usually it’s pretty easy, as it’s in the first or second volume in a series and I can easily just drop it and never look back. It’s much harder when it’s in a series I really like. I don’t WANT to drop this series. And yeah, the second half of the book is basically everything we wanted to have happen. But man alive. I absolutely did not need the main plotline of this volume, whose entire purpose (and it’s clearly, deliberately on purpose) is to fill this volume with drama even though all the roadblolcks and evil villains have been taken care of. It is there to pile on the pain and suffering once more, and I’m not sure it makes the resolution sweeter for that fact. Basically, there is a scene (it has the words “I hate you” in it) that made me want to jump into the sea. Anyway. Moving on.

It’s finally time. We’re at the wedding, Miyo looks gorgeous, the guests are here, everything is prepared… and the groom is absent. Clearly it’s time for a flashback to show how we got to this point. Miyo is doing her best to get ready for being an actual wife, including facing up to the fact that she will need to be intimate with her husband (when she can’t even say the word “darling” without falling over with a red face) and also trying to brush up on her cooking skills, which are already miles better than her sister-in-law but could use some work. While at a cooking demonstration, she runs into an old classmate from elementary school, who was the other “quiet, shy girl nobody liked” in class, and Miyo gets told a rather depressing story about a sacrificial marriage. She then goes home… and has the scene I mentioned at the start.

The good and bad thing about this series is that it is filled with the supernatural, and there are tons of things that have something evil, monstrous, or twisted as their cause. This is bad because it means that we get everything that happens in this book, which involves curses, evil from the previous generation seemingly trying to rise up and make Kiyoka late for his wedding, and in the end, straight-up murder attempts. The good thing is that it means that we don’t have to have all those horrible romance cliches of “I misheard you and we must now not talk to each other for the next five volumes” miscommunication. It turns out to really be a curse. We also get to see discount bargain-basement Kiyoka and Miyo, who are there as an object lesson in how sometimes you can try to escape a terrible life by entering into an arranged marriage with a stoic, cold man and it goes really badly. I don’t think there’s supposed to be a moral here, like “they should have tried harder”, I think it’s just meant to be “there but for the grace of God go I”.

The good bits of this book were very good. The wedding was fantastic, the ceremony afterwords was heartwarming, the wedding night was moved offscreen but we assume it happened without a lot of blushing and awkwardness, and after that there’s only one minor knife to the heart to deal with and we can get our happily ever after. Except we get an 8th volume soon, so now we get My Happy Married Life. I’ll be reading more. Just… perhaps fewer road cones for the sake of being road cones?

By Akumi Agitogi and Tsukiho Tsukioka. Released in Japan as “Watashi no Shiawase na Kekkon” by Fujimi L Bunko. Released in North America Yen On. Translated by David Musto.

Reading this volume of My Happy Marriage felt so different from all the previous volumes, it was absolutely like a breath of fresh air. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the other volumes are also excellent. But there’s always been this sense of suffocation to the events, a feeling that we’re waiting for the other shoe do drop. Frequently it has dropped, so we’re absolutely correct on that stage. Here, though? It’s only at the start, where Miyo is about to ,make a very dumb decision. Once she’s warded off that, though, everything unfolds exactly the way that it should. She seeks out allies, gets them to help her, researches her powers so she can use them better, makes peace with her mother, and heads off to go rescue her man from the hellish prison that he’s incarcerated in. And this works, because the climax is not “will Usui win or will the good guys prevail”, it’s “will Miyo stop hating herself and let love into her heart?” Spoilers: she does.

Miyo starts off this book by thinking the only way to do things is to just walk up to Usui so that she can get Kiyoka somehow. Fortunately, he’s powerful enough, even in prison, while being tortured, and with gift suppression all around, to create a familiar to stop her and tell her that she should actually go and gather allies to do this properly. The familiar also looks like Kiyoka as an 8-year-old boy, which leads to the cute moments of this book, as she finds him adorable, calls him Kiyo, and even lets him sleep in her bed – something I fear she will regret later when she realizes how familiars work. In any case, she goes to visit the Usuba patriarch and gets the complete story about what happened with Usui and her mother, then she goes to Kiyoka’s parents to ask his father to help her gather gift-users, and she gets Kiyoka’s military crew. Then it’s time to go do a prison break.

As I said, if you’re reading this for the thriller aspect, you may be a bit disappointed. Everything goes almost embarrassingly well, due to a combination of Miyo’s dream powers and Kazushi’s ability to hit people very hard. They literally walk into the prison because, due to everything that’s happened in the last couple books, there aren’t enough soldiers Usui trusts to guard it and also beat off the diversion that’s being fought outside. Even the one bit where things look bad happens exactly as expected – if you’re surprised at what Arata did, I’m so sorry, you must not read very many of these series. But the true climax of the book was Usui trying to talk Miyo into joining him in ruling the world, and Miyo snapping and screaming at him. That was wonderful, I will be so happy if it gets animated. Miyo may also have super powers and come from a terrible family life, but she is using her powers to make herself happy, not impose herself on others. Something Usui doesn’t get.

This isn’t the last book, and the author promises the happy marriage is imminent (though the blurb for the next volume suggests a snag). Fans of this series will love this.

By Akumi Agitogi and Tsukiho Tsukioka. Released in Japan as “Watashi no Shiawase na Kekkon” by Fujimi L Bunko. Released in North America Yen On. Translated by David Musto.

Well, now I just feel bad. One of my go-to jokes about this series is the hideous irony of the title, after all. And in the Afterword the author says they worry about it as well, and asks readers not to constantly harp on it. So that’s half this review needing to be totally rewritten, then. That said, there are signs in this book that we are working our way there, if painfully slowly. Miyo still hates herself so much it’s almost suffocating, but is starting to realize (or be told point blank) that keeping everything to herself can actually be more painful than a possible rejection. She and Kiyoka have a scene where they share a bed (engineered, of course), and it’s as sweet as you’d expect, even though nothing happens, of course. And at the end of the book, we even get an explicit confession of love! Which, um, is actually tragically awful given… (waves vaguely at the cliffhanger)

We pick up where we left off, as the Emperor has been abducted. The Powers that Be make a decision to keep this quiet, which is not that hard given the Emperor is mostly a figurehead now anyway. That said, they really need to protect the prince from the bad guys now. They also need to protect Miyo, so make the decision to do both at the same time and have her staying at the palace, along with Kiyoka, Hazuki, and Yurie. Oh yes, and Arata, her faithful bodyguard. It should be a lot easier now, but there are still ominous rumblings. Miyo’s dreams about her mother and Usui turn out to be something he can talk back to her in, and he doubles down on destroying the world in order to teach it a lesson. Meanwhile, it turns out that the government and military is positively filled with traitors, and that’s bad news for Kiyoka in particular…

All of the My Happy Marriage books have rolled along on a sense of dread, and this one is no exception. We already know from the fourth book that Arata is working for the enemy, so the only question is whether he’s going to be a double agent or a triple agent. Usui is a wonderfully terrible villain, and the thing that pleased me most about the entire book was hearing that his arc should wrap up in Book 6, because I want to be nowhere near him again. The Education Minister’s secretary ends up being like something straight out of a horror movie, and in fact there is a fake climax to the book that reads like the end of a horror film. That said, this is the first book where The Bad Guys Win, and all seems lost. Thankfully, all seeming lost is what finally galvanizes Miyo to get off her ass and be proactive. I’m not sure I approve of her “I will do this by myself so as not to put anyone else in danger” attitude, but it’s otherwise nice to see, and terrific character development.

Still riveting, still fantastically written, still leaves you depressed. Great stuff.

By Akumi Agitogi and Tsukiho Tsukioka. Released in Japan as “Watashi no Shiawase na Kekkon” by Fujimi L Bunko. Released in North America Yen On. Translated by David Musto.

There is generally a habit in books, whether they’re “mysteries” or not, of trying to conceal a surprise twist. Keep the audience guessing, don’t let them figure out what the twist is until it’s too late. In practice, this is quite hard to pull off, and tends to lead to rolling of the eyes once the big reveal happens. As such, I always appreciate when a book doesn’t bother to do that and just says “let’s give it away on page 1”. Which is exactly what happens here, as there’s a traitor in the group that’s trying to protect Miyo, and the number of people tat it could possibly be amounts to one person. So we see that person approached by the villain immediately, in a prologue, and know who it is. Which is good, as it can then help with that this author really IS good at, which is giving readers an ulcer as they wait for the bad things to inevitably happen.

We pick up where we left off last time, with Miyo and Kiyoka beset by a man who claims to be her real father, and is also really, really smugly evil. Now Miyo can’t be left on her own , so she starts going to work and coming home with Kiyoka every day. She also gets a bodyguard, Kaoruko, one of the few women in the military in what is a very misogynistic unit. This means that Miyo has to deal with a) all the other members of the unit badmouthing Kaoruko and telling her to stay in the kitchen, and b) the fact that Miyo is associated with a family no one trusts and everyone seems to despise. You get the sense that the title of the series is getting further and further away, especially as they’re still not actually married yet.

So yeah, this book runs on dread. Not the dread of a horror novel, but the dread of a book about an abused daughter who is still viewing herself as the absolute worst being attacked on all sides. She has Kiyoka, who does the best he can, but she really needs more allies. Sadly, the one friend she makes, Kaoruko, turns out to be one of Kiyoka’s former potential fiancees, and clearly still has feelings for him, which sends Miyo into another spiral of self-loathing. Now, she does get one scene late in the book where she stands up and lets the sexist soldiers have it, but it’s sort of like eating a riceball made of needles in order to get to the tasty plum inside. Why read the series at all? The needles are also VERY tasty. This author knows how to write depression, anxiety, and melancholy, and Miyo is an extremely well-drawn woman.

So yes, we’re still not happy, and one subplot hints that we may see more double (triple?) agents. But this is still really good angst. The anime debuts next week, and should be exquisitely painful.

By Akumi Agitogi and Tsukiho Tsukioka. Released in Japan as “Watashi no Shiawase na Kekkon” by Fujimi L Bunko. Released in North America Yen On. Translated by David Musto.

Good news! After two trauma-inducingly depressing volumes of this series, we finally get a volume of My Happy Marriage that is working towards the title. That’s not to say that this volume is all sweetness and light – honestly, this series is never going to be that, I expect, until the final 5 pages of the last volume. But compared to the first two books, this is a pleasant walk in the park. Indeed, I wonder if the author thought the same thing, given that the entire subplot that is being investigated by Kiyoka seems like something invented to give the book a bit more drama and heft. Miyo is still suffering, of course, but this time it’s straightforward, normal abuse that we’ve seen in many, many series like this – the abuse of a mother-in-law who hates her son’s choice of wife. And while she and Kiyoka are not quite on the same page yet, they do at least now understand how the other person thinks.

Kiyoka and Miyo are invited by his father back to the Kudou mansion, as there needs to be a “meet the parents” event. The only trouble is that Kiyoka and Hazuki seem to have minimal respect for their father, and they both absolutely despise their mother. Neither one wants Miyo to be anywhere near her. Unfortunately, Kiyoka also gets an investigation that’s in the same town that his family home is, so and and Miyo (Hazuki can’t make it) have to go and meet Mommie Dearest anyway. It goes about as well as you’d expect, especially since Kiyoka has to be away from the mansion for the investigation much of the time, leaving Miyo to deal with her all on her own. And while this is going on, there’s a huge horned monster terrifying people near an out-of-the-way shack…

How much the reader enjoys this probably depends on how much they can tolerate Fuyu, Kiyoka’s mother and a thoroughly unpleasant woman. Her verbal abuse towards Miyo is loathsome, and the novel’s resolution appears to be a combination of “I have seen that you can be useful so I will allow the marriage” and “I am a 50-year-old tsundere, the worst kind”. Miyo still has horrible self-hatred issues, which don’t help when Fuyu is belittling her (she simply agrees with everything Fuyu says), but she rapidly realizes that the reason Fuyu’s abuse actually hurts her is that she’s now experienced what it’s like to be loved. The joy of being accepted makes the pain of rejection harder to bear. That said, Miyo still tends to ignore her own emotional despair, something literally pointed out to her by Kiyoka… who, to be fair, does the same thing.

I can see people disliking this book, mostly as Fuyu does not really suffer any consequences for her abusive behavior. That said, it honestly felt like a lighter, softer volume? Which probably says more about the first two in the series than it does about this one. Still valiantly hoping for the title to be accurate one day.

By Akumi Agitogi and Tsukiho Tsukioka. Released in Japan as “Watashi no Shiawase na Kekkon” by Fujimi L Bunko. Released in North America Yen On. Translated by David Musto.

The late lamented manga Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei had as one of its characters a girl named Ai Kaga, whose name was a take on “guilt complex”. She constantly blamed herself for anything that happened around her, even if it had nothing to do with her. This was mined for considerable humor, as was everything in that manga, to the point where Ai’s apologies could actually be weaponized to take out soldiers. Now, take that sort of person and play it 100% seriously and tragically, and you have an idea what reading another volume inside the head of Miyo Saimori is like. Yes, the title continues to be the most ironic one ever, as just because we’ve removed Miyo from her abusive family does not mean that we’ve actually solved her problems, especially since her husband is also a past master at non-communication. The result is that this book feels a lot like the first one did: beautiful and well-written, but not something to read if you’re in the mood for a “light” novel.

Having settled in at the home of her fiance, Miyo is trying to learn the art of being a bride, complete with lessons on “how to act at parties” from Kiyoka’s bright and outgoing sister Hazuki. Unfortunately, she’s started to have horrible nightmares every night, which has made it hard for her to get any rest and has caused her mental health to once more deteriorate. This is not being helped by the fact that she has no idea how to ask for help or to say she needs to rest, and Kiyoka himself has no idea how to offer help if Miyo does not ask for it first. The result is that both of them are once again doubting their partner’s feelings. So it’s a very bad time for a man to show up and turn out to be her cousin, related to her mother’s side of the family… which has as many dark secrets as her father’s side.

As you’d expect with a book like this, once we reach the breaking point for Miyo and she is allowed to become proactive, she shows off that she can be a terrifyingly powerful and gorgeous young woman. It’s just that we kind of have to get through 150 pages, a break-up, more family abuse, and a heaping helping of despair first. I’m not surprised that Miyo’s actually not just powerful, but one of the most powerful Gift-Users around, as this was signposted in the first book. Possibly the most interesting part of the book was Miyo’s feelings towards her mother, who had deliberately suppressed Miyo’s powers in order to protect her… but this also led to Miyo’s abuse by her family for years. She finds this very difficult to simply accept with just a “she did it because she loved me”. I also really enjoyed Hazuki, a desperately needed outgoing and extroverted young who also has a sad backstory but is still strong.

I’m still looking forward to the next volume of this series, but I suspect it will once again be “no, this is still not a happy marriage”, because the plot seems to be “overcoming obstacles”. As such, let the reader beware.

By Akumi Agitogi and Tsukiho Tsukioka. Released in Japan as “Watashi no Shiawase na Kekkon” by Fujimi L Bunko. Released in North America Yen On. Translated by Kiki Piatkowska.

Brief content warning: this book features an abusive family, and unlike other light novels we’ve seen to date in this genre, they do not vanish after the first 20 pages. The marriage, though, is not abusive.

It’s rare that a book affects me so much that I think to myself that I may have to drop another, similar series for being thoroughly inadequate, but that’s sort of how I feel. After reading the first volume of My Happy Marriage, I suspect any time I try to get back into I’ll Never Set Foot in That House Again!, a book with a very similar premise, I will come away thinking it shallow and boorish. Because My Happy Marriage is wonderfully written but also amazingly painful, the story of a woman who has spent most of her life being thoroughly abused by her family suddenly finding herself in a marriage that turns out to be the best thing that ever happened to her… and feeling that she doesn’t deserve any of it. Miyo’s pain and suffering suffuses this first volume.

Seemingly set in a Meiji-period Japan where some families have superpowers, this is the story of Miyo Saimori. Hers is a Cinderella story, but that also means it starts out the way Cinderella’s does as well – after her mother dies and her father remarries, she’s despised by her stepmother, and her younger sister is raised to hate her as well, particularly as she seemingly has no powers of her own. She has a maid on her side… till the maid is fired. She has a childhood friend who has a crush on her… but he’s too cowardly to do anything. She’s reduced to worse than a servant. So when she’s suddenly told she’ll be engaged to the powerful Kiyoka Kudou, she doesn’t know what to think. He’s been looking for a bride for some time, and has rejected all of them. Will Miyo be what he really needs? And can he possibly help her out of the deep pit of self-loathing and despair that is her life?

This book is very compelling but also very hard to read, as you are drenched in Miyo’s POV, and she is an abused woman. Despite being taken to Kiyoko’s house near the start of the book, we continue to focus on her family, who are losing power and influence and desperate to get it back. Fortunately, once she gets to Kiyoko’s house, she does start to have some allies. Kiyoko is, as his reputation says, cold and dismissive at first, but that’s mostly because he’s had a succession of women after his position and power. In fact, once he opens up to Miyo he becomes quite the loving fiancee. His elderly maid is also wonderful, and the first person that Miyo really opens up to. As for her supposed lack of power… it’s heavily implied in this book that she does indeed have strong powers, and that they just awaken late (something her mother was trying to get across to her father before she died). I suspect future books will go into this.

I also hope that future books will better try to match the title of the series. I want to read more of My Happy Marriage, but that’s mostly as I really want to see the happy part. This was good setup, and very much needed to get a good look into Miyo’s psyche, but it’s not what I would call a “light” novel. (Actually, given there are no internal illustrations, it probably should be classified as a light novel at all.)