Remember Nisekoi? Now there was a show that I ultimately had a lot of complaints with and deeply disliked… but it wasn’t the fault of the title-founding premise? No, that, like many elements of said former show, seemed extremely promising, and it took a lot of effort for Nisekoi to squander all the good will it did generate and kick itself out of the passing grades.
So, when the pitch for this show could be rendered as “It’s just like Nisekoi, but…”, I’m all ears. Can forcing a pair of natural enemies to make nice (and possibly make out) win this time, or is this going to be strike two? Well the title is suggestive of the answer, so let’s break it down.
We get an immediate downgrade out of the gate when we get our dubious setup. Rather than the sham relationship being used to keep gangsters in line, which provided a lot of comedic potential, instead the grandfather of our male lead (Saito Houjou) and the grandmother of our female lead (Akane Sakuramori) simply want to vicariously recreate the ship the two of them had in youth that didn’t sail, and are willing to blackmail their offspring’s offspring into tying the knot for said sick satisfaction.
The reprehensible elders also arrange cohabitation for the couple that shortly ends up wed, including a single bed in the house and strict orders to use it simultaneously.
On the plus side there’s no locket nonsense (at least at first) but on the minus side there’s also no Onodera (at least at first), no Claude, and in fact nothing to distract from the couple who hate each other, um, hating each other. And even that somehow gutterballs – at first there seems to be a real disconnect in their ways of life, with Saito being a slob with no culinary sense and Akane being a shrill neat freak who can’t stand horror. Shockingly, though, these differences are worked through about as quickly as they’re brought up, leading to mutual understanding and relatively peaceful cohabitation with only hollow claims of hatred by episode three.
So what does this show have going for it? Well, Saito has a flat affect space alien of a cousin who acts as his little sister. She’s basically Kasumi from Muv Luv, except filthy rich and willing to use that. Sure, fine. She’s pivotal to a few plots, but I’m just going to come out and say that most of the plots in the show don’t matter. They make Akane mad or stress her out for one episode because she’s rather high strung, and then pretty much resolve it in the same episode. Meanwhile, while claiming to hate each other when queried, Akane and Saito go through lots of happy couple stuff, with Saito even working hard to buy Akane a ring – technically because she saw it in a store window and he wanted to reduce tension in the house by doing something nice, but the symbolism is there.
Along the way, we get a sort of homeopathic intro to the show’s Onodera equivalent, a gyaru friend of Akane who has a crush on Saito and who confirms with her, repeatedly, that there’s nothing going on between them. Eventually she even asks Saito out on a date (making Akane hideously jealous for neither the first nor last time. Not that she likes him or anything, bakka. This should be called “Married life with an S-tier Tsundere”) and while he turns her down she’s kind of irrepressible and stays close and friendly for future nonsense.
Sadly, the show also debuts its version of Haru – a little brat whose scenes are almost uniformly awkward and uncomfortable and who just makes things worse. In this case, this would be Maho, Akane’s little sister who shows up out of nowhere (she was implied dead by backstory earlier) with the intent to blackmail and seduce Saito, going for every dirty trick in the book until ambushing Saito in bed causes Akane to throw them both out. While they’re in the dog house, her ill girl backstory kicks in and we get that she was trying to do it to free her sister and let Akane be happy. Which makes thing awkward when that’s not what Akane wanted but now Maho has a legit crush of her own with which to be a comedic annoyance for the rest of the show.
And, during Maho’s arc, the show also deploys its equivalent to the stupid, pointless locket. It seems that some years ago, Saito’s family had a party, and he met a girl around his age there. She had long hair, a pleasant demeanor, and they talked for hours but he didn’t get her name so he doesn’t know who she was. He brings this up shockingly late given that it’s pretty obvious to the audience (and later confirmed) that this was Akane, especially considering that Saito is well established to have Hollywood photographic memory, able to perfectly recall anything from even the barest glance, at one point learning a language by wildly flipping through a reference book or some sort.
He seems to largely rule Akane out because she’s cut her hair and doesn’t speak demurely anymore, but he also clearly suspects even though he never asks anyone but Maho directly.
Anyway, there is exactly one arc with real meat to it, and that’s this: It gets leaked (through the gyaru) that Akane and Saito are cohabiting, because Akane was not being terribly discreet at school. This is apparently a big problem because Akane is still pretending like she hates Saito and doesn’t want to be seen as a couple with him (even though a lot of the school already saw them as a couple), so the brilliant plan is hatched for Saito to fake-date someone else. After failing with little sis cousin and ruling out Maho as a matter of course, this task falls on the Gyaru who is only too happy to accept.
Naturally, this also makes Akane hideously jealous for the rest of the show, until she and the girl who, recall, is her best friend and has asked her about a million times if it’s okay for her to pursue Saito, warning her at every stage that she really will take him if she can, finally have it out.
In their verbal battle, Akane finally admits she loves Saito, which lets the two of them agree to be friends first and rivals second.
So what does Akane do having finally stopped lying to herself? Immediately have a spat with Saito and tell him to his face that she hates him. And that’s the line the show goes out on.
I hope she loses. The gyaru, Himari, is sweet and earnest and actually trying. It would defy all laws of storytelling, but I’d genuinely enjoy it if Akane ended up laying, alone, in the bed she’s made.
I know this is a brief review, but the show’s biggest sin is that it has no meat to it. It’s not slice of life, it’s trying to be a romantic comedy with dramatic notes, but it shows us something worthwhile so seldom.
The other big sin is that the characters are annoying. Saito isn’t milquetoast gormless but he’s not much better, usually playing the straight man to the fact that Akane has a hair trigger on both her temper and her fear response, freaking out at blackouts, imagined ghosts, and just about every contact, look, or phrase she can come up with a sinister interpretation of. Akane, as one could guess, gets kind of old. I know she’s a tsundere, but here’s the worst part: she ‘s a very harsh tsundere who is never given a reason to be harsh, at least not one that justifies it. At about the last episode when we establish she was party girl we learn she’d been looking forward to seeing Saito again when they went to the same school, only to have him not remember her and… that seems to be her only actual grudge of note (academic competitiveness, where she’s stuck at second in class to Saito’s first, is floated but doesn’t cover pure hatred).
It makes me realize how much work goes into well-written tsunderes, the ones who can be among Anime’s best leading ladies. When you delve into their stories, as you almost inevitably do, there are reasons either deep, apparent, or both why they take the harsh path. Usually it also covers for not being able to be honest with themselves, but that’s either not all, or it’s a particularly tangled case. Asuka Langley has her thing with Kaji coloring how she interacts with Shinji. Rin Tohsaka is a mage raised to be ruthless and trained to eliminate Shiro as an enemy. Shana just plain isn’t socialized with normal people and has a very inhuman view on the world. Mikoto Misaka… okay, Mikoto doesn’t have much of an excuse other than her general temper but she’s got five levels of awesome to back her up and she’s always fun to watch so that can be forgiven.
Akane is… intermittently fun to watch. Sometimes her overreactions get a laugh, especially when she’s in panic mode, and her sweet scenes can be legitimately sweet and sometimes funny when Saito is waiting for the other shoe to drop. But when she’s bad she’s really bad.
Neither little sister helps much. Saito’s is shockingly inoffensive for her archetype, while Akane’s is hellishly obnoxious. How about the Himari? She’s a welcome presence, but she’s also not much of one until the fake-date arc kicks in, being an occasional trigger for standard puttering and not much else. Her early conversations with Akane are also just plain on repeat. “So you don’t like Saito, that’s really true?” “No I hate his guts.” “So you really really pinky swear won’t mind if I go after him?” “Help yourself I hate the guy.” See you again in an episode or two.
I will give the show this… it’s a shorter exercise in dreck than Nisekoi. That actually does count for some points here. Nisekoi was hideously bloated, sprawling over so many episodes and losing what progress it made in an absolute morass of nothing. I’m Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class does less, but it does it in twelve episodes, most of which at least have some pointless episodic puttering to hold your interest for twenty-two minutes.
But while it’s less boring than Nisekoi, I’m Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class also does less right or of value. There were bits and bobs in Nisekoi that were downright delightful, even if they couldn’t save the show. There is nothing of the sort here. There’s no Tsugumi, no Chitoge’s Mom arc, and no bored Shaft animators to save us from the doldrums that remain.
Because of that, I think I’m Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class has to end up with a lower grade. I think it had too many moments that worked and provided too much general entertainment to get an outright fail, but it is going to receive a flat D for its troubles. I guess I don’t actually hate the show, but only because hate is too strong an emotion for I’m Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class to conjure it. At the very least, it’s one that can be comfortably left forgotten.