Remember Love and Lies? The show where high schoolers were forcibly paired off and we followed a boy, the girl he was paired with, and the girl he actually loved? What if, instead of this mismatch happening at the hands of an Orwellian government, it was instead perpetrated by the school, as a “practical exam” for the supposed reason of teaching kids what a real relationship was like?
Now, to be fair, Love and Lies fell short primarily because of its details, not its premise. Still, softening the edges and adding a bit of Toradora!‘s creative DNA – those are odd choices. Love and Lies felt compelling in part because there were actual stakes. This is a little school project that for some reason lasts for an entire year of forced dorm cohabitation, rather than the week that would be an arguably interesting exercise.
So, of course our main character, Jirou Yakuin, is paired not with the childhood friend he has a crush on and who the framing suggests has a crush on him (Shiroi Sakurazaka) but rather with the pastel pink gyaru bully, Akari Watanabe. Why was there no drafting mechanic in this kind of program? Were there not massive protests from actual couples getting forcibly provided with third wheels, to say nothing of hopefuls like our leads?
Akari is… unpleasant here at the start. Aggressively unpleasant, particularly to our lead. It’s not hard to see how any looks aside she wouldn’t be easy to get along with.
They do quickly declare that there’s an out: score in the top ten at the end of any month (which is done by monitoring systems adding points for getting along and subtracting for fights), and you can get repaired. This seems kind of backwards? Wouldn’t you want to remix the couples with disaster-tier chemistry rather than the ones that are having lovey-dovey good times? Even APE got to shuffle low-performing partners rather than stars.
Well, that’s our excuse for a plot, a reason that forces the pair to actually get mock lovey-dovey. Let’s just take it. Jirou of course wants to switch to Shiori, and Shiori just happens to be partnered with Akari’s crush, Minami Tenjin. Akari tries to turn up the heat right away, but even though he wants the prize, Jirou is less sure about play-acting romance with someone he kind of despises, even if she is hot. Once she’s alone we see that Akari is supposed to be sweet and vulnerable as well, desperate to not have her crush stolen away, but she really does like putting her worst foot forward.
They do soften her up fairly quickly as time goes on, with even the first episode giving her some sweeter moments and a few obvious sparks between the two.
It’s probably just lust at this stage.
After working pretty hard to get over their issues and make with the positive points, Akari and Jirou get their first result as B-rank. Not bad. But unfortunately for the scheme, it seems their preferred partners were less automatically agreeable than was expected, hanging out in the bottom-of-the-barrel E-rank.
It’s at about this point when the show realizes it needs at least Shiori to still have a meaningful presence, as while Akari is out with her friends, it’s Shiori who comes over to tend to Jirou when he’s sick, a sequence that gets the audience but not characters full confirmation that the romantic feelings are mutual.
Akari also seems to rather quickly fall prey to the same issue as Taiga, where even though she professes to want only her initial crush, working constantly with another guy is going to raise his stock in her eyes as well.
More fuel is poured on the fire as Shiori and Minami reach A rank but decide to not split immediately (which is apparently expected), with Shiori having a suggestive chat with Jirou that pretty much says she’d have swapped if it was for him, while Minami has a close encounter with Akari that sets her heart fluttering but also makes her realize what her inner conflicts may be. Some misunderstandings around that also get Jirou and Akari closer as she reveals that contrary to her reputation and constant teasing of Jirou as a virgin, Akari herself had never kissed before episode 1 where she goaded Jirou into giving her a “goodbye kiss” as he left the dorm.
Of course, Shiori is also getting advice from her friends on what to do about Jirou.
Part of why I feel this is more comparable to Love and Lies than it is to Toradora!, despite ostensibly having the latter’s “we are working together in order to set each other up with our preferred partners” aspect is that Minami doesn’t have a whole lot of presence. He’s the heartthrob nice guy that every girl should naturally want, and he doesn’t get a lot of lines or screen time to show us much else while we’re building Akari, Shiori, and Jirou. Between the loud, eccentric, and very present Kitamura on one side, and the literally non-existent “other match” for Misaki on the other, he’s much closer to the latter. This makes the show much more Jirou’s than Akari’s, as it’s his alternate that’s taken seriously and developed.
This is continued when we get the reverse misunderstanding, with Akari out of sorts because she thinks that Jirou and Shiori had an intimate moment (moreso than they did) and gets out of sorts because of it. Add a few more instances like a missed assignation with Minami (who it’s implied has his own unreachable desires that mean supporting Shiori in her pursuit. I’m just surprised the dude got a scene; Shiori’s female friend with an implied crush on her has been more involved) and we get to summer vacation where everyone important happens to take the same part-time job that comes with a three-day vacation. Naturally, the desired couples use the opportunity to get close, even during cafe work.
A little trouble with the whipped cream
This extended beach trip makes up the last act of the show, as the new environment and its encounter table of romantic contrivances pushes the characters to their limits, with Akari being more frustrated at Jirou letting her go than she is happy to pursue Minami (as little as she does) and Shiori dedicated to working up the courage to do something. This ends up with the test of courage, where Akari gets lost. Minami finds her and they have a heart to heart that amounts to Akari getting shot down and given a big push towards Jirou (Minami, it seems, has a tragic unrequited love for an older, married woman), while Shiori finds Jirou to the tune of a confession and a big damn kiss.
This, seemingly set to have the childhood friend ship sail while leaving Akari’s heart smashed into a million tiny pieces, is the penultimate episode. The final episode walks it back a bit by revealing that Shiori got shy and awkward after delivering her critical hit kiss, leaving their status ambiguous, while Akari is now competing in earnest. Each girl gets a summer vacation field trip with Jirou, firmly establishing that we’re now in a basic Betty-and-Veronica love triangle with Shiori as the sweet and demure one and Akari as the sexy and outgoing one.
This ends with the girls racing up to the local shrine, and with Jiro in tow, making their prayers for the ending they want.
As to what Jiro prays for, we don’t get to hear it. Open ending!
So, that was More Than a Married Couple, but Not Lovers. How does it hold up?
Well, the characters are nice. Part of the advantage of only caring about three is that they can get a lot of work each. Shiori benefits a little less, since she’s out of focus at first, but Akari really shines based on how she evolves from a completely nasty piece of work to… somebody who’s still willing to be teasing and/or tsun at times, but who we can see is a loving person deep down and not someone who’s trying to be as bad to her assigned partner as she comes off.
At times, this thing does kind of let its Nisekoi-style bloat show. Especially early on there are several senseless fantasy scenes, and throughout the piece, people (especially Jirou and Shiori) aren’t the greatest at finishing their sentences. Usually there will be at least some reason given, and at least the male lead here is explicitly an inexperienced and dithering wimp with reason to back down, but it’s still trouble. That said, this show manages way more progress in twelve episodes than that one could pull in about three times the running time, so credit to the new version.
So, in terms of “Fake relationship love triangle nonsense”, this one easily beats both Nisekoi and Love and Lies, but those bars were so low ants would have trouble limboing under them. The high bar is, again, kind of Toradora!, but let’s be honest, something with such a tortured premise wasn’t getting there with anything short of a screenwriting miracle.
On the whole, there’s a fair amount of dead air, but a decent amount of character growth. The style is this weirdly simplistic pastel-heavy sort of cel-shaded affair, but it looks really nice most of the time. For every upside, there’s a downside, and vise versa.
I guess a big part of this show might be how you react to Akari Fanservice, because the camera is on her for most of the show and, like Jirou, it’s pretty interested in her various assets. For me, that neither detracts nor enriches, at least not much. At best, it sells Jirou’s discomfort when she’s intentionally or unintentionally making moves. But some folks are liable to have strong opinions one way or the other.
In the end, I’m going to issue a C+ to More Than a Married Couple, but Not Lovers. It held my interest, mostly, and I think on the net it lifted itself a little above bog standard with a few genuinely good scenes. It’s not really anything to write home about, but if you like romcoms in general it will probably be worth your time as simple entertainment.