I’m Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class gives you exactly what you expect, but honestly? What you get is something that for the most part delivers. Its premise is simple and to the point, and it’s filled with rom-com tropes that are put to good use, even if they never amount to anything beyond that. The way our girl Akane grabs our leading man Saito by the necktie is similar to how Haruhi grabbed Kyon’s, a signifier that tells you right then and there that these two’s inner disgust will turn into romance. It’s a tale as old as time, and here, it’s predictable without being stale.
As the title oh-so explicitly states, this is an anime where the couple starts on, well, to say the “wrong foot” is kind of understating things, no? Saito and Akane are high schoolers who don’t just hate each other—they are each other’s archnemesis. That is, until Saito’s grandfather, a wealthy business tycoon, decides to marry Akane’s grandmother. Logic says that this should affect Saito and Akane’s adult parents instead—after all, the age-old anime trope of parental remarriage typically affects the immediately succeeding generation, not one or two generations down. What keeps the ball rolling here is that Saito is the heir to his grandfather’s successful corporation, and should Saito reject this forced marriage, the corporate empire will instead go to a useless dog. It’s an offer Saito cannot refuse.
Naturally, Akane and Saito’s relationship starts on an awkward footing. Their discussions quickly transform into arguments, although they mostly sound caught off-guard and distraught rather than red-faced angry, per se. I don’t consider this a flaw, since their verbal spats add to their cuteness. Maybe it was intended that way. Since it’s obvious from the very start that they’ll end up liking each other towards the end, it’s best to see Akane and Saito’s tsundere-ish tendencies as the glue holding them together.
Adding to the show’s adorability is the art style. The color palette is draped in bright yellows, reds, and blues that make for a style that’s unabashedly garish (highly complementary). Sometimes the art gets very minimalist and chibi for certain scenes to up the moe here. Admittedly, there are a few times where these scenes are thrown in for just a few seconds that don’t add too much, almost like the animators felt compelled to add these scenes in for consistency’s sake. Thankfully, they aren’t distracting when they do happen.
The real scene-stealer here is Saito’s little sister Shise, a silver-haired eccentric who speaks softly and carries a bizarre stick. I love weird characters, and even if characters like Shise are a dime a dozen, her personality is charming regardless. There are gags where she shows up randomly, and at one point we see that she’s frozen herself in Saito’s refrigerator for…reasons. The anime does play up her little sister qualities in ways that seem nonsensical at times, but hey, whatever gets the job done.
The show also gets into harem territory with some slice-of-life sprinkles thrown into the mix—the main cast even does the Kirara Jump in the OP. At times this is cute; other times unnecessary. Saito becomes an object of desire by his bubbly classmate Himari, who mostly feels thrown in until the end of the cour, and Akane’s little sister Maho, whose interest in Saito is mostly for show. But it’s not something the show hits us with at first. The episode Maho is introduced has her and Shise duking it out in a Little Sister Duel that got me good.If you’re going to dip your toes into territory that’s not only taboo but also very been-there-done-that, at least make it funny, which this bit did. This hilarious momentum is destroyed next episode when Maho fake-flirts with Saito problematically. How this event unfolds evolves into something more serious for Maho, yet it’s hard to take seriously, or even comfortably, for that matter. Sure, this gives Maho more development, but I would have preferred it if she remained a tool for comedic bits.
That being said, the jokes and gags in Married to the Girl I Hate still mostly work, and I giggled more than I thought I would. Yet there are a few moments that do feel like wasted potential. For example, there’s a sequence where the gang goes on a rollercoaster, and what could have been stretched into a two-minute-long bit is rendered into a flat montage filled with stills. There are a few other truncated moments like this in the show, and they do come off as kind of a groan. When they appear, it almost feels like the show just wanted to skim through these to serve the plot and not the humor.
Still, I enjoyed the show despite its shortcomings. In a winter that gave us the hilarious second season of The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You and the underappreciated I May Be a Guild Receptionist, it’s doubtful that I’m Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class will move the needles like the aforementioned did. Don’t let that get to you. There is still something cute and amicable enough about this rom-com to give it the old college try.
