the rom-com anime that respects consent

19 May, 2026

last modified 1 week, 6 days ago

The anime adaptation of the manga Marriagetoxin started airing, and it has NOT been making nearly as much buzz online as I hoped it would. Therefore, I’m making a post to convince people to watch it. If I can sway even one person to bet on my particular brightly-colored action-comedy losing horse, I’ll be very happy…

So: what is Marriagetoxin? Well, it’s an ongoing romantic comedy/action manga I’ve been reading and enjoying for the past ~year or so. It's on the Manga+ app Shonen Jump has, so you can just like, read it for free. If you want to¹.

Marriagetoxin is a very silly type of action-romance-comedy, which is reflected in its pitch: amidst an underground world of long-historied clans of hitmen for hire with various expertises, the heir to the Poison Clan, a young man named Hikaru Gero, plans to have no children and allow his odious bloodline to die with him and with his sister Akari, a lesbian in a committed relationship with another woman. However, their grandmother—the current leader of the Poison Clan—disagrees: if Gero won’t marry and have children, she’ll force Akari into an arranged marriage with a man for the purposes of producing heirs. Gero, who’s hugely supportive of his sister, is naturally enraged by this proposition and tells his grandmother to leave Akari alone, as he’ll find a partner and give her those damn grandchildren. Gero is simultaneously hired to assassinate a marriage swindler named Kinosaki, but finds out the people who hired him are big pieces of shit, while Kinosaki (while a criminal) has a heart of gold. Therefore, after saving the poor sap, Gero hires Kinosaki as a marriage advisor: see, Gero has never been properly socialized, and he has no clue how to talk to women or people. Kinosaki’s job is to coach him through romance and help Gero find a bride—before grandma gets too impatient and threatens Akari again. Stupid hijinks ensue!!

Uh, I’m also sort of burying a lede here, but I’ll talk about that later. For now, the title of the post. See, Gero (while very socially awkward and low key autistic, and) despite his scary job, is a huge sweetie-pie and (above all things) one of the greatest Women Respectors I’ve fucking seen in anime. Like, okay, yes: Marriagetoxin does have harem elements, Gero does meet multiple women interested in him, any of whom might become his future wife, but, like. In the third episode, after he’s met the first one, he straight-up tells her “I know absolutely nothing about you as a person and neither do you know anything about me, so I think we should spend time as friends first and get to know each other before we decide if a romantic relationship is right for us”. Kinosaki signs him up for being a “hero for hire” as a way to meet women and Gero’s first response is “that’s skeevy as shit”, and the only reason he sticks with it is because Kinosaki points out that the important part of the relationship is not the circumstances under which they meet, but the relationship they build together, as equals and partners. This is what the show is like, all the time, every time. The love interests in this show are trying out their relationships with Gero, getting to know him and seeing if it works out, and going on casual friendly-with-some-flirting-type getting-to-know dates in the meantime, where the goal is for both of them to have fun together. Gero’s getting into dating app talking-stage situationships! …But in like, a good way!

There’s a cool moment early on, I think this really characterizes the show, where Gero actually does put someone in a tough spot — he’s been hired to kill Kinosaki, but since he needs a wife and he thinks Kinosaki is attracted to him, he proposes letting Kinosaki live in exchange for a marriage of convenience. Gero, of course, is proposing this out of ignorance; he doesn’t realize what position he’s putting Kinosaki in. But what I think is great is how Kinosaki responds: by immediately calling Gero out as a piece of shit for doing this — to which Gero, after a moment’s reflection, agrees, and so he changes his offer to hiring Kinosaki as a purely platonic romantic coach. It’s a really good, really characterizing moment for everyone involved, including the manga itself!

Also, everyone is an adult. Nobody here is in highschool. I would like to point this out because I am well and truly sick of highschool romcoms and I imagine a lot of people feel the same. (If you like highschool romcoms, though, power to you. I read DanDaDan, that shit is great).

And all the lady love interests have way above-average-for-anime integrity and push their own agendas forward, too. Like, Gero is basically a sidequest for the first lady introduced, Himekawa; she’s got her own thing going on as an art thief and Gero is just someone she happens to meet on the job. This manga actually passes the Bechdel test. Somehow. Down to the spirit of the thing—as in the original strip, “imagining the women are in a gay relationship—though that arc won’t be animated for a while, whoops.

The comedy is consistently kind of very stupid in a good way. I mentioned this before, I’ll mention it again… In the first episode, you see a guy vamoose away from a hang-out with a friend by riding a pair of spiders like rollerskates. Gero’s favourite thing in life are DIY candy kits and he repeatedly fanboys over a specific made-up brand with a goofy name. Look at this clip.

Finally, if the Weeb Ass Shit scale means anything to you, I would score Marriagetoxin nearly non-existant in an Ass scale where the middle is Kill la Kill. It’s so friggin tasteful. Some of the girls are boobed out, but they all have internal organs and facial structure; none of them look like fucked up oughties moeblob homunculi or like One Piece hourglasses. You can actually stare at them and take them seriously.

And Gero is absolutely never pervy, not even once; in fact he’s very shy (to the point of having a mini-character arc about holding women when he’s carrying them because he does not want to touch them anywhere they don’t wanna be touched, even if they’re unconscious and he’s literally saving their lives). The story itself isn’t pervy, either; while it delights in the ambient cuteness of beautiful women, it doesn’t give you any sort of marshmallow pillows or underskirt peeks.

It also ranks pretty low on the Weeb scale; if you’re smart enough to understand that “foreign word being said” plus “food on-screen” equals “name of food is being said”, you’re pretty much good for 90% of this show.

And in the Shit scale, I mean—this is a pretty dumb comedy, but the story isn’t nearly as stupid as it seems. It has actual themes of confronting stifling and regressive power structures as well as trying to grow when presented with challenges you can’t currently surmount. The character writing is pretty damn great, everyone is super loveable and gets some fleshing-out, some interesting depth to them, some agency… Like, okay. Random example of a cool character detail: Gero’s clan specializes in poisoning, so he’s been trained since childhood to never eat food made by another person. This comes up in three neat ways: he’s a great cook, he can’t go to restaurants and order food like other people and this comes up during his dates, and this is the reason he likes DIY candy kits — because he gets to enjoy the sugar of industrially manufactured candy without compromising the “make all food yourself” principle. This is a pretty solidly thought-through shonen protagonist, to me!

Anyway, yeah. You should watch Marriagetoxin if you wanna see a silly romantic comedy shonen that’s a bit more mature than the rest, but still lets itself be lighthearted and fun.

…Okay, is everyone out? Have we sold every normal person on it? Are we good to unbury the lede? Let’s do it on three. One, two…

Confession time: I actually did not read Marriagetoxin because of how respectful it is to women, that was a nice surprise I found out while I was going for it. And I didn’t read Marriagetoxin because the premise grabbed me, either.

What got me… What got my life-long fudanshi self to read it… was the fact that Marriagetoxin is, in its current, unfinished, ongoing state, one of the greatest examples of slash ship queerbaiting I have seen in my life. And I’m saying this while having gone through the hits: this is laying it on thicker than any of the big ships you can think about. Because, see, the girl Gero meets in the first episode — the “first girl” of any harem, who, of course, always wins — is Kinosaki.

And Kinosaki is a guy.

Kinosaki is an explicitly textually bisexual man who dresses up in skirts and make-up and hair extensions for fun and profit.

As for the bait: Gero is repeatedly shown to be attracted to Kinosaki and flustered by Kinosaki; he establishes a deep friendship with Kinosaki; they work incredibly well as partners; Kinosaki corrects Gero and Gero surpasses Kinosaki’s expectations; they have fake dates together for practice. And the entire plot of the manga, especially after certain revelations that won’t be animated for quite a while, seems to thematically be heading towards “actually fuck you, grandma, I’m gonna love who I love”. Gero has an entire recent chapter dedicated to how he sees Kinosaki as a guiding light. Kinosaki steals Gero’s hoodie and wears it. Every character who isn’t in the know immediately thinks Gero and Kinosaki are dating.

This dog is the fucking Air Bud of chess. I could not love losing to it more. I don’t think I have real expectations of Gero and Kinosaki ending up together together — short of Kinosaki ending up having Been A Girl All Along, which I personally think would ruin the story — but I do think it’s not impossible for the climax of the story to be that Gero realizes he’s still not ready for marriage, so he goes and beats his grandma, shonen-style, and ends the story a situationship-riddled bachelor who’s still got Kinosaki hanging off his elbow. But I don’t blame people if they have real expectations that Kinosaki will “win”, because even Gero forgets that he himself is not dating Kinosaki, and needs to be reminded of this by Kinosaki, multiple times. Like, at least three times so far, by my account.

The singular, only problem with losing to this particular dog is that the fandom is the size of two peanuts and I have too much college to make all the content I want to see, so… I don’t know. Go watch this anime, read the manga, and please email me. I want to hear what you think.

Regular posting will continue at some point in the future, I swear.

And as always:

Thank you for reading!

P.S.: This video from the channel “Lines in Motion” basically makes all the points I’m making in this post but like, better, lol. Shoutout to them.

#2026 #review #🌕