REVIEW: ‘Marriagetoxin’ Season 1 Excellently Blends Romance With Action

Marriagetoxin is an engaging romance-leaning shonen anime that provides an entertaining experience through its endearing cast, interesting world, and explosive moments. The first season is enjoyable in many ways, despite some drawbacks that could be improved in a potential second season.

Marriagetoxin Season follows Hikaru Gero (Haruki Ishiya), the only male in the direct line to be the heir of the Gero family, a renowned clan of Poison Master assassins. Due to his line of work, Gero is unable to meet women, fall in love, or enter any romantic relationships. Because of this, he’s basically given up on the concept of love and marriage, despite everyone around him getting married and pressure from his grandmother, the current head of the family, to have him or his sister marry and continue the clan.

Marriagetoxin sets up Hikaru’s personality details excellently.

Things quickly take a turn for the worse when he learns his grandmother is pressuring his sister into forcibly marrying and reproducing. To ensure he protects his sister’s liberty while also maintaining his choice in a partner, Gero teams up with Mei Kinosaki (Shion Wakayama), a marriage swindler who dresses as a woman, one of the targets he chooses not to kill, to be his matchmaker.

The first few episodes of Marriagetoxin fantastically showcase the two protagonists’ personalities and goals. Though an oddball, Hikaru is determined and diligent, and only focuses on work while ignoring his wants and needs. He uses his job as an excuse to hide his fear of rejection and vulnerability, but finally decides to take the necessary first step.

Despite his job as a literal killer, he has a moral code of only killing bad people, and he clearly cares about those he gets close to. All these details are portrayed excellently through several scenes. Kinosaki chooses his targets carefully through a similar code and is incredibly determined to help his sick brother, whom he claims is the only reason he swindles people.

Romance is secondary to action and narrative in Marriagetoxin Season 1.

While Kinosaki faces many dangers, he always voices his opinions and never cowers in the face of them. As the episodes progress, he grows closer to Hikaru, always has his back, and helps him pursue his goal of meeting women despite the dangers involved.

The anime starts with the simple premise of an assassin trying to marry to protect his sister and ensure his clan’s future. This narrative then expands drastically and becomes more complicated as he goes on quests to help girls in need who are either involved in the assassin world or are involuntarily drawn into it, while still actively searching for a wife. Unlike in other series, all the girls Hikaru meets aren’t just helpless damsels. They all have strong personalities, convictions, are highly capable, and are genuinely likable.

The romance element, while taking a back seat to the anime’s action, fanfare, and overarching narrative progression, is still present, even if only sparsely. When it is featured prominently, it is wholesome and genuine without being too tropey. The intentions between Hikaru and the girls he rescues are clear and innocent. The anime displays the slow but sure progression of his relationships with these girls quite well, as he at least becomes friends with them and starts to learn more about them.

Marriagetoxin’s storytelling style forgoes excessive exposition, unlike many of its contemporaries.

Through Hikaru’s adventures and encounters with other Master Assassins, the narrative expands to cover the assassin world, where viewers learn about its hierarchies, intricacies, rules, major players, and more. It also shows how all Masters who have been Hikaru’s enemies are warped by power or wealth, but unfortunately, these villains don’t show much depth beyond that, which is a shame. Regardless, the narrative progression is presented incredibly well, especially through the anime’s great, subtle storytelling style that forgoes excessive exposition, unlike most anime in the genre.

However, these encounters are also among the most exciting parts of the anime. They showcase the series’ unique Modified Bloodlines power system, in which each Master uses their clan’s techniques honed over years of training to fight. The power system grants several unique abilities and fighting methods, ranging from Sound abilities to Body Transformations.

Each Master’s ability is unique and fun to see in action. However, while the anime features several fight scenes that showcase these abilities effectively, they are unsatisfyingly few and far between, especially for a shonen battle anime. Several episodes lack a fight, and when one is included, it is incredibly short and rarely a full fight, making it too brief to be engaging or satisfying.

Marriagetoxin features consistently fluid animations and intricate character designs.

Animation-wise, most episodes of Marriagetoxin feature consistently fluid animations, intricate character designs, expressive facial expressions, and vibrant backgrounds. While the fight scenes are usually short, they still feature great composition and sometimes good choreography. However, its mostly consistent quality noticeably dips in the last few episodes, where some CG animation is awkwardly shoved into some sections, making for a jarring viewing experience.

For the most part, the animation from Bones is solid, especially in episodes like six and twelve. The soundtrack, with its melodic and epic background tracks, is also immaculate and enhances the viewing experience. Lastly, the anime features great comedic moments, making it one of the funniest this season.

All in all, Marriagetoxin Season 1 is a highly entertaining and unique shonen anime that, despite its drawbacks, offers an enjoyable experience.

 Marriagetoxin Season 1 is streaming now on Crunchyroll.