I Married My Female Friend

This manga presents a very interesting premise that deals with a great deal of ambiguity and complexity when it comes to human relationships, yet I didn't feel entirely satisfied after finishing the read despite my best attempts to be invested in the story. The series, without explicitly namedropping it, deals with platonic love. That I feel is a subject often underrepresented in media depicting relationships, as the word "love" is essentially reserved for romantic connection. Just like the title says "I Married My Female Friend" presents this wonderfully interesting idea of marrying someone who's your friend mainly due to avoid societal pressure and simply wanting tohave a person who supports you daily. In many ways it parallels a lavender marriage, relevant to the fact this manga depicts queer people, yet it also stands in opposition to it as the world of this story presents Japan where same sex marriage is now fully legalized. It's quite a bold angle to create this world where queer people are finally able to get married to the person they truly love and choose to depict a marriage more so out of convenience rather than romantic love. All of those elements paint quite a complex and varied picture that this story presents. Unfortunately, I do find myself questioning whether or not it was utilized to its fullest. In some ways the manga finds itself at a crossroads and the two main elements of the premise start to drift apart from each other, as the characters grow closer together. As the series gradually shifts their relationship to romantic love, I feel it loses that interesting angle of depicting platonic marriage. It ultimately settles into this more easily explainable and socially expected version of marriage and a relationship between two people living together. While it certainly is endearing, I feel like it ultimately suffered diminishing returns. On the other hand, as their love blossoms and their marriage stands for their romantic love for each other, I can't help but notice that since they were already married, the achievement of them confessing their love for each other has a lot less weight and feels more inconsequential than it would've been if that wasn't the case. In a way, if the author created this world of (currently) pure fantasy where same sex couples can get married and wants to ultimately make it a tale of love, I wish they would've just started with a well established romantic connection and explore the liberation of being able to proclaim your love to the world, marrying the person you love most. In its current state, I feel the series is neither about a nonconformist platonic marriage, nor it is about a couple of lovers diving into marriage after systemic change. I can't say I'm entirely satisfied of the chemistry between the two main characters. It's quite serviceable, but it feels somewhat surface level, when it comes to either platonic or romantic connection. They do certainly enjoy each other's presence and company, but they don't feel particularly fleshed out as to why. Their relationship with their marriage is often presented as quite a minefield that's hard to navigate with lots of rules and a looming doomsday clock, in spite of their affinity for one another. i see it that the series, in spite of favoring honest communication as the author often does, struggled to establish the rules of a more complex relationship of platonic commitment and openness to explore romance and its different forms with other partners. While the series treats those elements as two mutually exclusive things, I don't think they needed to quite be presented like that. (But that's working under the assumption if Rukiko and Kurumi didn't end up falling for each other anyway). Ultimately, that brings me to the notion that the marriage aspect, as a whole is rather downplayed the entire manga and is only really relevant to the story once, where Kurumi pays Rukiko a visit at a hospital. For much of its run the series seems to equate "being married" to just "living together". The series certainly insists in dialogue multiple times that the two women are married, but it feels pretty much entirely arbitrary in many cases. I feel like there's a whole lot of elements of married life that go wholly unexplored and are never mentioned. While some of it might've been a bit too much of bureaucracy which would be boring for most readers, I still find it disappointing that the manga never quite acknowledged those things. Two of the simplest examples would be taking on the last name of your spouse and opening a joint bank account, it's honestly surprising such basic and seemingly key things are never mentioned. While their platonic friendship is often framed as the obstacle for them to get closer, as they lead rather different lives, I feel it goes so far the other end that they do end up feeling as strangers at times. At the same time it doesn't really end up as a satisfying "roommates to lovers" kind of story either as the shift from friends to lovers feels more so a formality due to them spending time together, rather than something that fundamentally changed about them as people. I greatly appreciate the work of Usui-sensei in depicting very complex and varied kinds of connections humans form, but I can't deny that this series feels like she tried to bite off more than she could chew. They still delivered a manga brimming with beautiful art and rather tightly written dialogue and a support cast that serves their purpose rather well. That's why I can't wholly say that this manga is not worth people's time, as it is rather serviceable and doesn't make any outrageous mistakes that would make me despise it, it simply pales in comparison to their other manga. It unfortunately lacks her usual emotional complexity and insight towards the psyche of those characters, how society impacts them and vice versa.