Happy Negative Marriage

tl;dr: A manga about a relationship of between two very immature adults that’s incredibly well written for the first two thirds or so, but completely botches the final third. This manga is a character focused romantic drama between Satou and Akio. Despite Satou being a 30-year-old man and Akio a 26-year-old woman, both of them are nowhere near mature enough for marriage. Satou has never been in a relationship and is still a virgin, so he has no idea how to deal with women. But more importantly he’s comfortable being alone and is afraid of putting himself out there only to fail. Akio has also neverbeen in a real relationship and is also still a virgin, but she’s the type that goes along with what others want from her on anything. She just does what she thinks others want from her and hopes that she’ll end up happy without having to think about or decide what she truly wants to do. And her getting married would make her father happy, so she’s decided that that’s what she’ll do. The two of them meet at a marriage meeting and seem to make a good pair at first. Satou just halfheartedly takes part in the marriage meeting, but Akio responds incredibly well to him despite that. After all, she’s really good at responding to what others want, and deep down inside Satou just really wants to be loved. Akio is also not so much interested in Satou as marriage in and of itself, so the issues with Satou aren’t really a problem for her either. And Satou doesn’t seem to care either because he’s found someone that loves him without having had to really put himself out there and put his feeling at risk. However, a relationship such as this isn’t really much more than a sham, so how long could it really last? The manga does a really good job of exploring the complexes and personality issues that are plaguing both Satou and Akio. The writing is able to convey the happiness they feel when things are going well, as well as the pain they feel when things aren’t. There are a lot of intensely emotional moments. It also does a really good job of explaining what mental roadblocks and hang ups they have and how they prevent them from moving forward in finding happiness. As such, both Satou and Akio are easy to understand, sympathize with, and root for. Satou also gets a good amount of character growth and turns out to be a pretty awesome character. Akio also some moments, but it kind of fizzles out and doesn’t really reach a satisfying conclusion. On that note, the final stretch of this manga was pretty bad for a number of reasons. The biggest issue is that the ending felt incredibly forced and rushed to the point it doesn’t really make much sense. Satou got a good amount of character growth, but the final steps don’t feel consistent with what he’s like at that point. Akio fared even worse in that it felt like her character arc was still in its beginning phases but just jumped straight to the end without properly justifying it. As such, the ending overall is really unsatisfying even though the broader strokes of the ending are fine. Also, the arc leading up to the ending involves a villain who downright sucks. He’s awful, but not in a good way. Some villains you love to hate, but with some how much you hate them and how far they get just makes them unpleasant to read about. This one was very much the latter. Now it seemed like he was supposed to be a core part of Akio’s character development but as that went nowhere his entire existence seems pointless which makes his presence in the manga even more annoying. The art in this is excellent as you would expect from Amazume Ryuta. Especially the color pages. There is quite a bit of ecchi, though less explicit nudity than you’d expect. The character designs were pretty boring and forgettable outside of Akio, though it kind of ruined her design too near the end. I absolutely hate that trope. The fan translation was a mixed bag, with some parts being great and some not so much.