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“Kekkon Surutte Hontou desu ka?- 365 Days to the Wedding”Manga Review, kinda
Ever had a Manga that is just heartwarming to read? And while being at it, its chracters living rentfree in your head? A series that is satisfying to read, despite or more accurately because it’s sometimes a bit predictable. For me this happened with “Kekkon Surutte Hontou desu ka?- 365 Days to the Wedding”, a Manga by Tamiki Wakaki, which recently got an anime announced. It was said announcement, that got me to read the description of the manga and lead me to read it, halfheartedly at first. After three days however, i started to bookmark it. Without realizing it the series just stuck to me because, there were moments or even entire chapters that left me with a stupidly bright smile and a very warm and cozy feeling. Usually accompanied by a feeling of “i knew it”.
“Kekkon Surutte Hontou desuka?” is a slice of life/(office) romance manga about Takuya Oohara and Rika Honnjouji who are co-workers at a travel agency, where the higher- ups recently announced the opening of a branch in Irkutsk. Both protagonists are incredibly anti-social and neither of them wants to be send there. To reduce the likelyhood of getting send there, they pretend that they are getting married to each other, because the higher-ups also announced that singles are more likely to be send there. While pretending to get married they actually fall in love with each other. Technically this plan could easily fall flat, because the higher-ups could just send both of them, but that’s probably just me relinquishing my suspension disbelieve for a second. With that out of the way, one of the things that i like the most about the series is how the characters start developing because of each other. Both of them open up as people through interacting with each other and to see that unfold is genuinely heartwarming. And it stays like this. Without going into detail a good example of this is the entire development from chapter 20 or so up to chapter 50. Their different social backgrounds, ad an interesting element to their relationship, by creating a bit of tension, beyond just the two of them, because an underlying theme seems to be aside from marriage, the conflict between tradition and modernity. Something that influences another great aspect of the story namely the way how the author uses their co-workers to subtly deal with themes that, from my experience, are rarely brought up in slice of life/romance manga, like (dealing with) divorce and to some extend single motherhood. The only way how i’ve percieved these themes within the confines of romance manga somewhat, was thorough the classic, “oldest daughter does the household, while the mother works” trope. Within the story, especially the topic of single motherhood was part an arc, which lead me to like one the sidecharacters, Gonda, who meets a woman who turns out to be a single mother. Through that arc he gets an interesting amount of character development.
The fact that there were little to no conflict, to the point were i expected one to happen, while it didn't happen is something that i really enjoyed about the manga. A minor nitpick is that Gonda's Arc feels a bit cut short, but that impression might change, considering that i am currently slowly rereading the series. So in the future I might actually revisit this with a properly researched anaylsis on its themes (and probably overinterpret it, to the point of seeing aluminium trees).
So to conclude: I can happily recommend this Manga.