My Happy Marriage S2 Ep 10 & 11

Sorry I had to delay this entry for so long! I was struck with a severe case of migraines again so I just wasn’t in any shape to be writing up the entry. I’m feeling much better now, so let’s dig into this, because boy I got a lot to say… (particularly about episode 10).

It goes without saying, the highlights of these two episodes (10 and 11) were undoubtedly Miyo’s growth as a character! It’s incredibly rewarding and wonderful to see Miyo assert so much confidence and determination. She has learned from her mistakes, and steeled her resolve to properly awaken her powers, all for the sake of saving the one she loves. And she was prepared to carry all of this out on her own, but luckily for her, she’s not alone! She got little Kiyoka– I mean Shiki-gami Kiyo by her side!

And no kidding, Kiyo is quite literally the embodiment young Kiyoka. He’s so freaking CUTE! It was especially adorable to see him being all flustered and tsundere whenever Miyo asked him things to share a bed with her (because she was worried about him being cold haha). I already knew that Kiyoka was communicating through Kiyo so it gave me a good chuckle. But it’s a shame that they changed things like the making the lullaby sound good, because he was actually supposed to be singing off-key! That would’ve been quite funny to watch, but I understand why they switched to sounding good for scene transition purposes. Nevertheless, it’s disappointing to that a lot of his best scenes were either tweaked or cut out entirely. I will be elaborating a bit more about this in a bit.

Together, Miyo and Kiyo sought out her grandfather Yoshirou to gather more knowledge about how to awaken her powers, and her mother’s relationship with Usui. Through Sumi (whom Miyo was connecting with), we learned more about the parallels between Arata and Usui, how the two of them both had their ‘roles’ as the ‘protector’ taken away from them. However unlike Arata, Usui’s problem was on the fact Sumi was his entire world. She was the only one he was docile with, and was willing to do anything to help her achieve her dreams of letting their family be able to live under the sun with the rest of society. They were inseparable, but all that changed when the emperor meddled with their family and forced their hand. For the sake of protecting the Usuba family, Sumi chose to accept the arranged marriage into the Saimori’s. As expected, Usui was not happy about that, and despite Sumi’s pleas for him to find someone else to cherish, he felt as though she had abandoned him. Then not long after learning Sumi had died, that was when Usui went rogue and the Usuba’s completely lost trace of him.

Now I gotta say, I always thought it was super rich of Usui to make that claim how he’s ‘basically Miyo’s father’ after we learned he made the conscious decision to abandon Miyo after Sumi died. I mean, he could’ve stuck around to make sure she was growing up okay (though let’s be real, if he did he 100% would’ve killed everyone in the vicinity), but the fact of the matter is: he didn’t care about Miyo then, and he doesn’t actually care about her now. Her only purpose is to serve to be a tool in his grand scheme of things. “Queen of the World” my ass. She’s just another chess piece on the board to pursue his ambitions of twisting Sumi’s ideals by creating a new world.

Once Miyo’s powers had awakened, we finally got to see what she’s truly capable of. As expected, her powers aren’t flashy, but man they really do wonders. The way she was actually able to foresee exactly where she needed to go, and who she needed to met to accomplish her goals is nothing short of amazing. That was how she was able to track down Kiyoka’s parents (where she and Fuyu had a nice heart-to-heart conversation for an exchange), Godou and Kazushi for their assistance in breaking Kiyoka free. It was also really awesome to see her to see her put the Gifted Communion guards asleep, best of all Kiyo’s just watching absolutely stunned to see this new side of her! Look at her go! Unfortunately for the guards, they were not blessed with pleasant dreams, but uh… quite a nightmare that’ll keep them quite disturbed for a while. (Man the Saimori’s really dodged the bullet of Miyo having a gentle nature and her powers not awakening till wayyyy later… Things could’ve turned out verrryyy differently.)

At long last, Miyo and Kiyoka were finally reunited. Kiyoka ended up saving her against the grotesquerie. At long last, Miyo finally tells Kiyoka that she loves him and want to stay by his side for the rest of her life.  Q v Q My babies… I’m so happy for Kiyoka too. He was so patient with Miyo, it was a long time coming.

So how did I feel about these two episodes? Well I flat out did not enjoy episode 10, simply because of how much content had been changed and the amount that had been cut out entirely. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it.

As for episode 11: While it was significantly better, they still took a lot of liberties in changing up some of the scenes (mainly to make Miyo look cooler, that I have no complaints about), but I still felt like they rushed through it. And with the amount of things they’ve chosen to cut out, unfortunately this also watered down the build-up to these pivotal moments. So right now my biggest gripe with this season is what they are choosing to leave out.

If you may recall, at the end of my post for episode 8, there things I mentioned I wanted to add that had been left out. At the time, I was hoping they’d find way to plug it in at some point, but they didn’t. So how does this affect what happens in episode 10 and 11? Now for  this is particular issue, in all fairness, this is probably me just nitpicking the details. I was just disappointed they failed to highlight the depth of Miyo’s fears, because it was something cruel for her to overcome in order to awaken her powers. Yes, we already know that she’s scared of changing because of love and fears becoming strongly attached… but there was a lot more to it. So as promised, I will explain what was left out.

Miyo’s scared of how love could change her for the worse, to the point she fears it’d only bring misfortune to someone else.  She was abused her entire life by her step-mother, who held a grudge against her mother for having initially taken her lover away from her, and Miyo for simply being born of that arranged marriage. Meanwhile her birth father turned a blind eye to her being subjected to abuse, abandoned her the moment Kaya was born. So how do you think ‘love’ is portrayed to someone who’s been harmed by it? The horror of obsession, and fear of being consumed by jealousy… in that context, it makes perfect sense why Miyo would be terrified of embracing her feelings. What if she were to become someone like her stepmother? She doesn’t want to become like the Saimori family. That’s why she drew the line, and felt it would be safer simply have a relationship based off mere affection, and nothing more than that. And when Hazuki had pressed her about how she feels about Kiyoka, it was so distressing that she actually had a breakdown from it.

I consider these moments crucial to properly explaining why Miyo was hesitating so much to begin with. It wasn’t as simple as insecurity due to the lack of confidence, but rather the trauma that she had been subjected to all her life. By cutting this out, I felt like they completely overlooked how big of a deal it was for Miyo to overcome this fear of her deeply rooted by trauma. As a reader of the novels, I always appreciated the attention to detail of both Miyo’s struggle and growth of overcoming her traumatic past and abuse from the Saimori family. It made the awakening of her powers and newfound assertiveness feel that much more rewarding, and made it more emotionally invested as well. That’s why it frustrated me to see them cut this scene out. I was really hoping that we’d at least get an internal monologue to fill it in somehow, but we never did. So it’s certainly an understatement to say they really only scratched the surface of of Miyo’s fears about love changing her.

The next complaint I have, also falls into the problem I had with episode 10: They changed almost everything about Usui’s backstory!

Dear god… When they got to the part covering Usui’s and Sumi’s backstory, I couldn’t help but feel something was terribly off about it. I had thoughts like, “Wait what? Did that actually happen?” So as soon as episode 10 ended, I pulled out the novel and began flipping through it, re-reading the pages multiple times– and sure enough, they made some serious changes.

No, Usui’s power did not awaken because of witnessing his parents getting murdered. Usui was a psychopath from the get go. Unless the Author had says so or clarified this (and by all means, let me know if that’s the case), there was no sob-story of what triggered the awakening of his abilities. For context of the difference between the anime’s and the novel, here’s a word to word from the translations I have from the YEN-ON’s English localization, vol 6 pg 18-19: “…He was violent with other children his age, and he would kill dogs, cats, birds, fish and all sorts of small animals. He would act with impulsive cruelty for no apparent reason.”

So to say his powers were awakened after his parents were murdered by burglars? Was that really necessary? I suppose they were trying to humanize him to some degree, similar to how much they’ve significantly softened up Fuyu’s character to make her more likeable. Was it worth it? I don’t know. But in general, it drives me nuts when adaptions either completely leave out something important, or they change it to be something else entirely. Unfortunately they’ve taken a lot of liberties in making adjustments this season, many of which I don’t really agree with, similarly to how they made the dumbest decision to neglect mentioning the gift in the first episode of the first season.

And finally what’s been bugging me the most since the start of this season, is how they are doing a huge disservice to Kiyoka’s character.

While yes, Kiyoka does take a more of a backseat during this arc, the problem is that they choosing to cut out the (already) very few scenes he has. These scenes consists precious screen-time that not only allow Kiyoka and Miyo to interact with one another under different circumstances, but this also includes the time that goes towards each of their respective character development. That’s why I felt like this season struggled to balance progressing the plot and their relationship development from the get go. And because of that, there has been moments when it feels entirely unfamiliar because it they cut out so many scenes, as a reader, it’s been jarring to watch.

It’s honestly been really frustrating to see Kiyoka’s screen-time basically reduced where we only see him saying sweet flowery words to Miyo. It especially sucks knowing, that there are other scenes where we could’ve seen him discovering different sides of himself. Some examples: Realizing he can be a bit possessive (and is mindful of keeping himself in check), or feeling guilty and embarrassed when his sensory was connected to his shiki-gami Kiyo with Miyo. So it’s very disappointing to see the things that offer more depth to Kiyoka’s character are being left out in favour of rushing through to prioritize the Gift Communion plot. Sure they are small things, but please don’t forget this is about Kiyoka’s and Miyo’s love story, and they both deserve adequate attention to their character’s growth. That’s why I couldn’t help but feel so frustrated and even a little salty about their choice to cut out a number of really funny and endearing moments between Miyo and Kiyoka through Kiyo. These scenes would’ve (humorously) further foreshadow more of the fact Kiyoka was able to have sensory connection/take possession of his Shiki (Kiyo). Of course they did foreshadow it, such as: Kiyo being embarrassed to asked to share a bed with Miyo, or when Fuyu hugging Kiyo telling him to come home safely… but the point is, we missed out on a lot of great scenes. Still sad they cut out the scene where Miyo had asked Kiyo to join her in the baths so she could bathe him. I was really hoping to see Kiyo’s (aka Kiyoka’s) absolutely flustered reaction to that particular instance. Well, at least we got to see his cute little tsundere side. (You can see how he and his mother are alike in this regard haha!)

Anyhow, with two episodes left at this point it’s a complete toss-up of how well they’ll end this. Yes I have my list of complaints, but that isn’t to say it’s been a bad season. Despite my gripes I have been enjoying most of it… It’s just that I believe it could’ve been better, that’s all. At the very least, I hope they can finish on a high note!