My Happy Marriage Season 2

Episode 16

Yes, novel readers, it is true: this season of My Happy Marriage cut out huge swathes of the volume it's based on. Normally I'm not a fan of such adaptation tactics, but in this case, I'm fine with it. The primary reason is that it means that the Fuyu storyline is cut drastically short. While evil mother-in-law narratives are generally evergreen, given that Miyo spent most of season one trying to get out from under the shadow of the abuse she suffered from her stepmother and half-sister, throwing her right back under the same bus (or at least a bus on the same route) isn't appealing. In a novel series, there's more room to breathe, but we frankly don't need to see Miyo get tormented again. We have just enough of Fuyu to see that Miyo is stronger now – though not artificially strong; she's still uncomfortable – and to guess that Fuyu might have a reason for being such a capital-B-tsundere, and then we move on.

That works because arguably the most important piece of Kiyoka and Miyo's visit to the Kudo family “villa” (in the same sense that wealthy 19th-century socialites had “cottages”) is the reveal of the Gifted Communion. We don't know much about them yet, but what Kiyoka and his father discover isn't good: they're a group with an as-yet-unstated goal who seem to be able to turn humans into Grotesqueries, possibly with a vial of red liquid. Kiyoka assumes that the turned have consumed it, but there doesn't seem to be anything that overtly supports that yet. And truly, the most important thing is that they can cause this transformation, because the Grotesquerie Kiyoka fights at an abandoned mansion is strong; if his father hadn't shown up to handle the two humans, it wouldn't feel like a foregone conclusion that Kiyoka could have taken all three out.

There's also the fact that Prince Takaihito has sent Arata to help out. Although he doesn't appear to have told Arata everything (or much, honestly), sending him was a good idea. That's because the transformations may not be instantaneous: while Kiyoka is off fighting in the forest, a young man named Kota is brought to the Kudo house, suffering inside his own mind and growing a horn from his forehead like an oni. The only way to save him is with Miyo's Dreamsight, but she can't safely use it without someone to watch over her from the outside – a role Arata is uniquely qualified to fill. Is Kota in the process of transforming? It looks possible, and if that is the case, it positions Miyo and Kiyoka as the frontline against the Gifted Communion: he handles the physical attacks and she tackles the mental ones. That's a lot to put on a young woman who has only recently awoken to her powers and whose mental health is still recovering from a lifetime of abuse.

This brings us back to Fuyu and the blessedly curtailed storyline. Fuyu, who can be seen blushing as she more or less flings a ribbon into Miyo's hands in a faint attempt to redeem her, is starting to look less like Saimori Part 2 and more like a foil figure to Usui, the new character who appears officially at the end of the episode. He is, of course, the man with the glasses Miyo spotted watching her on the street before, but more importantly, he's also calling himself her father. Now, he was Sumi's original fiancé before she was instead wed to Saimori, but I would still bet against him being Miyo's biological father. Instead, he seems to be fixated on Miyo, as if he believes less that she is his child and more that she should have been his child. What this has to do with his role as a head figure in the Gifted Communion, and what the Communion is even doing or what its goals are isn't clear yet, but his obsession with Miyo stands in direct contrast to Fuyu's outwardly dismissive attitude towards her. Both he and Fuyu might say that their treatments of Miyo stem from love, but only Kiyoka has a healthy adoration for her, which is equally important in this twisted equation.

How does Miyo fit into whatever story Usui is spinning in his head? It's too early to know, but it certainly seems like she's central to what's going on as an Usuba…although people who view her in that light suggest that they aren't seeing her at all.

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