My Happy Marriage Season 2

Episode 19

If Arata's and Miyo's powers made you doubt why the Usuba family Gifts are so tightly controlled, Naoshi Usui's should clear that up. His Gift allows him to manipulate people's senses and perceptions, utterly destroying their grasp on reality in ways that, as we see this week, are more than just helpful to him personally. Soldiers attack each other believing that they're fighting enemies, a man halts just before he cuts Usui down because he thinks he's on the edge of a cliff, and most damning, Kaoruko is convinced to betray the army in general and Miyo in particular by Usui manipulating her memories.

It's a situation made all the worse by how other members of her squadron have treated her. Despite the supposed meritocracy of the unit, we've seen how Kaoruko is sidelined and treated as less than because of her gender, and that's isolated her. If she'd had a superior or comrade she trusted, she could have gone to them with what she believed Usui had done to her father—tortured him—but without that social safety net, she feels she has no choice but to bow to Usui's will. The stunned remark from one of the other soldiers that Kaoruko's father had trained him just that week lays bare that fact. But because she believed she had no one to turn to, she went along with Usui's demands, betraying the army and nearly losing Miyo to the enemy.

Another one of the dangers Usui poses is that he's both smart and at least a little bit charismatic. Thus far, Kiyoka has outsmarted him, figuring out (with a little help from the prince) that the whole kidnapped emperor bit is a ruse and preventing him from capturing Miyo, but that's by no means a guarantee. Because Usui knows just the right words to use to get under someone's skin, he knew just how to threaten Kaoruko, and this week, we see him try to use his wiles on Arata – and I'm not sure that he's failed to do so. Yes, we see Arata at the New Year's dinner at the Kudo home, but he's subdued, and the final scene of him staring out the window makes it clear that he's mulling something over. When we pair that with his memories of growing up in Usuba, it's hard not to wonder whether he's starting to see Usui's point.

If he is, that's at least partially the government's fault. Arata's childhood was as terrible as Miyo's – he wasn't physically abused or deprived, but there's an argument for emotional abuse. He was isolated, not allowed to have friends, and spent his whole childhood working towards becoming the Maiden of Dream-Sight's protector. Then, when she turns up, she's already got a protector and fiancé, rendering all of Arata's training moot. He worked his entire life for something that was snatched away at the last second, at least half, because the government was so afraid of his family's power.

That's not too dissimilar from what Usui went through, or at least, it can look that way. Usui and Sumi were tied together, and even if the adults didn't say anything, he clearly believed that they would marry one day, hence his assertion that Miyo is his daughter. But at the eleventh hour, Sumi was taken from him and given to another man, and everything he believed was true was crushed. Sumi's death made that final. As we see during their confrontation in the royal villa, Usui is both willing and keen to make Arata see the parallels between them, with Miyo as the prize for them both: he gets a piece of Sumi back, and Arata gets what he was promised.

Miyo is at least half aware of this. She tells Usui that she's not her mother and that seeing her as Sumi is fruitless. But Usui is not rational, no matter how well he fakes it, and the question is whether or not Arata can recognize that fact. Usui may have derailed Miyo's first friendship, but that doesn't mean she has to let him and those he manipulates do the same for the rest of her life—with or without her family's help.

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