Marriagetoxin Ep.01 - Gero must be the worst possible surname...

Marriagetoxin is an anime series adapted from the shonen manga of the same name, written by Joumyaku and illustrated by Yoda Mizuki. The story follows a hitman named Gero Hikaru, an expert in poisons who is forced to find someone to marry to save his little sister from being coerced into marriage to produce an heir.

He meets Kinosaki Mei, a beautiful, blonde marriage swindler and the target he was assigned to kill. He is moved by Mei’s words and decides to help her, only to find out that she is actually a cross-dressing male, or so "she" says. Honestly, you are never quite sure in this series, and the fact that "she" is the only prominent female character makes it even more suspicious.

Akari is honestly stunning, even though she doesn't give the 'little sister' feel that I was expecting due to her age.

Beautiful and stunning, but is she really a male? Even the description page only refer to her as 'Mei' and never with a specific pronoun.

Nevertheless, Mei decides to help him find a marriage partner to remove the burden from his little sister. He then gets kidnapped, and Hikaru comes to the rescue with his poison superpowers. The story is very action-focused, with Hikaru acting as the typical shonen protagonist possessing extreme powers that are beyond normal, as seen in the scene where he cuts a moving car in half using poison.

Though I have to admit, overall Hikaru is a fun protagonist; his attempts to impress the ladies on the group date were hilariously bad (see attached video) and made me chuckle a few times. Mei is going to need more than a little effort to teach him how to actually marry someone.

I am still not 100% sure about how to categorize this series as a whole. It definitely has action (seen in the many great battles) and it definitely has comedy. But is it really a romance series? Or will it be played as a comedy for the most part, with the focus staying on the other two elements?

Overall, it was a fun first episode, and I will give it a chance next week to see how the plot develops. I still haven't decided which series I want to cover for the season, and I've been a bit busy over the last few days, but it is a good candidate for weekly coverage. I am genuinely interested in seeing whether or not Mei is truly a male.

I had to screenshot the reactions of the woman to Hikaru's approaches. I picked the third one too, it's in the tag page.

I had a look and there's a few recurring heroines in the cast, but I'm still feeling that Mei...

The manga is relatively recent, having started in 2022, and is still ongoing with 17 volumes as of today, which is quite an impressive amount for a series only four years old. If the show turns out to be as good as this first episode, I may actually buy the manga once the adaptation is over.