Kekkon suru tte, Hontou desu ka
365 Days to the Wedding

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Searching about an adult romance manga where they doesn't get together only a few chapters before the end, which is realist, but not too drama-heavy with characters that are still believeable (with flaws)?

This manga is ideal.

The art:
Not the most impressive, but still pleasing on the eye.

The characters:
That's the part that is the best. The characters are realistic, they are really charming, most of them have enough focus without obscuring the main couple and add to the development of the story and the development of the relationship of the main couple. Not that love triangles are not sometimes useful or can be used well, but if ... love triangles is not someone cup of tea, to add unneeded drama to the romance, this show is ideal. The two main characters (the main couple) are really good as individual characters, moreover their relationship is really cute and believeable.

The theme:
One of the main theme of this anime is marriage, so it shows multiple examples of marriages (failed ones, but also successful ones). This central theme is really well explored. It also explores other themes like the abandonment of the rural regions, geography, etc.

The romance:
The romance between the main couple is really great, it's a good mix of romance progression and of relationship development. In some romance anime/manga, there is either a romance progression that is either too slow or it progresses well, but it not backed up by a natural relationship development between the characters involved and personal character development for each of them. The main couple has both, which makes the romance really satistying.

It's fun, characters are pretty, and the story as a whole is pretty bubbly. This is a really down to earth manga, so don't go expecting a lot from it.

All in all, I really liked it. It's not like I'm waiting every week for the chapter to drop, but It's a nice surprise when I see that a new chapter was released.

Also, the story pace is really "realistic" to say the least. I mean, we, the readers, can predict what's going to happen because we are given the whole story before our eyes, unlike the characters who only see their part. That being said, it's ... nice that the story goes almost as If the mangaka went through this in his life, with realistic developments, on a realistic setting. Heck, maybe a novel format could work better for this kind of story.

7/10. Nice read.

‘Are We Really Getting Married’ aims to portray a semi-realistic romance wrapped inside a wholesomely unrealistic premise. And while it can be argued that, in fact, it does pull off that ‘realistic romance’ vibes, it does so at the expense of almost everything else, but namely entertainment. Contrary to what the high minds might think, there is a good reason why ‘realistic romances’ rarely, if ever, blossom into anything more than niche past times. Even some of the most fanfare-inducing ones, like 500 Days of Summer, aren’t really ‘realistic’, just grounded.

There is really just no simple way about my final conclusion after 35 chapters of ... reading this manga: plain and simple… it’s just boring. It commits the worst cardinal sin of all pure romances, and though some people, as evidenced by the overall score, might find the blooming ‘realistic’ love to their liking, I do not. I do not like reading ‘realistic portrayals of love’ due to one simple reason: most authors, for some reason, seem to think that ‘realistic’ means ‘dull’ and ‘boring’. As such, they tend to make the characters in question extremely mundane, and that is all fine and dandy, but then they go ahead and make the stories hundreds of pages long. And that’s no good.

The story of ‘Are We Really Getting Married’ is held together by flimsy threads that are really there just as plot devices that push our two leads together. The narrative fluctuates between ‘eh’ and ‘meh’, and all its desperate attempts at bold portrayals of everyday occurrences are really just… well, meh. The story repeatedly goes in circles, but it’s a romantic story, so the narrative aspect really isn’t that important. There is little to evolve upon in terms of romantic narratives, which is why most, if not all authors focus simply on creating interesting characters. And characters here, well, are not.

What’s-his-name and what’s-her-face, in summary, are just boring. There is nothing uniquely interesting about them, nothing that makes me root for them, nothing that inspires me, nothing, nothing, nothing. It’s just a dull guy and a dull girl awkwardly falling in love like horny high-school teenagers despite being in their mid twenties. There are no quirks that make for decent comedy, there is quite literally 0 chemistry between the main pair–like, legit, you could pair two planks of wood and they’d likely have more chemistry than the two of them–and if, again, this is the ‘realistic love’, then I simply never want to love in my life since I’d be bored off my noggin’.

But, as is the case with most of these ‘realistic romances’, this story isn’t realistic. Forgoing the stupid premise, why is it that every single ‘realistic romance’ sprouts some of the most boring, uninteresting, and dull characters in existence? Because real people, believe it or not, are not boring. They don’t have singular quirks like ‘I love physical maps which is a weird thing, look how quirky I am’, or ‘I have a cat’ as personality traits. But whatever, it’s like I’m shouting into the void at this point, to be honest. I have no clue what’s happening in Japan, but these constant depictions of beyond socially inept grown adults are honestly just kind of… sad. It’s as though these characters haven’t ever interacted with people past 3 sentences their entire lives, and, even if that’s true, I just don’t care about them to watch them get to the 4th grader’s level of communicative skills.

Maybe it’s just me, but there’s a reason why most romantic manga have at least 1 of the 2 leads be an extrovert as such a character can carry a monotonous dud. That’s why all shounen romances sporting black-hole dense teenage boys with 0 personality have girls that steal the show and mostly become the reason people read the damn thing, or why every shoujo manga sports an awkward girl who orgasms at the sound of a dude’s voice while all the hot bishounen howling at her steal the pages around her. You can salvage 1 dud if you surround it by gold, but if everything you’re flaunting is just dud… well, what’s the damn point?

Anyway, I’ve ranted enough–I don’t see this as a realistic romance, or much of a romance to be honest. As I mentioned, chemistry between characters may as well redefine the definition of that word, and while art is nice and readable, it doesn’t come close to salvaging generic rom-com story and beyond dull main duo.

Cheerio!