My Happy Marriage Second Season Brings Love And Action

Season aired: Winter 2025

Number of episodes: 13

Watched on: Netflix

Translated by: Aya Kudo

Genres: Romance, Drama, Supernatural

Thoughts: My Happy Marriage returns with a second season on Netflix, and while the series unfortunately suffers snags in the production that resulted in the last two episodes being delayed, it manages to pull off the story in a succinct way. I was excited to return to the romance between Miyo and Kudo, which remains one of the best parts of the anime.

Miyo Saimori is an abused girl from a noble family. In this world, all noble families are blessed with supernatural abilities, but Miyo seems to show none. After being sold off in marriage to the cold yet exceptional Kiyoka Kudo, Miyo uncovers secrets about her family, herself, and Japan’s political landscape, while an unexpected romance blooms between her and the man that everyone believed would never love another.

While the first season is focused on establishing Miyo and her relationship with Kudo, this season takes a complete dive into the supernatural, centering the main conflict on the factors of Miyo’s Dreamsight power and her ability to master it. Having grown to embrace and feel assured in her place by Kudo’s side, Miyo starts the season decidedly more confident, and it immediately makes her a more active player in the story compared to the first season. This shift in the story was essential. In the first season, the audience sympathized with her hard past and is able to easily accept her passive role in lieu of a more active, handsome knight like Kudo saving her because of that. Now that she’s been saved, however, it would’ve been detrimental to the overall story and character arc for her not to continue to grow in the second season.

However, how the series manages to pull off her active role is debatable. For most of the season, I think it is successful. Miyo finds ways to help Kudo reconnect with his stubborn and judgmental mother, and voices her desire to help people with her powers. She even becomes a hero to her first friend by stepping out and defending Kaoruko, who constantly faces sexism from her male peers due to being the only girl in the military. Miyo’s main weakness, however, is her lack of understanding and control over her powers, something all the antagonists wish to steal from her and use to their own advantage. This makes her completely useless in physical battles, and while that isn’t necessarily a problem from a logical viewpoint, knowing she essentially has guns in her back pockets that she doesn’t seem to ever grab can be frustrating to watch. This season is a lot more action-oriented, with enough fights that seeing Miyo helpless in the background again has become annoying to watch at times.

The real criticism, however, is that once Miyo grasps the full extent of her powers, we only see her use them to their fullest in one episode. She takes charge of the plans, steps forward to use her powers, and even successfully subdues enemies. However, the second she is reunited with Kudo, she again takes a back seat to let her fiancé show off. While the finale does give her a brief moment to shine, most of her ends up as her trying to convince the bad guy to stand down through words, which isn’t even the instrumental piece in his downfall. This doesn’t necessarily erase all the proactive steps she took earlier in the series, but to have her climactic moment be more talk and less walk leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

The good news is that while I wished Kudo would sometimes stand back to let Miyo shine in battle, his fight sequences are dynamic and well-animated. Kudo might seem overpowered with his ability to dish out various elemental attacks, but the antagonists he faces are often those he needs to capture alive for the government, which forces him to hold back his full power. The result is that his fights are entertainingly choreographed, allowing him to show off not just his supernatural abilities but also his sword skills. He dances across the screen, searching for an opportunity to knock an opponent out rather than outright summon a blast of lightning to kill them.

There’s also a heavy dose of politics in the second season, something only briefly alluded to in the first. Considering the important role of the Taisho era, which eventually made way to the much more famous Meiji era, the era of the World Wars, I was pleasantly surprised to see actual historical references. One of the characters has the supernatural ability to briefly look into the future and mentions that the country needs to either avert the disaster or be prepared for it — no doubt a reference to the eventual World Wars that would come to devastate Japan.

Where the anime ultimately shines is the relationship between Kudo and Miyo. The first season did such an excellent job of establishing their chemistry and growing love, that many audience members, myself included, were dying for some extra romantic moments in a second season packed with plot and conflicts. This makes their final resolution in the finale all the sweeter and more deserved when the two are finally able to reunite and enjoy some downtime going out into town, shopping, and enjoying the sunset.

The series knows that its greatest weapon is still the romance, and it utilizes the soundtrack to highlight this. Evan Call, renowned for his fantastic work in Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, has the unique knack of blending in his sound to fit any series. However, in My Happy Marriage, I could hear the similarities between his compositions for this show and his work on Frieren. At the most romantic moments, the violin and melodic riffs emerge, immediately invoking a soft, comforting vibe. Unlike in cases where I’ve thought soundtrack composers creating similar music to be detrimental, I actually found it to be a positive use in this particular case. Amongst all the stressful, life-threatening situations surrounding them, Miyo and Kudo can only truly find peace around each other. Nothing else invokes that feeling better than a particular set of notes and instruments that Evan Call has mastered.

I’m so happy that My Happy Marriage is continuing. Throughout seasons one and two, Kudo and Miyo were never technically married. At the conclusion of the second season, where both Miyo and Kudo figured out what they wanted and plan to spend the rest of their lives devoting themselves to each other, the title of the series might finally come true. Yes, I had my issues with how Miyo’s powers were ultimately used at the end, but I’m not so unforgiving that a single mistake would spoil the way the rest of the series made me feel. This second season is chock-full of politics, dynamic supernatural fights, and interesting relationships both romantically and platonically, and for that, I think it’ll likely be remembered as the better season.

Rating

Plot: 8 (Multiplier 3)

Characters: 7.5 (Multiplier 3)

Art/Animation: 7.5 (Multiplier 2)

Voice acting: 8

Soundtrack: 8.5

FINAL SCORE: 78