Romance anime are in a different landscape nowadays, filled with safe tropes that aim to tug the heartstrings of viewers—and it did work in many moments—but it has gotten so stale and homogenized that it would be difficult to find an identity in each romance show. Not to say that romance series now wouldn't dare to take risks—since there are a couple that do and made a step above on breaking the medium—but it's difficult to find a romance show where it is littered with heavy drama between its characters. However, it used to be a norm back in the 2000s.

Romance animes in the 2000s and early 2010s, such as Toradora and Maid-Sama, are filled with characters that often banter with each other, creating this tension between characters and having that satisfying moment where they put their differences from each other aside and create this slowly growing bond, warming up to each other until they have fallen in love. Not to say that this is the objectively best approach for romance anime, but the abundance of these kinds of tropes captured many individuals in the romance genre. Fast forward to today, the strong contenders for these banter-style romance shows have been Kaguya-Sama: Love is War and the recently released Alya, but these animes alone are a few rarities with what romance shows have become today.

There are reasons why these tropes have slowly disappeared, namely that they don't really work in this day and age. People's preferences have changed, and the greater population has started to prefer a more dominantly calmer and wholesome approach in romance—and there is nothing wrong with that. However, at some point you might have a craving for rewatching those old tropes flourish once again. And this is where this anime enters in. ***

“I'm Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in my Class” is basically what the title is. It's a straightforward romance anime with a flair of the good and bad tropes of romance shows in the 2000s. It is littered with your expected spicy tropes that you've expected, ranging from characters bantering with each other—which is the main attraction that has carried this series all throughout—and side characters that are obviously ripped from yesteryear, namely the sister-role characters and a love triangle character—something that is rare too nowadays, apart from harem shows.

With that said, this is not a show where you will find meaning or profundity with its output. The characters in the show are playing their stereotypical roles to the point of having no unique personality that separates them from other characters from different shows, plotlines that you can expect from a mile away, and it can get tedious as you keep on watching with its repetitiveness. ***

This show is not the best romance show out there as it pretends to be, but it is mainly banking on its 2000s anime tropes, hitting that wave of nostalgia for the people who grew up with anime with these kinds of tropes. If you miss these kinds of tropes, you will be better off rewatching old romance series that might've offered better characters, plotlines, storytelling, animation, and direction. But if you're seeking a romance anime that tackles old tropes with a modern flair, this can just serve at its bare minimum. ***