Let’s get one thing straight: I am a romantic slut. I live for stories about couples getting together, staying together, doing cute couple shit, all that nonsense. And I especially love stories where the couples get together at the start so we can actually develop that relationship. So many of my favorite fictional romances- Monogatari, Chuunibyou, Clannad, Ore Monogatari- became my favorites because they allow time after the establishment of the romance to really explore how the couple functions as a couple, for comedy, drama, and fluffy feels alike. So a show like Tonikawa: Over the Moon for You, where the guy and girl get married at the start and the premise is about exploring their adorable married life? That should’ve been right up my alley. I should’ve come out of this show singing its praises as the feel-good masterpiece of the year. Certainly, that’s what everyone else seems to be doing. But from pretty much the moment I started watching it, something felt noticeably off. And no matter how many genuinely funny or cute moments it had throughout its run, I could never shake that feeling. Something was very, very wrong with this seemingly harmless little show. And since everyone else seems to love Tonikawa, I suppose it falls to me to be the asshole and break down why this anime rubbed me the wrong way.

So, the premise. Yuzuki Nasa is a rigorously academic kid who wants to achieve great things as revenge for his parents naming him after NASA, because then when everyone thinks of Nasa, they’ll think of him first instead of that space exploration organization. Don’t think to hard about that, it basically doesn’t matter. One day, he sees a cute girl walking home, instantly falls head over heels in love, and runs across the street to talk to her... right into the path of an oncoming truck. The girl, who’s name is Tsukasa, miraculously saves him from being isekai’d into a different anime entirely, giving him the chance to confess his love and ask her out. She agrees, with one condition: they have to get married. Two years years pass before they see each other again, time in which Nasa grows into an adult and moves into his own apartment, still waiting for the day Tsukasa shows up again. And what do you know, there she is outside his apartment, ready to make good on their promise. They get married in short order, and the rest of the show is basically just slice-of-life fluff exploring their married life as they settle into their new apartment, buy wedding rings, go on dates, all that mushy stuff. And I guess there’s a supporting cast full of wacky personalities, but none of them leave much of an impression save for Kaname, the hilariously filthy high school girl who runs the local bathhouse. She’s by far the best character in the show, fight me.

For the most part, though, yeah, this show is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s about watching a cute couple do cute couple things, nothing more, nothing less. At worst, it’s just boring and unengaging, but it does have a sprinkling of adorable and goofy moments throughout that keep your attention from fully slipping. Every episode made me chuckle or go “aaaw” at least once, which is more than some rom-coms can say. But I’m not content to just leave it at “this show is middling-to-decent fluff” and call it a day. Because the more I sit with Tonikawa, the more that discomfort I talked about creeps into my overall impression. Staring at this show long enough, that seemingly cozy exterior starts to curdle into something ugly and cynical. I’ve rolled it over in my head, and the conclusion I’ve come to is one that despite ostensibly focusing on a relationship, Tonikawa isn’t actually an anime about a relationship at all.

It’s a wish fulfillment power fantasy about a guy who gets a smoking hot wife dropped into his lap almost at random and gets to do pretty much whatever he wants with her.

I realize that might be a harsh statement, so I’m going to invite you to take a step back and follow my thought process. Why do Nasa and Tsukasa love each other? What is it that draws them to each other? Remember, Nasa fell head over heels in love with her from first sight just because she was cute. Hell, that’s the title of the damn show: “Anyway, it’s cute!” His attraction to her is almost purely surface level. And Tsukasa basically offers to marry him right from the start, so it’s not like she has any good reasoning either. What do they like about each other? Dislike? How are they changing as a result of being with each other? How are they staying the same? What is it about each other that gives their bond meaning beyond, well, anyway it’s cute? The characters talk a lot in this show about how much they love each other, how beautiful love is, how great it is to be married, but nowhere in that morass of shallow nothings are we given a sense of why their relationship, is as good as it is. And what dawned on me after a while is that Tonikawa doesn’t actually seem to care about Nasa and Tsukasa’s marriage in the specifics. What it cares about is the concept of marriage and relationships as an abstract, some nebulously good “thing” that supposedly is good for you to have.

And what are the joys of marriage in Tonikawa’s eyes? Is it the feeling of getting to know another person intimately? Of sharing life’s ups and downs together? Of coming to understand yourself better through your interactions with someone you care about, and understanding them in turn? Nope. What Tonikawa values in marriage is how you get to hold a girl’s soft hand. How you get to sleep in the same bed as her. How you get to see her in various states of undress and it be totally okay. How you get to kiss her. How you get to have her pamper you when you’re down. How you get to see her flustered and embarrassed at all your horny requests but ultimately accepting of them because hey, she’s your wife, and it’s her job to be attractive for you. How wonderful it would be if you could snag a perfect wife with no effort who attends to your every need, who you never have to worry about pleasing because she’ll always love you no matter what, who doesn’t scare you with the actual needs of real-world relationships and the effort that would require from you to uphold your end of the bargain. Oh, and did I mention that Tsukasa is sixteen years old, and Nasa is eighteen? Yeah, apparently healthy marriage means getting married as a teenager to a technical adult who thinks horny thoughts about you.

Yes, I know it’s heavily foreshadowed that Tsukasa’s some kind of immortal mood goddess or alien or something who’d been around since ancient times, but I’m sorry, we are well past the point where “she’s actually 1,000 years old” is an acceptable excuse. Tsukasa could have easily been just as old as Nasa and the story would have made just as much sense. The only reason for her to be underage is because it makes the fantasy hotter. Because it makes your imaginary perfect wife even more subservient to you. Because this show doesn’t actually care about marriage as a relationship: it cares about marriage as a commodity. Something to be packaged and handed out as a reward to deserving guys, a shallow grab-bag of surface-level treats to be indulged in mindlessly with no consideration for the girl on the other side. Something to be rewarded with, something to be flattered with, something to consume like a chocolate cake with no need to worry about putting in actual effort. Because hey, what’s the point of putting in effort to make a chocolate cake feel happy and equally valued? It’s just a cake, it doesn’t have feelings that can be hurt. It’s not like it’s an actual person, with needs and wants of their own. I mean, can you imagine?

I don’t begrudge anyone for enjoying Tonikawa. God knows, this year has been hellfire enough, and we all deserve a show that we can just feel happy and comfortable with. Plus, I trust your intelligence enough that I’m sure most of you aren’t going to this show for actual relationship advice. It’s a fantasy, nothing more, nothing less. But let’s be honest about the kind of fantasy it is. Let’s be able to see this show with open eyes and not be blinded by the cute colors and plastic sheen of wholesomeness. This is every bit as much a piece of ego-stroking wish fulfillment as any bargain-bin seasonal isekai. Honestly, I suspect that truck did kill Nasa in the first episode, whisking him away to an isekai world where he gets to live out his wildest dreams free of consequence. It’s just that unlike most isekai worlds, this one is pretty much exactly the same as the one he left behind, only with the addition of a doting teenage girl who attends to his every whim and gets adorably flustered by his horny thoughts before acquiescing regardless. And for all the enjoyable moments throughout this show, that’s a fantasy I have no interest in ever returning to.

Tl;DRL Just watch Ore Monogatari and Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid. Those anime show what “couple gets together at the beginning” stories should be.