My Bride is a Mermaid - Reviews

Seto no Hanayome has grown to be one of my favourite anime over the years. This is mainly to the fact that music has a large part in it, along with songs and great humor. There's a limited amount of ecchiness, which is overshadowed by the sarcastic remarks of the characters and an entertaining episodical plot.

While the storyline of the anime has a less visible or original background plot, it is certainly not one without merrit. Being able to follow the developing love story of the two main characters is both rewarding as well as funny, while they are both tossed around in the realm of mermen, but a yakuza group too.

The voice cast was skilled enough at giving the various characters life, even though the anime may lack the focus of the manga, the voice actors made sure that no character was placed in the rear mirror.

The ending is a classical happy-ending that clearly resulted in a battle for life and love, concluding the anime with grace and a fine comedical finnish.

This anime is one of my favorites EVER. In my book, It'll always be placed in the top 10 animes. I find it funny because, Romantic Love Comedies are my favorite. The only thing i DISLIKE about this Anime is that everyone is so ..Whats the word.. Suspicious  but yet Angerful around Sun, But only the guys actually care for Sun. Including her Dad. To Sum it up Its one of my FAVE Animes ever.

Well, that was... interesting. The comedy in general wasn't really my cup of tea, and the show is fairly reliant on comedy. There was one episode I actually found hilarious, most were so-so, some were downright terrible. The characters are nothing to brag about either, most of them are one-dimensional comedy characters. The female lead is okay, and I can't say that many of the side characters don't stand out in their own ways, but the male lead is pretty pathetic most of the time. I've seen worse, however, and he does have a few moments of sheer awesomeness. Romance plays a fairly important part, it's... okay. I've seen better, but I guess the romance is somewhat above average. Still, if this were all, I would have dropped Seto no Hanayome before finishing it.

However, the show has two saving graces. First, the music. Music has a pretty important part in the show, and it's composed by the awesome Takanashi Yasuharu, and the two seiyuu who sing in the insert songs are both great. The OST is one of my all-time favourites. Secondly, the show has a few scenes of blindingly brilliant dramatisation. I'll never forget episodes 8, 13 and 24. These episodes alone would have raised the show from 5-point mediocrity to 6-point above average rating.

Then there is the last episode. The episode that deserves a paragraph of its own. The episode that single-handedly raises the show's rating by two whole points! I still get the chills remembering it. Such pure awesomeness is so, so rare. I'd say this episode is in my top 3 best concluding episodes I've ever seen, quite possibly the very best. It takes the brilliant dramatisation of the three episodes mentioned above and cranks it up to eleven. It takes the more or less pathetic male lead and turns him into a real man. It gives you various kinds of satisfactions, it's full of action and romance, it's got countless epic moments and dialogue lines. And it gives a pretty satisfying ending (though the story isn't over yet). It's a superbly climatic ending that this barely above average show didn't deserve. It alone makes it worthwhile to suffer the bad comedy and the good-for-nothing male lead for 25 episodes.

I still have the OVA's to watch, but I doubt they'll alter my view of this series in any way. 8/10 points.

Reviewing this is weird because with the criteria im given to grade it on it makes it look like i did not enjoy the series (which for the most part) i did.

The story was easily "meh" at best. Main character drowns, mermaid saves him, mermaid law makes it so he either dies or they get married. Simple stuff if you ask me and nothing totally original either. This was probably the weakest part of the whole thing. They decided to throw away story and the concept of a plot moving forward for straight comedy which has its pros and cons.

The episodes are pretty hit and miss as well. Some episodes are brilliant and filled with life and really good jokes, but then you get stuff filled with fanservice which is disappointing because I thought this show was better than that. Oh and then theres episodes like episode 20 where you have grown men cosplaying as school girls. Yeah that was about as dumb of an episode in an anime that i have seen so far, and it wasn't dumb in the silly funny way.

The characters range from really cool to "OMG WHY DID YOU HAVE TO BE IN THIS SERIES?!?!?!"

Also, its worth mentioning thatthis is indeed a harem which is not a good thing. Harems have this habit of basing way too much of their attention on fanservice. For a while in the series I saw that there was little to none but that changed after more of the females were introduced which is something expected but it still doesn't sit right with me. This shouldn't be mistaken that it focuses all of its attention on it but there are stretches which make me want to bang my head on a desk.

So we have Nagasumi our lead male. He is a pathetic, unpopular guy who apparently has the greatest luck when it comes to attractive females because he gets quite a few of them. Oh and hes also dead set on marrying a mermaid, cool.

We have Sun Seto who is the mermaid who will be marrying Nagasumi. She is also the daughter of Gozaburo seto. She is a klutz but still manages to be good at a number of things.

Gozaburo Seto is the leader of the Seto gang. It is a gang of all underwater creatures who when they take full human form are simply Yakuza. He is also very protective of Sun to the point that he tries to kill Nagasumi numerous times during the series. Honestly he is a huge reason why this series was funny hes really insane.

We have Lunar....oh boy. She is rather unpleasant to see. She is a pop star who also happens to be a mermaid and is a childhood rival of Sun. Everything about her in every scene annoyed the crap out of me. Her existance by itself made the series worse.

We have Masa and Shark Fujishiro as well. These guys are gang members who work for the seto's. Masa is a smooth talking guy who can get all of the ladies. He has a running gag with Nagasumi which is hilarious but you can watch and see for yourself. Shark Fujishiro is just that...hes a shark. He thinks everything can be solved if he eats it and he tries to eat Nagasumi quite a bit in the series.He also has a habit of saying everything as if it were a question.

The sounds as usual will be broken down into 2 parts. The 1st being the music, and the 2nd being the dub.

The music at best is forgettable. Thats all I have to say because there really isn't one track worth mentioning. The animation for the opening was nice i guess but thats as far as i'll go.

The dub got some points for sound though. It was nicely casted and every character managed to keep up the insane amount of energy that the show demands. Todd Haberkorn basically lives for roles like Nagasumi so his was about as natural as can be. I need to mention Bryan Massey who was Shark Fujishiro. I wish he did more voice acting for anime because his voice is unique and badass. He is Ladd in Baccano and here did a great job as the shark. Chris Sabat is Masa and he used a slightly different tone than his normal one but it landed up working out fine. The adaptive script as a whole was okay but it had a couple issues though. Lunar referred to herself as "we" instead of "I" when talking about herself and some of the slang that Sun used was very awkward. It could be the goal but it did urk me quite a bit.

Final Words- If you are solely looking for a laugh then this show isn't a bad place to turn but if you are expecting an original plot then you might as well look the other way. It suffers from lack of direction and certain characters who are more irritating than funny. Oh and its a harem...

Was it weird? Yes. Was it stupid? Yes. Was it funny? Absolutely. This was one of the most hilarious shows I have ever watched and I could not stop laughing. That alone earns it top marks from me.