MARRIAGETOXIN

Episode 9

So there's some good news and bad news with this week's episode. The bad news is that despite the near perfect first impression Kimie got to make last time, she ends up taking a bit of a backseat here in favor of more wacky battle shonen fare, which up to now hasn't really been the show's strongest feature aside from the animation quality those battles provide. The good news is that while that weakness hasn't necessarily gone away, the show does at least do a much better job of leaning into the absurdity of its fights, and while it's not exactly perfect, it's at least pretty fun.

Following up on Kimie's predicament from last time, Gero and the others end up at an island belonging to the Beast Clan where most of the episode ends up centering around a couple of fights. The first one sees Piichi getting pitted against a giant squid which on its own isn't too exciting, but is aided immensely by the bit of him looking at a video of how to prepare squid and using it to cut it to ribbons which is easily one of the best visual gags the show has rolled out so far. However, that's practically nothing compared to the main event where Gero gets pitted up against the Bird Master, who might take the cake for having the funniest assassin gimmick the show has featured to date. Rather than being some shadowy mastermind or unstoppable force of nature, he's a man with but a simple dream: to someday go to America and convince the MLB to adopt his new sport called Birdball so everyone can play baseball while flying around on a flock of birds. It's pretty dumb even by the standards of what we've seen from some of the show's other master killers, but it's also the kind of setup that's so outlandish that it circles back around to being genuinely hilarious, and it was really hard not to root for this guy as he hovers around on his birds while making baseball references. Alas, he doesn't really seem to be much more than a one off character, so no matter how silly his gimmick may be, it doesn't really amount to much when Gero's poisons can do just about anything (including letting him run on water apparently). I mentioned before that the fights in the show wavered a bit too much between running on rule of cool and trying to have some semblance of internal logic to them to fully click with me, but when we're dealing with a guy who visualizes being on a baseball mound while commanding an army of birds like attack drones, I think it's safe to say that logic is flying right out the window on this one, and I'm all here for it. Seeing the show fully embrace that chaos made this fight way more entertaining than I expected, and I got an extra special kick out of the Beast Clan's attempts at superhuman eugenics experiments resulting in the Bird Master leveling up to become the Bird Spear Master, and brandishing a spear made of random birds which was so out of left field it really was next impossible not to laugh it. Again it kinda makes me wish this guy had managed to stick around for longer and it's a shame it looks like kicked the bucket, but for the screentime he had, he more than served his purpose.

On the note of the Beast Clan, for as much fun as the baseball guy was, I'm a little more mixed on their leader, Dogo. His desire to experiment with the blood of various Masters to create more powerful hybrids does make for a good immediate threat, and his motivations actually clash pretty well with marrying for the sake of happiness, as he only values people for their genetics and thus believes that Gero would be better off finding a partner who befits his supposedly elite bloodline rather than settling for someone like Kirie whose failure to inherit all the skills of the Beast Clan have made her disposal to them. That's all well and good thematically, but as an actual antagonist, I find Dogo a bit too cartoonishly evil for my liking, and while I'm all for villains chewing the scenery, that's kind of all he has going for him at the moment, so by the time we got to his fourth or fifth slasher smile I was already starting to get a little exhausted of his presence. It's also a bit of a downer that, as mentioned before, Kimie doesn't really have much to do here aside from wallowing in the idea that Gero shouldn't waste his time on someone like her since she doesn't see herself as worthy of him. It fits pretty well with the themes here, but also doesn't really do much to push her on screen chemistry with him, and since MARRIAGETOXIN is still meant to be a romance series as much as it is an action one, I'd like to see the arc doing more to sell them as a potential couple. Since the episode ends with her and Gero deciding to work together to stop Dogo, I'm a little more optimistic that we'll get some better interactions with them next time around, but for now it's a bit of a sore spot on what's otherwise been the show's most entertaining outing so far.

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