With how light last week’s episode was on comedy, I have to say that swapping out the usual opening narration about Gero’s quest for a bride with one about Naruko’s search for “healing” was a gag that really caught me off guard. It didn’t exactly leave me rolling in laughter, but it was still a bit of a relief to see that the show can still play with people’s expectations, even as it delves into more standard action fare. I’d say that actually kind of set the mood for this week’s events because for as much of last week’s runtime was spent on the duel between Gero and Narumi, its conclusion actually ends up being pretty short, leaving Shiori to steal the spotlight this time around. It’s a welcome shift in priorities, and allows for what we get here to be a delight from nearly start to finish.

I suppose if I had anything close to a major nitpick, it’d actually be with the conclusion to Gero and Naruko’s fight. Visually it looks about as gorgeous as every other action sequence in this show, and more than delivers when it comes to presentation, but the sudden explanation of Naruko needing to breathe in the restorative given off by trees to restore his stamina was a really abrupt way to wrap up the fight, and the second he even mentioned needing to breathe in gas, it was pretty obvious that this could only end with him taking a whiff of Gero’s poisons. I mentioned in my last review that I tend to prefer my shonen fights on the simple side rather than trying too hard to get technical, so in that respect I don’t mind a win condition that’s a little silly, but the outcome here does feel a little forced. It gets the job done well enough that it’s hard to get upset about it, but outside of their visual quality, I can’t say that these kinds of battles seem to quite be MARRIAGETOXIN‘s strongest suit.

That’s okay, though, because the fight isn’t really all that important to the rest of the episode and doesn’t even serve as the climax for the arc. That distinction goes to Shiori saving the day by attempting to break her classmates out of hypnosis through one of her stage magic tricks. Since pulling that off ends up requiring her to bluff well enough to fool them into thinking she’s an actual witch, it doubles as a way of showing she’s capable of putting on a public face when she needs to, and similar to how she dealt with Naruko’s hypnosis, it’s great that Gero’s overall level of involvement here is fairly minimal as she pulls this off largely on her own. That bit of character development is bolstered even further by the fact that Shiori’s fake magic show somehow ends up getting an even bigger animation showcase than Gero and Naruko’s duel, but with how well it makes for a satisfying climax to her character arc I’m glad that this got the bigger focus. I’m a little more mixed on Shiori deciding to both forgive her aunt and ask for her to serve as an advisor considering that she was willing to have her assassinated if it meant maintaining the family business, but despite featuring a bunch of assassins, MARRIAGETOXIN is a pretty optimistic show, so it’s not too hard to roll with it even if does feel a little odd.

Although Gero mostly takes a backseat to Shiori here, he still gets plenty of his own development. While Naruko’s backstory of being made to kill his brother in order to prove his strength is fairly par the course for fictional assassins, it does help draw a direct parallel between him and Gero when it comes to how their respective families pursuit of raw strength has shaped them into who they are now. With how much they’ve been raised to see ordinary people as weak and helpless, seeing Gero acknowledge that there’s a kind of strength in a person being able to face their weaknesses head-on the way Shiori did works as another good way of showing how he’s started to recognize just how flawed that mindset truly is. That also makes it all the more fitting that he decides to spare Naruko while advising him to try finding someone he can be vulnerable around, as it’s evidence that he is changing for the better and learning that life doesn’t have to be as dark as the world he’s used to.

It was also kind of nice to see Gero recognize that Shiori has too much on her plate to handle romance on top of it, but as good as that kind of resolution would be for his character growth, it also wouldn’t have made for good romantic comedy, so I’m glad this wasn’t where their relationship ended. It was pretty funny seeing Shiori ask him out for drinks, only for the two to barely speak to each other the whole time, and it’s clear that for as many strides as they’ve made in learning how to act confident, their social awkwardness is still here to stay. That tension does give Gero the chance to redeem himself with an actually cool magic trick as opposed to the gross rubber puke one from before, but it does make it all the more hilariously devastating when Shiori indicates she’s happy to make room in her life for romance only for Gero to miss every signal she’s sending that she’s into him. He might be making himself more dateable by the day, but Gero’s still got a long way to go before he can actually find a girlfriend.

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MARRIAGETOXIN is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.