Crossover With Non-anime Series Fan Fiction ❯ Terdwilicker's Anime Reviews ❯ More Than A Married Couple, But Not Lovers ( Chapter 38 )

While the premise is unlikely, the result is a satisfying romance with remarkable depth, a character study between four people. The nerd and the Gyaru are forced to pretend to be married, sharing living space for most of the school year. They still attend classes like normal, but they come home to their shared apartment, cook and eat together, get recorded and evaluated on their empathy and romantic ability with each other (not sex, but compliments and sensitivity to emotions) in order to graduate. It is a weird show, a different variation of Ai Yori Aoshi, the original anime about an arranged marriage and romantic complications, and it works reasonably well. The interruptions via cellphone social media poison is something that apparently Japan can't remove either.

Overall this was a nice show and worth watching. The scoring system on their interactions is probably the MOST unrealistic part of this story, even more than putting two compatible teenagers in the same living space and expecting them not to boink. No school would actually do this, even if school teachers are dumb enough to believe that emotional intelligence is real and can be measured. 

Rather than treat this as an unrealistic slice of life comedy, instead take it as metaphor about expectations, appearances, and empathy, in the most positive and kind-hearted way. It isn't remotely realistic, but it is meant to generate 'aw shucks' feelings in the viewer.

The downside of this show is that if you've had a real relationship, it will make you angry. The characters brush past and ignore really serious misdeeds that in real relationships WILL cause divorce/cheating/suicide, and the story doesn't take them seriously at all, which suggests the author has no personal experience with relationships. They might in fact be: a virgin.