Despite being the firstborn daughter of a noble family known for its supernatural abilities, Miyo is treated little different than a servant by her father, stepmother, and stepsister after not manifesting any supernatural abilities.
After years of abuse and neglect, Miyo is told that she will be married off into the Kudo household. Kiyoka Kudo has built a reputation as a cruel man, having chased off several fiancees already. Knowing that she can’t return home and will be left homeless if the marriage fails, Miyo is ready to bow and scrape. However, she finds Kiyoka Kudo to be a quiet, but kind man. Unfortunately, not everyone takes her marriage into the Kudo family so well.
This series is proof that not every romance anime has to be complex, dramatic, or intensely romantic to be good. Sometimes all it takes is characters that are impossible to hate engaging in those nice moments we enjoy romance anime for. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like My Happy Marriage, head on down below.
Anime Like My Happy Marriage
For Fans of Historical Romance
Taisho Maiden Fairy Tale
After losing his mother and the loss of his dominant hand in a car crash, Tamahiko Shima was exiled by his strict father to an estate in the mountains of Chiba.
Becoming a pessimist and determined to waste away in his uselessness, Tamahiko gets a surprise one night when his father bought a young girl from those who owed him a debt and sent her to live with him as his new bride.
Although he laments her having to marry someone like him, his new betrothed Yuzuki and her wealth of kindness become rehabilitating.
My Happy Marriage and Taisho Maiden Fairy Tale both take place in a similar time period where Japan was both modernizing and westernizing, leaving some cultural traditions to wane. While both series are historical romance anime, Taisho Maiden Fairy Tale does lack that element of supernatural.
Both series are about women being given to men as a bride, and having a rather slow-building but wholesome relationship with each other.
One partner in the romance is also rehabilitating the other in both series as well. While Kudo is rebuilding Miyo’s shattered self-esteem, Yuzuki is soothing Tamahiko’s deep depression.
Demon Girl Zakuro
Kei Agemaki is the son of a famous general, and as such joined the government upon becoming an adult. However, he has had a secret fear of the paranormal his entire life. This becomes a big issue when he is assigned to work in the Ministry of Spirit Affairs where he must work side-by-side with spirits.
Alongside half-spirit girl Zakuro who has a distaste for the increasing abandonment of spiritual beliefs spreading around Meiji Era Japan, Kei, Zakuro and the rest of the ministry work to solve a variety of paranormal cases.
Both My Happy Marriage and Demon Girl Zakuro are Meiji-set historical romance anime with a bit of supernatural action as well.
However, while the basic set up of both anime series is similar, the actual relationships within are quite different. Miyo is meek, Zakuro is rather aggressive. Kudo is strong and reserved, Kei looks strong and handsome, but has a timid side when it comes to spirits.
While both series have a building romance, Demon Girl Zakuro features more frequent action.
Emma – A Victorian Romance
Emma is a maid that serves a retired governess. While she enjoys her work and has long-accepted her place in working class society serving those above her, Emma longs to experience romance. Unfortunately, this is something that has not quite been fulfilled by the working class men around London.
One day, when the eldest son of a wealthy household comes to visit her mistress, a woman who had served as governess for him as a child, he and Emma form an immediate connection. However, as a member of the gentry, the strict lines of class division that separate the citizens of 19th century England stand firmly between them and their happily ever after.
While the Meiji-set My Happy Marriage and the Victorian-set Emma are two distinctly different settings, both series are historical romance anime that do well to showcase the time period while also having slow-building romances. However, Emma is a historical romance firmly steeped in realism, so there is no supernatural element to it.
While it is much more of a focus in Emma, both series focus on a bit of a difference in station between the female and male love interest. However, that difference in societal station is the primary roadblock to romantic progression in Emma where it is not so important in My Happy Marriage.
Both series do have the love interests like each other immediately, though. The only thing that stands between them is often other people.
For Fans of Arranged Marriages
Engaged to the Unidentified
On Kobeni Yonomori’s 16th birthday, it is discovered that her grandfather arranged for her to marry the mysterious Hakuya Mitsumine. Shocked, she now finds herself living with her future husband, his deceptive little sister, and her own perverted older sister.
However, Kobeni takes it in stride, adjusting to her new life and trying to learn more about the new additions.
Both Engaged to the Unidentified and My Happy Marriage are romance anime about an arranged marriage. However, Engaged to the Unidentified is set in the modern age, and often more of a comedy than it is a romance.
Both series follow female main characters that, one day, are told they have a husband inbound. While Miyo goes to live with her new husband-to-be, Kobeni has her husband-to-be as well as his sister come live with her family.
While Engaged to the Unidentified is really most enjoyable as a comedy, it still has some romance to it. Like My Happy Marriage, there is also a supernatural element to that romantic relationship as well, but the supernatural aspect is kept a bit more mysterious in Engaged to the Unidentified until later in the series.
A Galaxy Next Door
After the death of their father, Ichirou Kuga supported his two younger siblings on their inheritance and by taking up drawing manga. However, with tight deadlines, he finds himself in need of a new assistant to help him meet his schedule.
While growing dangerously near his breaking point, Shiori Goshiki takes the job. She is incredibly fast and also detailed, a real dream assistant.
However, one night while working late, Ichirou gets pricked by something on Goshiki’s body and suddenly finds out that now they can’t be too physically far apart without him suffering ill effects, but they are, according to the customs of her homeland, engaged to marry.
While both My Happy Marriage and A Galaxy Next Door are about two people forced into a slightly supernatural relationship with each other, A Galaxy Next Door isn’t necessarily an arranged marriage. It is more of an accident and actually gets in the way of her future arranged marriage that her mother was planning for Shiori.
Both series are romance anime, but perhaps the biggest thing they have in common is that they are slightly supernatural romance anime where the actual romantic relationship is surprisingly problem-free. Miyo needs a bit of a self-esteem boost from being loved while both main characters in A Galaxy Next Door have small personal issues they need to work on. However, the relationship between them is actually quite wholesome.
The World is Still Beautiful
Within the realms of the Sun Kingdom, it never rains. However, in the Principality of the Rain, the women of the family possess the ability to call upon the rain. So when the Sun King, recent conqueror of the world, Livius I decides to take a wife, it is only natural to pick one of the four princesses from the Principality of the Rain.
Nike Remarcier is the youngest and lost a game to her sisters, so she was chosen to go. Frustrated at her lot, she journeys to the kingdom and is surprised to find that the Sun King is not as scary as they say, and also that he is just a boy.
Although The World is Still Beautiful is a fantasy romance anime, it is set in an older period of time that makes it not too different from the historical romance experience presented in My Happy Marriage.
Both series are about women that are forced into an arranged marriage with a high-ranking man that has a reputation for cruelty. They are then pleasantly surprised to find those men much nicer than they thought.
While both series follow the slow-building relationship and the variety of problems that others cause around them, The World is Still Beautiful has a bit of an age-gap where the male main character is younger and still acts a bit childish at times.
As he is a boy, it also limits how far they go with romantic progression as well.
Kakuriyo – Bed and Breakfast for Spirits
Since she was a child, Aoi could see spirits. One day, while feeding a hungry spirit, she is whisked off to the hidden realm of spirits where an ogre states she will be his bride.
It seems her grandfather sold her off to marry him in order to satisfy his debt that he accrued at his inn in the spirit world. Instead, Aoi refuses and works off the debt owed in the bed and breakfast as an employee.
Similar to My Happy Marriage, Kakuriyo follows a girl told that she was arranged to be married to an ogre, who turns out to just be a handsome man. While My Happy Marriage is a historical romance, Kakuriyo still has that same vibe since it takes place in the spirit world at a Japanese-style inn.
The key difference is that Kakuriyo doesn’t start out as a romance. It actually starts out as more of a food and hospitality anime as she starts her own restaurant on the property to pay off her debt. It also occasionally manifests some reverse harem elements, but there is a clear main romance between her and her arranged marriage partner that has the same sort of “quiet, dignified, and kind” air to him like Kudo.
For Fans of Loving Unwanted Women
The Ancient Magus’ Bride
After being abandoned by her family, Chise Hatori is a 16-year-old teenager without hope.
In order to not have to worry about herself, she sells herself to slavers, only to be purchased by Magus Elias Ainsworth.
There, she is told she will become his apprentice and, in the future, his bride. Together, they work to build a relationship and work to control her own magus powers that will eventually result in her early death.
Not unlike Miyo kind of resigning herself to being a wife to her supposedly cruel arranged marriage partner, The Ancient Magus’ Bride starts off with the main character selling herself into slavery for a place to live, content to eek out a meager existence for whomever bought her for the short remainder of her life.
Both stories take those sad beginnings and transform them into a positive romance where their new “owners,” for lack of a better word, are kind and serve to rehabilitate their self-esteem and self-worth through kindness.
Both series do well to balance the growing romantic relationship with the supernatural-fueled drama in the show. While both series enjoy their drama, The Ancient Magus’ Bride tends to go with bigger, occasionally more action-oriented fantasy drama.
Furthermore, both Chise and Miyo have a particularly rare power that is considered a danger to herself and others. It also makes them both pretty coveted by others.
Violet Evergarden
After the Great War and her time in it came to an end, Violet Evergarden is adrift. Her purpose was once only battle, and now she must find a new one.
After recovering from the loss of her arms, Violet takes up a job at the CH Postal Services. Here she transcribes people’s thoughts into what should be emotional letters. While the “emotional” part seems to greatly escape her, she aims to learn how to move people with words.
Both My Happy Marriage and Violet Evergarden are historically-inspired fantasy romance anime about girls who are basically just walking empty shells. Both Miyo and Violet have had all the worth beaten out of them to the point where they are barely even people anymore. These series are about their rehabilitation.
The key difference is that, while Violent Evergarden does manifest a romantic element later, it is – for most of the series – an emotional drama, not a romance. The main character is rehabilitating herself by learning from the emotional experiences of others. Miyo, alternatively, is being rehabilitated from love.
Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts
After hundreds of years of war between the kingdom of beasts and the neighboring human kingdom, a peace treaty was signed. The conditions of this treaty say that humans must offer a sacrifice to be devoured by the King of Beasts every year on a particular night.
Sariphi is the latest sacrifice to be sent, adopted by her parents to specifically protect their true-born daughter. Despondent after learning that truth and feeling like she has no home to return back to anyway, Sariphi is fine with dying and unafraid of the King of Beasts.
Intrigued by her lack of fear, the King of Beasts begins to grow closer to her, and when the day of sacrifice comes, he defies his advisors and decides to takes this interesting girl as his wife.
My Happy Marriage and Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts feature female main characters that are raised more as servants by their family than people. So naturally, both series start with their parents telling them to go to their new husbands.
However, while Miyo is just being sent to a cruel man, Sariphi is being sent to be killed by the King of Beasts. Once there, they discover that these cruel men are actually kind, and the men themselves grow quite fond of their new brides.
While both are romance anime, because Sariphi is a human and now to be the actual queen of the Beast Kingdom, Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts is more focused on the drama that comes from that. Like My Happy Marriage, her actual romantic relationship is wholesome and problem-free.
Bibliophile Princess
Ever since she was a child, Elianna Bernstein has preferred the company of books to people. As such, when she is proposed to by Crown Prince Christopher, she believes that she is just a temporary fiancee to protect the royal family from the schemes of other noble families.
Yet, when Christopher appears to be getting closer to another girl, Elianna looks up from her books and realizes that she is not as indifferent to him as she thought. What’s more, Christopher was never anything other than in love with her either.
What you have in both My Happy Marriage and Bibliophile Princess are two female main characters that suffer from a devastating self-confidence and self-esteem problem. They believe themselves not really worthy of the love from their male love interests, men of a higher station of nobility than themselves.
However, those male love interests love them almost immediately and unconditionally. This means the meat of the series is actually about that love rehabilitating those girls and making them feel worthy to stand by their side as a wife.
Both series are the sort of romance anime where the main couple gets along perfectly. The drama of the series is actually spawned by everyone around them.
Raven of the Inner Palace
Within the imperial palace, the emperor lives with his consorts. One such woman is the Raven Consort, who does not perform night time duties and remains in solitude.
This Raven Consort, a title currently held by the young Liu Shouxue, is charged with handling spiritual matters brought to her – everything from finding lost items to sending on spirits. It is even said that she can perform curses.
After living her days often undisturbed, she is visited by the young emperor Xia Gaojun, whose visits become even more frequent as the pair bond and she assists him in unraveling the spiritual mysteries of the inner palace.
Both My Happy Marriage and Raven of the Inner Palace are clearly historically-inspired, but they are ultimately fantasy romance anime for the supernatural elements they include. Raven of the Inner Palace goes a step further by being set in a fully fictional world, it just happens to resemble Imperial China.
Both series follow girls with a mysterious power that are kept secluded from others until a high-ranking, stoic but kind man takes an interest in them.
The catalyst for this is an arranged marriage in My Happy Marriage whereas Raven of the Inner Palace is a bit more complex surrounding a newly crowned emperor taking an interest in a mysterious consort that he is not actually supposed to interact with.
While My Happy Marriage takes much longer to get to Miyo’s power, Raven from The Inner Palace is more focused on unraveling the mystery purpose of the Raven Consort. My Happy Marriage is more dedicated to the relationship, but you also see it building in Raven of the Inner Palace as well.
Ultimately, both anime are about once-lonely girls building positive relationships with others, both romantically and platonically.
Do you have more anime recommendations like My Happy Marriage? Let fans know in the comments section below.
