I Got Married to the Girl I Hate Most in Class

I Got Married to the Girl I Hate Most in Class (クラスの大嫌いな女子と結婚することになった) is a 12 episode romantic comedy based on the light novel series of the same name by Amano Seiju.  The anime aired during the Winter of 2025.

    High school senior Hojo Saito is the presumptive heir to the Hojo conglomerate a successful corporate empire.  He is the top of his class, liked by everyone and generally serious and reliable.  His classmate, Sakuramori Akane see's him as her arch enemy and eternal rival.  She does everything he can to make sure he understands her distaste for him.  Her aggression comes from an unknown place but Saito deals with it the best he can, mostly rolling with it but pushing back when her attacks become to severe.  Much to both of their shock and horror they are forced by their respective grandparents to elope.  Saito's grandfather, the current head of the Hojo conglomerate and Akane's grandmother grew up together and had a similar situation in school a their grandchildren.  In their twilight years their past has become rose tinted and they begin to regret not acting upon something that may have been.  They begin to se each other but that is not enough to satisfy their regret.  So, in order to prevent the same mistake from potentially recurring and to live vicariously through them, they are forcing the marriage of Saito and Akane.  In order to ensure it happens they threaten to remove both kinds dreams if they don't comply.  While they are currently enemies, their grandparents hope forced interaction and closeness will foster something else.

    Relenting under life altering treats both newly minter adults relent and soon find themselves living together, even forced to share a bed.  They do their best to establish ground rules and divide the duties of the household but their past can't be ignored and combat ensues on a regular basis, largely from Akane.  In reality she harbors deep seeded feelings fro her rival but lacks confidence in her determination.  She struggles with what she wants in this situation especially when he presents indifference and annoyance at having to be married to her.  She begins to question what she truly feels as jealousy begins to creep in, particularly with his younger cousin, Shisei, who is uncomfortably close with Saito.  Akane struggles with her best friend Himari and her feelings for her husband, feelings the gyaru has expressed since the first day of high school.  Saito himself is just trying to prevent as much tension in his life as possible as he maintains an eye on his future.  Of course, all of this needs to be hidden from everyone to prevent as much trouble as possible.  But how easy is it to hide that your living together, let alone married in high school?

    On the surface this is a terrible series.  The premise is terrible and haphazard, almost all of the characters are annoying and sometimes problematic.  We have seen a lot of the hooks and jokes and mysteries countless times before.  There is one that is lifted almost directly from Nisekoi in which Kaito yearns for a girl he met at a party once when he was younger, that he had a connection with.  There are a few uncomfortable moments when someone related to Akane arrives and causes a lot of...havoc. Yet, I watched the entire thing and by the end of it was watching in on release day weekly.  Something about Akane and Saito was pleasant.  Their entire circumstance and everyone around them was terrible and outlandishly stupid.  But they were agreeable characters, even if Akane was a by the book tsundere.  I don't know, I just really liked them.  Saito is level headed and mature.  He does what he can to respect Akane's boundaries and doesn't fall into the rote of being a twitchy virgin at every moment.  The story was its most engaging when it began to delve into Himari's feelings for Saito and her actions once the marriage was revealed to her.  Himari herself is a typical trope as well, the flashy, buxom gyaru who only presents herself as a bimbo but is quite intelligent in her own right.

     While over all its not a good package, it had some enjoyable parts.  The character design isn't bad and there is a healthy dose of chibi used for effect.  There is some questionable content choices at times, but over all its a wholesome story about coming to tears with your feelings.  I may have to check out the light novels, to see how much deeper the story goes, as there is quite a bit of the background that's left to interpretation.  Either way, its not good, but its better than Nisekoi or Rent-a-Girlfriend.

The series was simulcast on Crunchyroll.