Danica Davidson
November 29, 2010
Young love is intense. It’s even more intense when the girl’s father is always trying to assassinate the boy.
Nagasumi is a junior high school student who’s visiting his grandmother by the beach and goes swimming… even though he doesn’t know how. Pretty soon he’s drowning in the ocean, only to be saved by a lovely young mermaid.
Unfortunately for all those involved, it’s forbidden for humans to know about mermaids. That means either the mermaid has to die for betraying the secret, Nagasumi and his family have to die for knowing about mermaids, or Nagasumi has to marry the mermaid because then it’s all in the family so no big deal. After these options are explained to Nagasumi, of course he asks the mermaid to marry him.
The mermaid, Sun, agrees. She can even be human part of the time and join her fiancé on land. She has the same thing going on they had in the movie Splash: if her bottom half is wet, she has fins, but if she dries off, she has human legs. You would think everything’s all worked out, but her father isn’t pleased with the arrangement, and decides killing Nagasumi is still the best option. He even tries to snuff the guy out while Nagasumi is on a date with Sun. That’s what happens when the father is not only an overprotective merman, but also a member of the yakuza!
Even though there’s so much talk about assassination here, don’t be fooled. My Bride is a Mermaid is an out-and-out comedy. It’s not the strongest comedy or the most original, but it’s not bad, either. It definitely has its share of moments. It’s one of those outrageous, overly emotional comedies, if you know what I mean. Characters screaming over nothing with close-ups on their faces and drenching sweat beads running through someone’s hair. It goes for the exorbitant and unexpected, like when Nagasumi tries to win a goldfish at a fair and instead finds himself face-to-face with a chomping great white shark. Or when a cute little girl in a conch is yet another assassin who’ll do Nagasumi in before he dares carry out an inappropriate act like put suntan lotion on Sun’s back.
This is all based off the manga Seto no Hanayome by Tahiko Kimura, which to date has not been licensed for an American audience. The anime series runs 26 episodes, and FUNimation has released it in two collections. You may think that Nagasumi has it made since he’s engaged to a pretty mermaid, but episodes show how it might have been safer to stick to his own species.
Distributor: FUNimation
Available: Now
© Tahiko Kimura/SQUARE ENIX-Seto Project.
