Toumei Otoko to Ningen Onna: Sonouchi Fuufu ni Naru Futari

Cute. Cute cute cute cute cute.

Not only are Shizuka and Akira an adorable couple, the show explores differences in lived experiences, where the details of these different characters' lives are affected through who they are and what that's made them. Not only do Shizuka and Akira get to understand each other better as a blind and invisible person, we get to see what it's like for Jarashi as an uncommon type of monster, and for Light and Karma as a mixed race couple. Despite being fantastical, most of the experiences are in some way applicable to real life.

It doesn't have the most ... incredible presentation, and there's the odd throwaway subplot or episode. Running a private investigation firm might sound interesting, but in the slice-of-life context, it feels like an unnecessary and often tedious complication. Despite the plots getting a little dry in the second half, the progression of the romance doesn't slow down too much, and Shizuka's chronic butterflies never cease to amuse.

If you are reading this and you’re a romance fan genuinely interested in this show, take the following review and my overall score with a grain of salt. I am not far enough up my own ass to not realize that my lack of enjoyment with The Invisible Man and his Soon to be Wife is not an indicator of the show’s quality. It’s probably pretty decent. I’m just not a fan of slow, sweet, fluffy romances, which is exactly what The Invisible Man and his Soon to be Wife is. Regardless, I will publish my honest thoughts regarding the anime, leaving my record.

The ... Invisible Man and his Soon to be Wife is fine. It’s fine I guess. That’s all I can really say.

The OST is alright. The ED and OP are cute. I especially like how the ED utilizes the turquoise coloring from the original web comic. Some shots of the ED are pretty boring, but the direction of both the OP and ED isn’t bad. As far as animation quality goes, I feel like the production committee was shuffled around partly through the series run, because after the halfway point, things start looking very interesting. I’m not a fan of the washed colors, but the animation itself becomes a lot more livelier and interesting to look at. (For some scenes, they even use flat coloring, particularly the opening dinner scene in episode 12!) The character animation is nothing on Frieren’s level, but it's still very charming to watch and gives a lot of personality to the characters.

To get to the point as to why I didn’t enjoy this series, I just couldn’t bring myself to care about the main couple. Like, at all. Shizuka was so kind and sweet that she didn’t leave much of an impression on me. I felt like she was way too embarrassed to do romantic stuff with Akira, despite her being an adult, and not a school girl. There may be an argument here about the infantilization of her blindness, but to be honest, her childish nature revolves around her identity as a woman rather than as a blind person. I guess it’s (probably) not ableism?

I have similar thoughts towards the male lead, Akira. The couple is just so Nice and Good to each other all the time, that it bored me. Shizuka and Akira are fantastic at communicating with one another. They should be, as grown adults. However, two people in a loving, healthy relationship just doesn’t make a fun show for me. I can see some people liking two mature characters going about romance maturely, but for me, I just couldn’t get invested in Shizuka squealing over Akira every five minutes, while Akira is the most respectful man of all time. It’s interesting that the two are in a relationship for 11 out of 12 episodes. Most romance anime tell the couple’s story before the confession even occurs (and even detail detours that happen after the confession). In that regard, one of the series' pros is how straightforward it is in coupling Shizuka and Akira. However, this little bit of intrigue wasn’t enough to keep me invested, or even invest me at all.

Losing interest in the romance, I found what actually kept my attention was the world at large. I found myself wondering what the politics of this society could be like, one where humans are simply one dominant species of hundreds, where creatures of all kinds (and all cultures) lived in peace. My favorite character was Jirashi, a bobcat anthro who had an episode to herself regarding her insecurity about her spotted patterns, and the difficulties of finding clothes that went with them. While I enjoyed this conflict regarding individual identity, I felt a bit disappointed that there didn’t seem to be any major socio-political conflict backdropping against our main couple. In a world where everyone is so vastly different, there has to be some interesting conflicts. If humans can’t tolerate someone who merely has a different skin color, I can’t imagine it’s all happiness and rainbows in a world where a high fantasy elf can be housemates with a sentient giant crab.

However, I am not so far up my own ass. The Invisible Man and His Soon to be Wife isn’t about this at all. It would be a bad idea for the show to focus on that aspect, because the show really only wants to and is only designed to revolve around our main couple, and how they interact with the world--and it wouldn’t be a feel good, fluffy romance, if there were socio-political drama. As much as I would like to explore the world at large, that simply isn’t the point of the show, and it shouldn’t be. Regardless, I still desired the musings of the world beyond Shizuka and Akira’s rose colored glasses

The supporting cast as a whole was mostly okay. I found that I didn’t love most of the nonhuman designs, as creative as the actual races could be. The dark elf/drow, Karma, is funny, but I didn’t feel very much at all for his and his wife Light’s conflict, especially in the last quarter of the series. Akira and Shizuka’s co-workers are also there. I liked the supporting gay couple, Daichi and Madaraito, but really only because they were a gay couple and were there. I am a fujoshi, but I am also a supporter of the LGBT community, so I appreciated seeing queer couples normalized in a setting that wasn’t explicitly a BL, especially since one of them was fat, and both the characters and narrative were extremely normal about that. However, they didn’t do much for me besides being eye-candy, I suppose. I already said most of what I wanted to say about Jirashi, and while I liked her arc, she also didn’t do a lot for me--and again, because as the show should be, its focus is on the main couple, and not their coworkers.

I’m going to have a hard time recommending The Invisible Man and his Soon to be Wife, because I didn’t enjoy it. Despite that, I can recognize its strengths, even if those strengths didn’t appeal to me. It’s hard to tell someone to watch a show you think is probably good but didn’t enjoy yourself. The Invisible Man and his Soon to be Wife will remain at this impasse for me. Perhaps traditional romance fans will enjoy it, but there just wasn’t enough edge to keep me satisfied.

(Spanish review on my list)

It's entirely my fault for watching this anime without thinking much about it... I saw the title and saw that the woman was blind, and I thought, "Okay, a society where there are only a few invisible people, and the relationship of how love has to prevail and how they both face discrimination—one for being invisible and the other for being blind, plus wanting to be together despite being of different species—but thanks to how they complement each other, the power of love will overcome everything!"

So I built up expectations... but nope... it turns out it's a modern society inhabited by ... different races and species of magic and fantasy (elves, furries, orcs, humans, invisible people, animal people, and more furries, etc.).

And well, it fell apart. After that, the world was quite... mmm... how to put it?... "good?" "pink?"... there isn't really a major crisis, nor marked discrimination. There is some mention of discrimination, and some characters feel uncomfortable in certain situations, but it's always due to their own perspectives and not so much because someone is being rude to them...

On the other hand, the protagonist is very much a prince charming and the girl is very silly and "sweet," so the relationship, even though they're supposed to be older, felt a bit like a schoolgirl's and was jarring...

I insist that the problem is that I had high expectations, and that's when you'll say:

"Hey Chamin, so you don't recommend this anime?" And I would normally tell you, "No, drop it."
BUT... BUT there's one episode... episode 11, that's going to make me recommend it and say it's a good anime. I really think it's the only good episode, and that's because they actually put effort into it. Even the animation is different. It presents a really good story. You can feel the characters and see their development. It's what I expected from the whole anime. And curiously, what holds that episode together is an extra character. But wow, what a great episode! I really enjoyed it. It's not like I was crying or laughing my head off, but it was a really good extra story with a great atmosphere that made me feel like the rest of the anime was worth it.

I'm not going to give it a super recommendation, nor am I going to give it a high rating because it's just one episode among the other 11 that aren't really worth it. But at least something positive came out of all this.

On second thought, I'm going to put it as "Not Recommended" to get attention, but actually I do recommend it (only chapter 11).