'Happy marriage' ~ when there's everything you want but something's missing

story and characters

The problem is as follows: I love it when the characters are bound to be together, especially when it's because of marriage, and their feelings start to develop only after that. Moreover, it's a josei, so the heroine is not the shoujo-manga 16-year-old-innocent-maiden, and the guy isn't a high schooler, and the relationship is more mature - at least it should be. Still, in fact, we get all those parameters right except for one thing - it didn't differ that much from shoujo in terms of maturity of the story. What we have here is a cool guy, in both senses of this word, and your usual emotional miss clumsy who's struggling to get him while in fact he's all hers already.
I mean, seriously. A guy who does nothing but repeat to her that she's his. And a girl who does nothing but trust him and then distrust him. All that because they both can't open to each other.
Oh, now that I put it this short it doesn't sound that bad, huh? Then, what's the reason?
Well... Maybe the reason is that there weren't any moments that make your heart skip a bit. Like, when you finally see a romantic scene it has to be a great pleasure to read it, but then you read it and don't get what you came for. And that there weren't moments that make your heart break because of sympathy. Because the actions of the characters were so unnatural that you couldn't really believe it happened that way. Because the characters were made of soap which changes its shape when you pour hot water on it. Because I simply dislike it when a heroine is lying on her bed in tears and just a few pages later she's eating supper merrily with the one that made her suffer as if the problem was solved by just one more 'no you can't go away from me'.
By the middle of the manga they finally manage to do IT, and I was probably supposed to be very happy, but I couldn't really understand how a 4-volume-long problem could be solved by a single phrase of the heroine, and why all her previous phrases were not enough. There is but one reason I can imagine - it's 'Hapimari', it's not 'Darling wa namamono ni tsuki' to have the characters do it in the second chapter. The latter made the readers enjoy every, every single chapter. The former was only keeping its readers by making them wait for IT to come.
THEN comes the second part of the manga. It's the time when the author has to use all her wits to create situations which would make the readers not_drop reading.
And the main object of the readers expectations is, of course, the white wedding dress. So we'll let them divorce not because it really was the only option, but because we need a chapter to show the heroine finally wearing IT and the characters finally have a proper wedding ceremony.

In the end, I'll tell you how it looks to me - it's a story about a typical Japanese family with a hard-working husband, clever and able, not coming home before midnight, but instead, having hard times dealing with the world of feelings and emotions; and a tender wife caring about him and waiting for him, though probably there's a difference from the usual picture that she's not a full-time housewife. In vol. 6 one of the Hero's female acquaintances utters an important phrase. 'What's with her? Does she think that if she cries a guy will come and save her?' I couldn't but agree. It's strange that the author even understands how her heroine looks in the eyes of other people, and still she perseveres with this type of a heroine. A heroine who doesn't have to actually do her best. She only needs to show that she's willing to. And occasionally develop good relationships and acquaintances.

That's how it should be in the eyes of the Japanese society. That's appropriate. That's welcome.

Graphics

There are mangakas who draw the readers' attention by their beautiful design, or colouring, or style. And there are those who don't. I have my favourites among both of them. And it just happens so that miss Enjoji captured my heart neither by the story, nor by art.

Conclusion

I was only going to let myself indulge in a romance for grown-ups, because when you're the same age as the heroine of josei you feel like you can possibly relate to her. Unfortunately, this manga didn't let me feel any pleasure, even if it was supposed to be a guilty one.
The manga definitely made me want to go and plunge into some very plain, naive shoujo, which I considered to be tired of when deciding to read josei instead.