In sickness and in health
MARRIAGETOXIN (マリッジトキシン) is a 2022 comedy/action manga written by Joumyaku and illustrated by Mizuki Yoda.
Hikaru Gero is the young heir to the Poison Clan, a high-ranking clan of assassins that specializes in the use of poison to kill their targets. Uninterested in marriage and relationships, Gero is willing to let the clan die with him, up until the matriarch of the clan threatens to force his lesbian little sister to produce an heir instead. Hoping to save her, he begs the aid of his latest target Kinosaki, a beautiful crossdressing marriage swindler experienced at seducing either gender. Can Kinosaki help Gero find a woman that Gero can truly love and be loved by in return, or will the brutality of life in the underworld crush their search for romance under its foot?
The manga began serialization online in Shonen Jump + in April of 2022.
Tropes
- Acquired Poison Immunity: The Poison Clan members, of course. Gero also kills a target in the first chapter by disguising himself as a chef and secretly building up his poison taster's immunity.
- An Aesop: Kinosaki's advice about dating is all good advice for anyone trying to find a partner:
- Good hygiene and dressing well helps you get through the door, but that's just the start, it just makes you a nice person to a stranger, not necessarily an available partner if you don't have something that actually attracts them.
- Dating is a numbers game so you always have to be willing to meet more people. In that sense, doing things like signing up for dating events or sites can be just a good way as any to meet possible romantic prospects.
- Being vulnerable and opening yourself up will help you forge a deeper bond with a romantic partner.
- Don't force yourself to act cool during a date and be nice to your date. At the end of the day, a date is a successful as long as both people had a good time with it.
- Personality and talent are both attractives to possible partners just like looks, people often fall in love with musicians, artists, athletes, and doctors because of their skill in a determined field.
- Arranged Marriage:
- Considering the Poison Clan and its sub-clans' occupation, it doesn't come as a surprise that this is a common occurence.
- It happens later on to Makoto, who gets forced into a marriage after her father is taken hostage.
- Assassin Outclassin': Every arc involves Gero trying to defeat an assassin who's gunning for the arc girl's head.
- Author Appeal: A very noticeable trend is for the arc girl to get Bound and Gagged in often very suggestive ways. One can easily get the impression that the author is just into that sort of thing.
- Central Theme: There's a shoe for every foot. There's someone out there for everyone. This is illustrated by the story being the quest of finding someone for Gero, after seeing his little sister and his best friend both finding someone, despite the challenges they have.Kinosaki: There are all kinds of people out there. If you bare your soul and show your true colors, like you just did with me, you'll eventually find someone ho's interested in you.
- Chekhov's Boomerang: Gero's water-absorbing polymer. It's introduced as an item he uses for party tricks, but it is used to save Ushiro from falling off of a cliff, and then again to defeat Naruko.
- Chekhov's Gun: In the first chapter, the character of Gero's best friend, the Bug User Assassin, who says he intends to get hitched soon after finding a good woman. The end of chapter 19 shows Gero receiving an invitation for his wedding ceremony through a butterfly.
- Cool Big Bro: Both Gero and Kinosaki are loving older brothers willing to put everything in line for their younger siblings. Gero changes his life plan of ending the Poison Clan with him the moment his sister (a lesbian with a girlfriend) is threatened to be forcibly impregnated otherwise, while Kinosaki only turned into a marriage swindler to gather money for his younger brother's medical expenses.
- Darwinist Desire: Dogo shows disdain for the idea of Gero, someone who has the impressive blood of the Poison Clan, to be married with Arashiyama, a specialist whose powers waned over time until she became the Hamster User, losing power over other kinds of rodent. Gero is disgusted at the thought of choosing a wife in such a way and has nothing but positive feelings for Arashiyama.
- A Day in the Limelight: The bonus chapters will typically be short vignettes focusing on characters who haven't been in the story for a while.
- Evil Matriarch: The grandmother of the Poison Clan, aside from leading a family of assassins, is obsessed enough with the continuity of the clan that she threatens to have her lesbian granddaughter forcefully impregnated for the sake of producing an heir.
- Evil Uncle: Gender-inverted. Shiori's aunt Futae believes that she's the rightful heir to the company that Shiori's late father had left to her, and sends assassins to kill the girl. Gero finds himself being hired by Shiori's uncle to protect her from her aunt.
- Face of a Thug: Toshiki, a Bug User Specialist and Gero's best friend, is a huge, intimidating-looking man with numerous facial scars and a guttural voice. However, he's actually a polite and kind man.
- Fitness Nut: Shiori's uncle is seen lifting weights or otherwise exercising in almost every scene he appears in. He even has a 10-kg cellphone case to make sure that he's still lifting something even when not actively working out.
- Hitman with a Heart:
- Gero not only has a major protective streak for his younger sister, but he also refuses to kill anyone that he doesn't think is a bad person.
- Gero's friend Toshiki is also a hitman, but he's shown to be an otherwise kind and polite man.
- I Want Grandkids: Pretty much what started the story—if Gero's grandmother didn't go as far as to forcibly impregnate his lesbian sister out of this trope, he wouldn't seek Kinosaki's assistance otherwise.
- Make It Look Like an Accident: Naruko, a Sound User assassin, attempts to kill Gero's client Shiori by using hallucinations to either make her try to kill herself or fall off a cliff, as making it look like an accident or a suicide is better than simply murdering her. Even Gero admits that part of the job for any assassin is to keep investigations away from their client, and committing an obvious murder is counterproductive.
- Master of Illusion: Naruko is able to use his sound waves to cause hallucinations in the people he targets. He is capable of making Shiori try to kill herself by causing her to see her dead father, and later causes the group of students camping to see the image of a god to convince them into trying to kill Shiori as a sacrifice.
- Punch-Clock Villain: A number of the assassins Gero goes up against, such as Ushio and Naruko, are shown to be pretty agreeable people for the most part, even if they do kill people for a living. Justified in that very few people actually choose to become an assassin; the vast majority of them are simply born into that life.
- Punny Name: Himekawa's shark is called Jawshua.
- Rescue Romance: Invoked. Knowing how bad Gero is with normal means of meeting people, Kinosaki makes the plan of having him take jobs that involve protecting or saving women, creating an opportunity to make them see him in his best light: fighting to help them, which puts his charm in full focus and enhances the chance of them falling for him.
- Serial-Killer Killer: Piichi is an assassin hunter who aims to eradicate the Beast Clan after hearing that they're planning something terrible. Along the way, he also kills many other specialists whom he deems a threat to his dream.
- Shout-Out:
- During their practice museum date, when Gero finds the first DIY Candy ever made, he says he feels like the Neanderthal that found a monolith.
- Ushio uses water to make the "Menacing" onomatopeia (ゴゴゴゴ) commonly used in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
- The top 5 enforcers of the Beast Clan are named The "Beast Stars"
- The game that Sakazuki is playing on chapter 67 is clearly meant to be Dark Souls, down to similar UI and a "Victory Achieved" message screen.
- In chapter 70, when Heiwajima and Sakazuka force Makoto into marriage using her father's memories as a bargaining chip, they laugh in a manner identical to that of Mahito and Sukuna in Jujutsu Kaisen during Junpei's Cruel and Unusual Death.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Shiori and Gero bond over a shared interest in magic and party tricks. Their final interaction in the end of her introductory arc has them showing their new tricks to each other.
- Threatening Shark: Completely averted with Jawshua, Himekawa's shark buddy, who's just a big ol' cuddly guy.
- Unsettling Gender-Reveal: The first chapter ends with Kinosaki revealing he is a man, much to Gero's surprise. Chapter 2 follows immediately after that, showing Kinosaki's very male, nude body taking a sexy bath and even offering to let Gero confirm he is male by seeing him naked.
