Marry My Husband (Japan)
私の夫と結婚して
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Betrayed by husband and best friend, a woman relives her life ten years earlier and hands them to each other.
In 2025 Misa Kanbe is seriously ill in hospital. Her husband, Tomoya, rarely visits, and her only comfort is Reina Esaka, her friend since childhood and colleague at the company SUZUTOYA. Allowed home for a day, she finds the two of them together, lovers, discussing her life insurance, and Tomoya pushes her to her death from their apartment building. She wakes on 18 September 2015, ten years earlier, just before a presentation Reina once sabotaged. Her second life has a rule: what happened before will happen again unless someone takes her place. So she decides to hand Reina the fate that was hers, starting with Tomoya.
Wataru Suzuki, the head of corporate strategy and the chairman's grandson, keeps appearing at her side. He remembers her from university, sitting by a pond with a turtle, and has loved her quietly ever since. Misa lets Reina's envy do the work: whatever makes Misa happy, Reina wants. Tomoya turns violent again; Reina seduces him; Misa wrecks the meeting with his parents; Reina announces she is pregnant and marries him. At the wedding Misa thanks her, off microphone, for picking up the rubbish she threw away. Misa and Wataru fall in love.
Then the rule bites back. Reina, whose mother took her own life in front of her when she was a girl, realises she has been played and swears to destroy Misa; she was never pregnant. Misa's cancer passes to her senior colleague, Yuriko Sumiyoshi. And Misa learns that Wataru is living his life a second time too: in the first, he died when his car went off a railway bridge. He drives Tomoya to that bridge, meaning to make him take Misa's fate, and Misa stops him. Wataru finds Yuriko a specialist. Tomoya plots to kill Reina for her insurance, but she has already tampered with his brakes; he crashes, after calling Misa in tears to promise he will make her happy next time.
Reina lures Wataru to meet her and attacks him, while Misa, abducted with the help of her old boss, wakes in a Ferris-wheel gondola facing Reina. Injured, Wataru stops the wheel and reaches her. Reina takes her own life, as her mother once did, and Tomoya dies without waking. By spring Wataru and Yuriko have recovered. On 18 September 2025, the day Misa died in her first life, she thanks Wataru for her second one and asks him to marry her, and they kiss.
Starring
Fuka Koshibaas Misa Kanbe
An office worker killed by her husband and her best friend, who wakes ten years in the past and sets out to hand them to each other.
Misa Kanbe’s story
Misa's first life ends at thirty-six, when she finds Tomoya with Reina and he kills her. Waking in 2015, she learns her fate will repeat unless someone takes it on, and steers Reina into it: she lets Reina's envy draw her to Tomoya and, at their wedding, thanks her off microphone for picking up her rubbish. She falls in love with Wataru. When her cancer passes to Yuriko, she learns Wataru too is living a second life, and stops him sacrificing Tomoya at the bridge where he died. On a Ferris wheel she tells Reina she has always hated her and urges her to live some other way, apart from her; Reina takes her own life. Misa reopens a shop tied to memories of her father and, on the date of her first death, asks Wataru to marry her.
Takeru Satohas Wataru Suzuki
Head of corporate strategy and the chairman's grandson, who has loved Misa since university and is hiding a second life of his own.
Wataru Suzuki’s story
At university Wataru watched Misa with a turtle by a campus pond, and when the pond dried up he rescued the turtle, which he still keeps. In his first life he could only watch over her from a distance; after she was killed, he died when his car went off a railway bridge. In his second he keeps appearing at her side and, when she nearly falls, holds her and says he will never let her die again. When her cancer passes to Yuriko, he finds Yuriko a specialist, then drives Tomoya to the bridge, meaning him to take Misa's fate, until Misa stops him. Wounded by Reina, he still stops the Ferris wheel and reaches Misa. By spring he has recovered, runs his father's company and has gone back to his research, and Misa asks him to marry her.
Sei Shiraishias Reina Esaka
Misa's childhood friend and only close friend, who cannot bear to see Misa happy.
Reina Esaka’s story
Reina was a girl when her mother took her own life in front of her; unwanted by her father, she was sent to relatives in Toyama, where she met Misa. In Misa's first life she becomes Tomoya's lover while Misa lies ill. In the second, Misa uses her envy: she seduces Tomoya, fakes a pregnancy and marries him. When she grasps what Misa whispered at the wedding, she burns their photographs and swears to destroy her. When Tomoya plots to kill her for her insurance, she tampers with his brakes. With the police after her, she attacks Wataru and has Misa brought to a Ferris wheel. Misa says she has always hated her; Reina answers that she knew, and would never let her go. Urged to find another way to live, Reina takes her own life, as her mother did.
You Yokoyamaas Tomoya Hirano
Misa's husband in her first life, who turns violent and, in her second, ends up married to Reina.
Tomoko Tabataas Yuriko Sumiyoshi
Misa's senior colleague and deputy section chief, to whom Misa's misfortunes pass in the second life.
Reina Kurosakias Miku Suzuki
Misa's junior colleague and Wataru's younger sister, whom Misa saves from the false accusation that ruined her in the first life.
Why it matters
Marry My Husband remakes a Korean hit, and its Japanese version, a co-production directed by Ahn Gil-ho, was announced as the most-watched Amazon original drama in Japan in its first thirty days. Its pleasure is plain and old: a woman betrayed by a husband who hits her and a friend who envies her gets to hand them to each other. Its more interesting idea is the rule that governs her second life. Misfortune cannot be cancelled, only moved, and when her cancer lands on a colleague the revenge fantasy becomes a moral question: what does a woman owe the people who absorb the harm she escapes? The series answers with a romance and two deaths, but it lets the question stand long enough to be felt. Underneath runs a sadder story: a friendship built on envy, and a girl who saw her mother take her own life and was left with relatives because her father would not take her.