We Got Married (Japan)
私たち結婚しました
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
Celebrity pairs play newlyweds for the cameras; the interest is how quickly rehearsed intimacy starts to feel real.
We Got Married is ABEMA's remake of the Korean MBC show, billed as a marriage mockumentary. Each season two celebrity couples are married for the length of ten episodes, with a proposal, a wedding, a new home and a honeymoon, and love missions devised by the manga artist Akiko Higashimura. When the season ends, so does the marriage. The actor Shohei Miura hosts from the studio. Five seasons ran from July 2021 to May 2024.
In the fourth season, from November 2022 to January 2023, the actor Yuki Kubota, the oldest husband in the series, is paired with the model and morning-television presenter Asuka Kijima, fifteen years younger, and the actor Toshiki Seto, twenty-seven, with the actor and model Ayaka Konno, twenty-three, the youngest wife yet. On the first day Kubota suggests they drop formal speech. Offered a handshake, a whisper or a kiss by a mission, he chooses the kiss; he cannot boil an egg. They find they both love a drink, and the studio teases them for drinking in every scene. In his home town, Hiratsuka, he tells her about his setbacks and the audition at twenty-six he had decided would be his last chance. She tells him about the year at twenty-one when she nearly gave up, and later cries that the image of a woman who always copes has become a weight. Seto, shy and indecisive, apologises after a mission kiss on the cheek, and the quick, cool Konno leads, until on their honeymoon in Kanazawa he takes charge, shouts that he loves her and gives her earrings.
On the last day Kubota's final mission tells him that his wife is Cinderella and must be put in a car at midnight. Kijima sobs; he holds out, then cries, and they kiss goodbye. His parting letter describes the shy, stubborn, hard-working woman behind her public image, and his parting gift is an egg-boiling kit. Konno, who rarely shows her feelings, weeps too, and asks Seto for a last kiss.
Starring
Shohei MiuraHost
An actor who hosts every season from the studio, joined in season 4 by the comedy duo Chocolate Planet.
Yuki KubotaHimself
An actor and the series' oldest husband, relaxed and affectionate, who cannot boil an egg and cries at the parting.
Asuka KijimaHerself
A model and morning-television presenter, fifteen years younger than her husband, who learns to let him see her weaknesses.
Toshiki SetoHimself
A shy, indecisive actor of 27 who wants to be more manly and finally takes the lead on the honeymoon.
Ayaka KonnoHerself
An actor and model of 23, the youngest wife in the series, cool and decisive, who weeps at the parting.
Why it matters
We Got Married stages the part of love that dating shows usually stop short of: the marriage itself, rehearsed for ten weeks by two people who know it will end. ABEMA's producer said the choice was deliberate. Marriage is a life event that women in their twenties and early thirties, the audience the show was made for, have to face one way or another, and a show about being married rather than getting together could show a couple getting through a difficulty and making up for each other's gaps, not just scheming to win. The final episode of the second season passed a million views. The format is openly artificial, missions and all, which is what makes its moments of candour strange to watch: a presenter known for coping, crying about the effort of always coping, beside a husband she will lose at midnight. How much of that tenderness is performance, and whether it matters, is left open.