ホタルの嫁入り

HOTARU NO YOMEIRI

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
Not Available
RELEASE
January 12, 2026
CHAPTERS
79

DESCRIPTION

On the surface, Satoko has it all—she’s beautiful, the daughter of a nobleman, and at a prime age for marriage. Unfortunately, she is also quite ill and only has a short time left to live. Before she can secure a marriage that will redeem her worth in her family’s eyes, she finds herself the target of the mysterious assassin Shinpei, and her plans are put in jeopardy. In order to save herself, she makes a desperate proposal—of marriage! When it comes to love, however, Shinpei takes “until death do we part” seriously.

(Source: VIZ Media)

CAST

Shinpei Gotou
Satoko Kirigaya

CHAPTERS

RELATED TO HOTARU NO YOMEIRI

MANGA RomanceOjou-sama to Youjinbou

ANIME DramaHotaru no Yomeiri

REVIEWS

eeazybreezy
73/100
for those who like their MLs devoted and FLs with some spunk!
oof, yeah, that ending's as bad as people say. i SOBBED.
i was surprised when i saw no reviews, so here's my humble opinion as a new user of this site and a longtime shojosei fan :D

firstly, just to to make it clear, i actually really liked this one! i'd say that if you can handle some really contrived plot points near the end, it is an enjoyable experience overall.

furthermore, i am a sucker for male yanderes. i wanna make this known because if you are not a sucker for male yanderes, this one's probably not for you. goto, the ML, never hurts the female lead but others are fair game for him. he's also just very obsessive, which i understand may be a turn-off for some people. i'd say he's the opposite of tsubasa of hana yori dango, or nathaniel from obey me, in terms of how he treats FL.

HOWEVER, if you are a sucker for male yanderes, and especially for soft yanderes, this is the one for you.

goto is cray-cray. definitely not sangwoo or anything (killing stalking still haunts my nightmares), but he is CRAY-CRAY. lemme tell you, this man had me fangirling. he loves satoko and only only satoko, and you can tell lol.
and unlike a lot of FLs, satoko's a very strong character, and the relationship is not one-sided. one-sided relationships are a big turn-off for me personally, because it just creates this power dynamic that icks me out (e.g. - your average ceo/yn, or duke of the north/villainess). although goto is physically stronger than satoko, the relationship is very equal compared to a lot of other romances because he reveres satoko so much. likewise, satoko's decisions are made with goto in mind. it's not exactly fluffy sweet healthy relationship either, but it isn't a situation where you're like "why is she even with him if he treats her like that?"

plot-wise, i definitely had my issues. i disliked some of the strange plot twists near the end, which really messed with the story. the major plot twist is ok, i didn't mind it, but some other ones i was just like "was there any need?"
i feel like in the middle, there are also some sideplots added to pad out the story, which were annoying at times, but also allowed for cute FL-ML moments, so i'm neutral.

now for the infamous ending. i don't think the ending was as bad as it could've been. yes, satoko and goto are seperated for many years, and it's implied that goto dies and they're reunited in death. it is very sad and honestly out of the blue, but we knew since the beginning that she was sick. however...as a reader, you just want them to be happy. and with how much they struggled, it feels very unsatisfying to have satoko die just like that. if we got some happy moments between the two as satoko gets sicker and sicker before dying...i feel like that could've been a good ending. but either way, i think the ending is okay. not great, but not disgusting either. it's not wonder egg priority by any means.

overall, for my final rating, i thought the character work in this manga was very good. i definitely got attached to every character, especially FL and ML. the plotting could've been tighter and more logical, and the ending definitely threw me off, but it's not a bad manga by any means. a comfortable 7.3/10, and a recommend for those who like their MLs with a screw loose!
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matsutake
75/100
One of my favourite series of all times, and the ending that almost ruined it.
It's weird to only award this a lukewarm rating when for so long it was my absolutely favourite manga. Is it fair to say that a bad ending ruins everything? I constantly debate this with myself: I spent three years loving this manga with all my heart, no complaints, only enthusiasm and excitement, so is it fair to say that a single chapter - even if it was the finale - ruined all the fun, tears and laughter that it has given me throughout the years? Maybe it is unfair, but in this case, I'll just have to settle for being unfair.

Hotaru no Yomeiri has a very complex plot from the point of view of what it discusses: trauma, illness, death, betrayal, power, terror, abandonment; but it is a very simple story when it comes to its main theme, which is a boy-meets-girl romance at its core. No matter how complicated the plot got, no matter how it blossomed into many other sub-plots, no matter how many characters were added or subtracted, the story remained always tightly structured and supported by the developing romance between Shinpei and Sakoto, which in a romance manga is a rare feat, since it's so common that these works start off with a small core focusing on the main couple and then, as it radiates and expands, I lose track of what captivated me to begin with, and consequently often lose interest in the manga completely. This never came close to happening with Hotaru no Yomeiri: the art never faultered, the script was always exciting, the developments were always captivating, and I rooted for Shinpei and Sakoto's relationship and personal growth like I rarely do for romance characters. And I couldn't wait to see where it was going!

That is, until the final chapter.

Which, if you were paying attention on the day of its release, was... not very well received, to put it mildly.

I never expected Hotaru no Yomeiri to have a happy ending. In my mind, a sweet happily-ever-after ending would probably have to involve several deus ex machina developments that would feel contradictory to the story's constant struggle. It was never easy for Sakoto and Shinpei, both as individuals as well as a couple: both carry a baggage of trauma that is not easily to let go of, and they are being persecuted and targeted all the time by different powers, so it was always hard to imagine that they would end up together at all, let alone happy. So the tragic, sort of open-ended final chapter was not unsatisfying because it was tragic or open-ended: it was unsatisfying because it betrayed its characters and everything we had learned about them so far. Sakoto dying at the end was almost a given for me and I believe it was that way for everyone who was reading it without the expectations of a shoujo manga; so to have her not die and instead live a healthy and content life without Shinpei felt worse, as a plot development, than to have her die when it looked like it, not because it was sad, but because it made no sense relating to everything we had learned about these characters. To have Shinpei, who was quite literally a maniac for her, a classic yandere who's only purpose in life was to follow her and love her suddenly just go away without even making sure that she was dead, or stay for the ceremonies that would've followed her death, to simply disappear without a trace and just leave her and the life they had together behind so easily and so immediately was a betrayal of his core values and traits. That's what felt so horrible about the ending: to make the ending possible, the main characters had to ultimately be transformed, their personalities altered at the last minute.

Some people understood it differently, that the final scene where Shinpei gets the letters and reunites with Sakoto after decades was actually just a product of his imagination, or that he was also about to die or already dead, meaning that the final scene was just a sort of dream - hence why I said it was sort of open-ended. That also doesn't fly that well with me though, because if that is what was meant to be conveyed, it was done in too concrete terms to look like it was an illusion. Not to mention that Shinpei reading the letters in old age was the very first scene of the entire manga - it's crazy but it's true, I was shooketh when I went back and read it - which to me signals clearly that the events that transpired during the final chapter - Sakoto's survival and recovery and their lives apart - were actually true. I do believe that the intention was to convey that they lived their lives apart and reunited in old age because I believe the purpose of it was to not give Shinpei an easy “way out”, that is, to not have a literal mass-murderer get a fairy tale ending just because we felt compassion and sympathy for him because of his relationship with Sakoto. In my opinion, that was the reason why they were separated, and again I have to add that this would've been fine with me, as long as the execution of this idea had been done without the back-bending betrayal of the main characters ways and values, Shinpei's in particular.

So, again, is it fair to leave all the three years of loving this series “go to waste” just because of one chapter? Is the first impression more important than the last? Is it possible to ruin a delicious meal with a sour dessert? These are endlessly debatable. But when I think of Hotaru no Yomeiri from now on, after it's completed, I can't in a good conscience say that I think the overall work is as good as the experience of following it as it came out. I'll always have so much love from the series and so many good memories of reading but, but I will always also have a mental asterisk next to its title whenever I talk about it with other people, because the way it ended really put me down. At the same time, if I meet anyone who's into period dramas and yandere couples, it would be tough to not recommend Hotaru no Yomeiri to them, and to just wish that they enjoy the ending more than I do! ♡

(And, to be clear: I'm still extremely excited for the anime, and I will eat it up and expect to love it regardless of anything critical I said above, lol.)
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