365 Days to the Wedding (Kekkon Surutte, Hontou Desu Ka?, "Are You Really Getting Married?") is a Romantic Comedy Slice of Life manga written and illustrated by Tamiki Wakaki (creator of The World God Only Knows), which was serialized in the seinen magazine Big Comic Spirits from March 2020 to June 2023. The manga is licensed in English by Seven Seas Entertainment.
Despite working together at a Tokyo travel agency for a couple of years, Takuya Ohara and Rika Honjoji barely know each other. They've never had a conversation about anything not related to work. Takuya finds Rika's gaze intimidating, and he's had a tendency ever since childhood to get flustered and find himself unable to promptly respond when spoken to. Meanwhile, Rika has all but convinced herself she's going to be alone forever because surely nobody could ever be interested in a relationship with a person whose hobbies are things like poring over maps and collecting rocks.
Then the company announces that they're opening up a new branch in Irkutsk, Siberia (Anchorage, Alaska in the live-action adaptation) to get ready for a predicted wave of interest in travel from Japan to Russia. Someone in the office will suffer the fate of being transferred to staff the new branch, and it's made known the higher-ups want to pick a single person so that a whole family won't be uprooted for the dreaded assignment.
To avoid either of them being the one chosen, Rika and Takuya hatch a plan to falsely claim they're getting married, thus removing themselves from the pool of single potential candidates for the transfer. However, it quickly becomes clear that the pair of introverted loners have badly underestimated how much work it will be to maintain the charade of their impending nuptials... and then things get more complicated when their fake relationship starts to stir real feelings.
In July 2022, a live-action series adaptation was announced under the name Map for The Wedding; it was licensed by Amazon for English streaming and can be watched here
. In April 2023, an anime adaptation was announced.
Are You Really Getting Married? contains examples of:
- Adaptation Distillation: The live-action adaptation concludes with a Time Skip one year after Rika and Takuya marry, excluding the subsequent plot of the manga.
- Adaptation Expansion:
- The live-action version has more dramatic moments and is less clean-cut than the manga, excluding the more comedic aspects of the original; the adaptation also has more third-party interference on Takuya and Rika's relationship.
- Takuya and Rika start getting affectionate somewhat earlier than in the manga.
- In the manga, no one but Takuya and Rika is aware of their scheme, but the live-action adaptation introduces an eavesdropper (Komiya) for dramatic purposes.
- Ms. Kurokawa takes the reassignment overseas out of wanderlust and her husband protests but understands that this is what she wants; in the adaptation, it's her husband who encourages her to take the post.
- In the manga, Rika's mom doesn't bring up an alternative marriage prospect for Rika, as she's made aware of the engagement with Takuya later in the story. The adaptation brings up an acquaintance of Rika's mom who's set up by her to stir her daughter's pot. Likewise, Aoi doesn't pursue Takuya in the manga, while she does in the adaptation.
- In the adaptation, Gonda continues pursuing Kaori, while he stops in the manga.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- Takuya and Rika honestly believe that they can tell their supervisor they're getting married and carry on in the office just as before, and that after someone else is chosen to transfer to the new Irkutsk office and some time passes everyone will forget all about it. They're completely taken aback when everybody wants to know details of how long they've been dating and throw them a congratulatory party.
- Rika tries to bring Takuya to the most boring date possible by following map locations in order to dissuade him from the engagement, notwithstanding that Takuya would be seeing her at her element, her most passionate and her very best. They end up kissing.
- Eating the Eye Candy: Rika suggests Takuya take his shirt off for a while at home as a way for them to get more comfortable with each other (she gets too embarrassed to have him touch her anywhere more intimate than her upper arm), and then can't take her eyes off him.
- Faint in Shock: Both Rika and Takuya when they suddenly find themselves the center of attention in the office after informing their superior of their "engagement."
- Ferris Wheel Date Moment: Rika and Takuya have one, sort of, when Rika visits an amusement park as research for a fabricated backstory of their non-existent romantic relationship and Takuya turns up.
- Follow in My Footsteps: On their second trip to visit Takuya's family in Aso (and their first since changing their fake engagement to a real one), Takuya finds out his father wants him to move back home to take over their family business, complicating Takuya and Rika's relationship just when it was blossoming.
- Grief-Induced Split: George split from his wife because their son died in a surfing accident.
- Harassing Phone Call: Takuya gets one from an unknown caller who claims they know his engagement to Rika is a lie.
- Karaoke Bonding Scene: At an office karaoke outing, Rika awkwardly sings a love song that uses a metaphor which incorporates her love for cartography, which leaves her embarrassed to the point of mortification. Takuya, however, admires her bravery for trying.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: Takuya has taken in an injured stray cat he names Kama, gets needed veterinary care for the animal, and spends a lot of time trying to win his trust, although Kama still tends to spend most of his time hiding behind the TV. When the new Irkutsk branch is announced, Takuya blurts out that he can't transfer because he has a cat - his first thought isn't the inconvenience and hardship of moving to Siberia, it's that Kama would be left without a home.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: The live-action series may have changed the setting for the reassignment from Siberia to Alaska due to the 2022 Russia/Ukraine conflict.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: What Rika and Takuya are trying to avoid with their charade engagement. The manga's assignment is to Siberia, while the live-action adaptation is to Alaska.
- Shotgun Wedding: What some of the other travel agency employees speculate Rika and Takuya are having when they announce an engagement without anyone ever knowing they were even dating.
- Sleeping Single: When Rika and Takuya first start cohabiting, the former tries to sleep in a camping tent set up in the middle of the apartment. Even as of the latest chapter after they've decided to make their engagement real, they still sleep in separate beds, and they become hopelessly flustered when the bedroom is mentioned while looking at new, larger places to move in to together.
