Perfectly Arranged Marriage / Anime & Manga

• Kaoru and Aoi from Ai Yori Aoshi. The twist is their families had annulled the Arranged Marriage before the plot even began, but the couple confirmed they did truly love each other and reestablished the engagement by their own will.
• In Basilisk, Gennosuke Koga and Iga-no-Oboro's betrothal is arranged in order to put an end to the long-standing war between their respective families. Conveniently, they both fall in Love at First Sight (as kids, in the anime; as adults, in the manga). Later, things go straight to hell And they end up Together in Death.
  • In a sort-of variation, it's mentioned in the manga that Gennosuke actually was not the first option for Oboro. Her grandmother Ogen had thought at first of engaging Oboro to her second-in-command, Tenzen Yakushiji, but decided against it since she didn't fully trust him. Considering that Tenzen turned out to be a ninja version of the Evil Chancellor and the series' especially cruel and sadistic Big Bad, she was right. Obviously, that didn't stop him from trying to get Oboro as his puppet bride after Ogen's death.
• In Black Butler, 10-year-old Ciel has an Arranged Marriage with his cousin Elizabeth. Interestingly enough, even from the beginning, there's no objections or Slap-Slap-Kiss from either side, and both of them take it as being natural and are rather fond of each other. Of course, they are only kids... It ought to be noted as well that three years later in the manga, despite all the awful things that happened to Ciel that left him orphaned, abused, atheist, and a little too grown-up for his age, Ciel's love for Elizabeth is even stronger. And she does her best to protect him, now that she has taken a level in badass.
• Teharu Kosukegawa in Change 123 finds out that his father has engaged him to marry the daughter of the man who saved him from a bear. Kosukegawa, who is already in a close relationship with Motoko (Multiple Personalities notwithstanding (they're even helping)), and naturally goes up to the country to politely turn her down. Until the girl in question turns out to be Motoko.
• DARLING in the FRANXX centers around a team of state-assigned mecha pilot pairs whose relationships (although not always romantic in nature) are surrounded by sexual metaphors. Many of these pairings don't work out—whether because of cruelty, Incompatible Orientation, or just plain incompatibility—but Ichigo and Goro were friends even before being paired and Goro has always loved her. By the Distant Finale, they've gotten married for real.
  Ichigo: Thank you for being my partner.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba presents two examples:
  • The Ubuyashiki family, lords of the Demon Slayer Corps, have their leaders afflicted to an accursed disease that eventually eat away their bodies in their youth; thus, to ease the burden of this curse the Ubuyashiki head is always paired to a woman descended from a family of priests that have watched over the Ubuyashikis since they were cursed. In the present, Kagaya Ubuyashiki and his wife Amane continued this tradition; however, they are actually very much in love with each other, Amane seeing her marriage beyond mere duty.
  • Tengen Uzui, the Sound Hashira, is married to three beautiful kunoichi as per custom of his former Shinobi clan. The original intent was for Tengen to treat them as mere breeding tools to produce more children to the clan, and eventually sacrifice themselves in a mission if needed; however, Tengen is not as cold blooded and heartless as his former clan, he actually wanted a better life for himself, Hinatsuru, Suma and Makio, which led them to defect, prioritizing their happiness together.
• Yura Kawada and Makoto Onoda, the main couple in Futari Ecchi. In a variation, the relationship is arranged via a matchmaking service.
• Yomi and Noriyuki in Ga-Rei -Zero- are engaged to be married by their fathers. Yomi's adoptive father did give her the choice to call off the marriage if she didn't want it, but she still accepted while pretending it was a sense of duty. The truth was that Yomi and Noriyuki do love each other. Sadly, tragedy strikes Yomi and their engagement gets cancelled by Noriyuki's father.
• Used in 70s shoujo manga Haikarasan Ga Tooru, where the Hanamura and Ijyuin clans arrange a marriage between Benio Hanamura and Shinobu Iijyuin before they were even born. Plucky Girl Benio refuses the idea at first, but when she sees that Shinobu is a genuinely Nice Guy who does care for her, she starts falling for him. And then, they become Star-Crossed Lovers. Until the Bittersweet Ending, that is.
  • There's also a variant in this: Benio and Shinobu's engagement was arranged as a sort-of compensation for a love match that couldn't be consummated, between Benio's now-deceased grandfather and Shinobu's beloved grandmother who raised him instead of his parents. Therefore, Shinobu initially accepted the arrangement more calmly than Benio because he wanted to fulfill a promise to his grandma that was made decades ago, and then he met Benio and fell for her genuinely.
• In This Corner of the World's main plot starts when main character Suzu gets a proposal of marriage from Shuusaku Houjou, a man she's never met, seemingly out of nowhere (or so she thinks) and her parents accept the marriage terms for her when she comes home late. Despite how sudden this is for Suzu, she does gradually grow to love him back.
• Kashiwagi from Kaguya-sama: Love Is War explains in late chapters that while she was asked in typical high school romance fashion, she was still calculating that this boy was from a good enough family that her parents would have arranged to marry her with, so by picking him, she protected herself from an unwanted Arranged Marriage.
• Macross 7: Possibly Mylene and Gamlin. It's pretty clear that Gamlin loves Mylene and would have no problems with marrying her. Mylene, for her part, likes Gamlin well enough, but it's an open-ended question (including to herself) whether she loves him or not. Another complication to the matter is that Mylene is, at the end of the series, a mere 15 years old and really isn't too interested in thinking about marriage just yet.
• My-Otome goes through the setup for this with Mashiro and Takumi - both escape from an arranged meeting that Mashiro's staff hopes will lead to better things and meet incognito in the poor side of town. Mashiro is definitely crushing big-time on Takumi by the end - and then he gives a scathing critique of her performance as queen, and his aides announce that the purpose of the visit was to announce the complete isolation of Takumi's kingdom.
• In Maison Ikkoku, Shun Mitaka is introduced to Asuna Kujou by way of an omiai arranged by his uncle. She is head over heels in love with him. He, on the other hand, objects strongly to the union at first, partially because he is in love with Kyouko, but also because of her large number of dogs, of which he is deathly afraid. However, after accidentally proposing to her due to a misunderstanding, he warms up to the idea a bit more, and eventually falls in love and marries her.
• Zigzaged in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED: Athrun and Lacus are childhood friends, and supposed to marry by their politician fathers' decision. They manage to be nice to each other. Then government breaks, Athrun's father declares that his son's marriage is out of the question and he must track down Lacus and her father as criminals. He finally sides with Lacus and both escape. When they reunite, they also learn that Kira and Cagalli, who get along really well… are actually brother and sister. No words exchanged, they agree "you can have Cagalli, I can have Kira? Great!" and are no longer interested in each other, except as friends.
• My Happy Marriage: Initially, Miyo's family, the Saimoris, sent her away to be married to Kiyoka Kudo (who is rumored to be a cruel man) believing that he might kick her out after finding out she has no supernatural abilities. To their surprise, the two soon form a close bond, with Miyo gaining more confidence in herself and Kiyoka opening up to her and turning out to not be a bad person.
• One Piece plays with the trope.
  • An Arranged Marriage is set up between "Black Leg" Vinsmoke Sanji, roped against his will, and Big Mom's 35th daughter, Charlotte Pudding, The two are perfect for each other, with Love at First Sight on both parts, similar tastes, and the groom's charms and gentlemanly behavior immediately work on the Nice Girl bride. However, there are some major problems: first Sanji is a member of the Straw Hats and doesn't want to leave his crew and dreams behind, and second the other person who arranged the marriage is Sanji's very abusive Archnemesis Dad Vinsmoke Judge. Since simply backing off the marriage isn't an option because of the parties that organized it, the bride decides to sacrifice her happiness with her groom-to-be to help him escape... but the groom, whose Parental Substitute and True Companions are being threatened if he doesn't comply and who loves his bride a lot, rejects this when she not only learns of his Dark and Troubled Past but brings up the matter directly to him. Unfortunately for Sanji, Pudding is evil and was acting like a sweet girl and is in fact planning to kill him along with the rest of the Vinsmoke family just so Linlin can take away their cloning technology. Perfectly Arranged Marriage? It was a Honey Trap... Fortunately, after a short Heroic BSoD, Sanji keeps his Nerves of Steel and decides to return to the Straw Hats to fight back, soon finding out Pudding's heartbreaking reasons to be the way she is. And a while later, Pudding is actually falling in love with Sanji, as he was among the first persons who truly treated her well.
  • Big Mom's other daughters, Praline and Chiffon. Praline is head over heels in love with Aladine, and Chiffon and Bege are deeply devoted to each other and their child Pez. The marriages Big Mom arranged for them are so happy, in fact, that they're willing to betray Big Mom for their husbands.
• The h-manga anthology Oni Bride begins with the story "Oni Bride," in which a human young man reunites with a young oni woman who he hadn't spoken to since they were children. When he asks her why she's in his house only wearing an apron she reminds him of their peoples' history, in which in order to maintain the peace between them, a member of each group would be selected to marry a member of the other group, and she reminds him that they were selected to marry when they came of age, and she shows him the things she learned during her "wife training."
• An earlier arc in Ouran High School Host Club featured two students in an arranged marriage to seal a business alliance between their families. However, they do already love one another: the boy is an Insecure Love Interest who wants to go abroad so he can be more appealing to his girlfriend, but said girlfriend is hurt because he made the decision without consulting her. Of course, the Host Club can't help but make sure the misunderstandings get cleared up... using the most convoluted means as possible.
• Juda and Alexandra in Red River (1995)... sorta. When Ilbani sees how well the two are getting along, he checks that Juda's legal spouse died in the plague and then decides to arrange for the two to be officially wed. Side materials confirm that the two were very Happily Married.
• Shaman King, between Yoh and Anna. She, at least, is definitely in love with him (she comes right out and admits it at least once, although not to Yoh's face). Yoh's feelings, while a little more ambiguous, definitely include affection for Anna (albeit mixed in with a healthy dose of fear). During the Osorezan Revoir Arc -where we see Anna and Yoh's first meeting- it's explicitly shown that it was Yoh who was the first to fall in love. By the second half of the manga we see just how much Yoh cares for Anna; he puts her above everyone else he knows. For example, when the X-Laws tell him to quit the Shaman Fight in exchange for bringing Ren back to life, he starts off by thanking everyone else for helping him get that far, then apologises to Anna and Anna alone, even though there were others who would have been disappointed because one of his reasons to become Shaman King was a promise made to her.
• The premise of the series Sore wa Totsuzen, Unmei no Aite ga or Suddenly, the Marriage Partner Showed Up. In the near future, a Japanese government organization called the Coupling Center proposes matches based on genetic compatibility. A person has the right to turn down a coupling, but no protagonist has done so yet. The Pilot chapter was about a sibling pair determined to have superior genetic compatibility, and the series seemed determined to address the very real issues of such a system making matches that violated existing social mores and personal psychology; but after that it slipped into more conventional romance fare with other couples, using the Coupling Center as a plot device to shortcut past Cannot Spit It Out territory and other romantic obstacles. (The brother/sister pair are shown still struggling with so much as a kiss in their Distant Finale epilogue of volume 1, at least, making it clear they haven't been able to overcome the Westermarck Effect yet.)
• In Twin Star Exorcists, Rokuro and Benio are betrothed against their will because The Prophecy says their child will save the world. They do not care for this - especially since they're barely teenagers - but understand that the other isn't to blame and eventually fall in love.
• Subverted for comedy's sake in Urusei Yatsura. Ryuunosuke Fujinami and Nagisa Shiowatari, at first glance, seems like they were tailor-made for each other; they're a Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy pairing taken to the extent that they're both Wholesome Crossdressers, not to mention a Bishōnen and a bifauxnen to boot, they both have insane fathers who were so set on having a child of a specific gender that they raised them as the opposite gender, and they're both badass martial artists. The problem? Ryuunosuke hates pretty much everything about Nagisa, because she desperately wants to be a normal girl and Nagisa has gleefully embraced his mixed-up gender. Add in Nagisa's other negative traits, such as his gluttonous appetite and his constant hugging, and Ryuunosuke can't imagine a less appealing spouse. Ironically, Nagisa is absolutely head-over-heels for Ryuunosuke, although he refuses to change who he is to make her more comfortable.
• Played with in The Vision of Escaflowne, with Princess Millerna Sarah Aston and Prince Dryden Fassa. She and Dryden are a mild version of Belligerent Sexual Tension as Millerna's put off by his facade and Dryden is a snarky Guile Hero. (Not to mention Milly has a huge crush on Allen). They grow fond of each other as the series advances, and then they get married - and then the trouble starts. And when it's all solved, Dryden calls off the engagement: he cares for Millerna and might be in love with her at that point, but he feels he still has to work hard to become truly worthy of marrying a girl like her.
• The Wallflower: Local Bishōnen lady killer Ranmaru has wealthy parents who set him up in an Arranged Marriage. He initially tries to get out of it by making the bride-to-be, Tamao, hate him. Though he could easily just break off the engagement himself, it's pretty clear he has no intention of doing so and as the story progresses it seems he really does develop genuine feelings for her. It helps that she just might be the only woman alive who is willing to love him despite his ladykiller antics. Heck, she might be the perfect match for Ranmaru because she may be too innocent or otherwise strong-willed to be thrown off by Ranmaru's usual antics. Ranmaru himself is affected by this as the only time he ever seems to show any guilt about his womanizing is when he's forced to see how it hurts Tamao.