Marry Them All/Sandbox



"Anime Tenchou: If you're a man, score all the heroines at once!

Hayate: Please hold on. "Score all the heroines at once"? Am I a rapist?

Maria: You don't like it?"

- Hayate the Combat Butler

In Love Triangles and more complicated situations, selecting just one suitor can prove to be a toughie. After all, the situation is there because he usually likes every girl to a degree and doesn't want to break anyone's heart or make them leave his company. Even if he likes one particular girl, there's little guarantee that the rest will be willing to accept his choice, especially in long-running harem series. This often happens when the love polygon devolves into Nakama and infatuations become close friendships instead.

So if First Girl Wins, Last Girl Wins, and/or Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends clearly aren't where the plot is going, there's another way to resolve the situation: Instead of choosing one girl, the protagonist simply marries them all and they all live as one large family.

The happiness of those involved depends on where on the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism the series is; the only way this kind of ending will not end in a perpetual warzone of a Dysfunctional Family with an emotionally-dead Henpecked Husband (Tenchi Muyo! GXP) or a bloodbath within the year (School Days) is if the wives are also close friends who love each-other like sisters (or something else).

See also Three and Polyamory. Contrast Dump Them All and No Romantic Resolution.