When I first started watching TMS Entertainment’s Anime adaptation of Rent A Girlfriend, I was very surprised by its realistic portrayal of an average college fresher-Kazuya Kinoshita. (You can read my immediate thoughts after watching the first episode here.
Kazuya, like most college freshers, is shown as an insecure, degenerate young adult who never had his way around girls. Kazuya like most freshers, free from the pressure and prejudices of high school is looking to make most of his college life, but he doesn’t know how to.
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Rent A Girlfriend: Kazuya and his ex
Being dumped by his first-ever girlfriend in just a month, which he like many other believed was beyond his league is a perfect confident crasher and Kazuya had been having a hard time dealing with it. Of course, it doesn’t help that his ex-girlfriend looked ravishing from the eyes of every passing, virgin, 18 years old, which further elevates his never-ending guilt of what he had lost.
Kazuya wandering deep in the chaos of his pain decides to rent-a-girlfriend which seemed like the most plausible solution to his disparity at the moment.
Renting a girlfriend is an actual thing
If you didn’t know, one can actually rent a girlfriend in a few of the Asian countries including Japan. As Chizuru( the rental girlfriend in the show) explains, later on, the concept of girlfriend renting exists in the first place so that shy, insecure man learns how to be comfortable around women.
Rent A Girlfriend: The Critique
For the first few episodes, that’s what the show’s ultimate goal seems to be and it perhaps remains the same by the end, but the way it tries to tell tumbles down the spiral so hard that all you can do is shake your head in disbelief, pull your hair and bang your head on the wall if you’re anything but less than 22 in real life. The problem with Rent A Girlfriend is that tells us exactly how not to get a girlfriend in the real-life instead of telling us what exactly a good if not ideal boyfriend type is.
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Kazuya is an obnoxious character to watch. More so because he’s so shockingly similar to what many of us are in that phase of life. He’s vulnerable, his inferiority complex is an all-time high and all he cares about is getting laid or having someone to love, and yes he also has a creepy yet strong relationship with his grandmother.
Rent A Girlfriend tries seemingly hard to convince its audience that being good at heart is somehow enough to be a good boyfriend which is not exactly the case. And if you’re a teenager who spends most of their life watching rom-com like these, you’ll probably believe it from the get-go and indeed never manage to get a girlfriend in real life.
Kazuya is a good person but he does all the wrong things, like stalking the girl he loves or lying constantly to the ones he cares about, not to mention the insane amount of money he spends on renting Chizuru every once a week that is just not realistically possible considering how Kazuya doesn’t have a part-time job for the major half of the show and is constantly ranting about how broke he’s always. But then nothing is realistic about this anime and you’ll get to know it from the get-go.
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Kazuya shows slight symptoms of borderline personality disorder, which means that he’s emotionally unstable and acts mostly on impulse and has trouble being alone by himself. This isn’t something serious, however. Most young adults go through this period which is eventually important for self-growth, but Kazuya is reluctant to improve himself, which in result, as I mentioned before makes him obnoxious to watch.
It’s not just Kazuya that’s just intolerable, however. His grandmother, who somehow sexualizes Chizuru( Kazuya’s rental girlfriend) every time they meet and consistently wants his grandson to get laid, which is, well aside the obvious humour is perplexing, to say the least. It’s hard to feel sympathetic for her and Kazuya’s relationship, which is only ever-present to depict Kazuya’s kind and caring nature, and also to cement Kazuya’s bond with Chizuru.
Speaking of Chizuru, who acts as a clumsy nerd in the college and as the ideal, eye-pooping, dazzling rental girlfriend boasting the highest ratings outside of it, is the only likeable personality in this show.
And that’s because Chizuru chooses to be closed-off which leaves a lot to be desired. Chizuru gives us a glimpse of her( pun intended) only when and wherever she wants to.
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In the early episodes, she promises Kazuya to be by his side until he finds an actual girlfriend, however, she does very little to actually help him, outside of gracefully demolishing his bank balance to pay off her film school fees.
One would think that a mature woman like Chizuru who has a purpose and sense of responsibility in life, may teach him the act of self-love and self-importance and self-growth, however, it’s she who gets drifted towards Kazuya by the honey-sweet compliments of him by his best friend, his grandmother and so on. This is the show’s biggest flaw.
It wants to portray how traits such as inferiority complex and self-loathing can be the biggest threats to understanding oneself and eventually be entitled enough for a girlfriend( or a boyfriend) but it does everything aside this to prove its point, at least in the first ten episodes. Perhaps, Kazuya does undergo personality changes and experiences a drastic growth by the end, but so far that process seems like a disaster, not to mention misleading and inappropriate.
Once Kazuya does get a temporary girlfriend who’s strongly attracted towards him, many would think that the show’s plot would take an interesting turn, however, all it does is introduce yet another obnoxious character in the form of Ruka Sarashina who falls for Kazuya just because he treats Chizuru, a rental girlfriend with utmost care and affection, and also who elevates her heartbeat unlike anyone else.
Ruka’s personality is a silhouette of Kazuya’s past self who was also incredibly clingy, desperate and full of self-doubts. Ruka’s arc could have been an interesting revelation for Kazuya as he witnesses life from a different perspective, but in turn, it makes Ruka straight up repugnant, so much that you may end up thrashing your screen with a chair and won’t even regret it.
Rent A Girlfriend has a strong concept for an anime but it fails to deliver anything worthy for someone’s precious time that could rather be spent doing anything other than watching this.
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