Girlfriend, Girlfriend

Episode 5

The last episode of Girlfriend, Girlfriend ended with our official introduction to the next potential harem member Rika Hoshizaki, a blonde and busty classmate who also happens to be a very popular YouTube vlogger. Last time, she discovered our bumbling trio's secret and I was very curious how the show was going to justify her being introduced without undoing any of the legwork the previous episode did in establishing just how far our band of idiots have come. What ended up happening did kind of subvert my expectations while also delivering on things that felt mostly in character with what had happened just before. Naoya's honesty about his desires while also acknowledging the fact that being intimate with anybody else would make his current girlfriends unhappy is a step in the right direction. I like the fact that him basically setting himself up as being immune to temptation is what caused Rika to short circuit and acted as the driving force for most of the episode.

Rika is very clearly someone who is used to getting everything she wants with her body so seeing her turn this into a battle of pride felt like a smart move that worked as a strong enough motivation to carry most of the episode. I'm not even sure if Rika genuinely has feelings for Naoya and they'll just explore that angle more later, but if she acts more as a consistent background character that just continues to stalk the main cast, I actually think that would be funnier moving forward based on what we saw here. Honestly, the biggest laugh I got out of this episode was the fact that our main trio genuinely don't really know what to do with her, and there's this sense that they're too polite to call the police when she's clearly trespassing on their property. I'm not sure if the episode was specifically trying to make fun of streamers in general, but seeing Rika stay up all night physically exhausting herself just for the sake of satisfying that pride is equal parts funny and, as a YouTuber myself, painfully relatable.

Also surprising was the fact that the final third of this episode dips into some more of that cute character writing that I appreciated from the last episode. I like that the show seems to have found this nice balance of establishing exaggerated character quirks with fairly believable and understandable conversations regarding relationship insecurities. We get plenty of fan service, but it feels mostly consensual when you consider the fact that these characters are trying to show themselves off for specific reasons. In fact, Rika using her body just to get attention ended up being a really clever contrast with how Saki and Nagisa are using their bodies just to grab the attention of their boyfriend. It all feels quite playful and my initial worry about introducing a third girlfriend into the fray has been replaced with an even better appreciation for how far we've come.

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Girlfriend, Girlfriend is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.