This Week in Anime

Is Rent-a-Girlfriend's Kazuya Bad or The Absolute Worst?

Steve
Nick, it's that time of year again. The seasons are changing, the leaves are falling, and we have to take out the trash.

The receptacle is RIGHT THERE too. That's such an irresponsible screenshot.

There's no justice in this world. And lest you try to lay all the blame on editorial, I do want to be clear that you're also on thin ice buddy. You got to cover RAG weekly and soften the blow over the course of 3 months. Meanwhile, I had to marathon this whole thing over the weekend so I could do this column with you. We are not the same, and I am in hell.

I'm just saying, I had about two days to cram in both this and the new Made In Abyss movie, and guess which one left me feeling more emotionally exhausted. Hint: it wasn't the one with the piss machine.

Actually, our track record with trash anime doesn't make that as clear a distinction as I wanted it to be, so let me elaborate: Rent-A-Girlfriend does not have a piss machine. Yet, anyway.

Good point, though I'd rather not let my synapses dwell on that possibility for too long. What is certain, however, is that during one dark night of the soul, Kazuya closed his browser, opened an app, and entered a magical and wonderous world full of girlfriends for rent.

It's funny, Werner Herzog actually put a film out recently about a fictional family rental service in Japan. I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds like the kind of subject matter he could do some interesting and sticky things with! Interrogate the human condition and economy and all that. RAG, on the other hand, sticks with what it knows, and what it knows is every harem comedy cliché in the book.

They suck, they don't grow or change, and we barely learn anything about them as people. It's a big freaking issue from minute one of the show. The inciting incident is Kazuya breaking up with this then-girlfriend Mami, but we're never told why they started dating in the first place, or why they broke up. In fact, we're never told! The entire impetus of this show is a black box—not done to create mystery, but ignored because the narrative just doesn't care.

Ohhhhh man, is that ever the single most frustrating thing about Rent-A-Girlfriend. It believes it can get away with anything as long as each episode lets Kazuya wallow in self-pity for a few moments. It really wants him to be a brooding male protagonist who just wants to grow up and change, AND be the inexplicable women magnet the genre asks him to be. RAG never comes close to putting in the work to make that anything close to tolerable.

Like, there's a canyon-sized gap between self-awareness and self-actualization. RAG just constantly stops at the self-awareness step, claps its hands together, and moves onto the next cleavage close-up.

Yeah, like, I get it. Breaking up with your first girlfriend sucks. I'm not saying I handled it swimmingly either (and actually I was around Kazuya's age then), but I also didn't channel that into a whole bitter manga/anime.

Oh undoubtedly. She's my fave, and the only character I have any sympathy for, because, like me, her only coping mechanism is subtweets.

She's fantastic, but it doesn't change the fact that the narrative treats her like some kind of unknowable chaotic force whose sole obsession is messing with the protagonist. That's not great!

You heard her, girls! It's your responsibility to be a band-aid to every sad and misguided boy you come across. And given the slice of that population I've seen online, you've got your work cut out for you. Good luck!!

It'd be one thing if that weren't a narrative that had already saturated the romance genre, but it is, and RAG doesn't do enough on top of that to differentiate itself. Not even in an enjoyable terrible way.

The only explanation we're offered is that she's just that irreparably charmed by his...whatever his personality is. I mean, this is a show that had him stalk her for an entire episode, and in the end, after he was found out, she gave him a present.

Don't worry, she was very cross with him for all of 20 seconds!

Lol I think this was the point at which I had to take a break and do something else. Just a staggering combination of Sudden Onset Anime Sickness and falling off a boat in the world's most improbable fashion.
I also think we need to address the story's real villain:

So there's a serious (and completely unexamined by the show, naturally) reason the the grandma is the villain (blah blah older generations forcing outdated values and standards on younger generations blah blah). However, the not-so-serious one is arguably more heinous: she's why the show changes from "rental girlfriend romcom" to "whoops we have to pretend we're dating for real! hope we don't fall in love or anything haha" romcom. And that's the lamest thing.

I'm fine with fake dating, but why would you do fake dating when you have a perfectly good rental girlfriend setup that's also literally the title of your show? Like, do something interesting with that! Anything. Please.

Depends, is she going to inexplicably fall in love with Kazuya and immediately negate the rental girlfriend thing yet again?

Hey, I do like her ribbon.

Nick, please stop teasing me with better romcoms we could have watched, or else I'm going to tell on you to Lynzee.

Editor's Note: After mulling over Steve's report, Nick has to watch Eiken for a future TWIA column.

Buddy, you've got a big storm coming.

On the other hand, though, he really should like her tweets. That's the least he can do.

Oh yeah, speaking of bragging rights, another very uncomfortable thing about RAG is the sheer volume of scenes with strangers ogling him and his gf-of-the-day together. There's a ton of unexamined exhibitionism going on there. A better story might have turned that into a commentary on Kazuya's pathological need for external validation based on archaic and patriarchal ideals, but, well, y'know.

It's bizarre and gross, especially because it centers the "hapless" dude as the object of harassment. That's, uh, not how things shake out in reality.

And because RAG is RAG, it shows a modicum of awareness regarding this, before continuing to ignore it.

To be fair, despite not saying much, she still gets stronger characterization than the majority of the cast.

That is, I know things about her that do not relate to Kazuya.

Give me a full series! A show about a student stumbling through the rental girlfriend business despite being a weirdo Precure-loving shut-in? That legit sounds great!

Godspeed and giddy-up, Sumi. I do actually want to say one nice thing about Rent-A-Girlfriend: it has a pretty darn good eye for fashion.


Yes that means the pink crocs too.

Look, my taste in fashion is just like Mami's taste in music: impeccable.

The show definitely has some spunk to it, I'll say that.

ANYWAY, I kinda hated Rent-A-Girlfriend, which I hope comes as no surprise if you've made it this far. I would not recommend it, and I would especially not recommend watching all of it over a single weekend. No amount of masturbation jokes can salvage this one.

Circumstances are dire, and RAG didn't even have the decency to end. At least, for now, the suffering is temporarily attenuated.

Excuse me, I've got some very important tweets to make.