Kanojo, Okarishimasu

So I wrote a post a while back comparing two mangas with each other. At the end of the post, past the reveal for my best girl in Kaguya-sama, I mentioned Kanojo, Okarishimasu. It's a manga I was reading long before the anime announcement and I feel like I should give it its fair share of commentary before the anime actually comes out in July.

I honestly didn't want to talk about it but the trailer was recommended in my feed for some reason and I felt it necessary that I get something written about this out there.

The English title for the anime is Rent-A-Girlfriend. It doesn't exactly explain much but here's the synopsis: Main character Kazuya gets dumped by his hot girlfriend and decides to rent a girlfriend using an app (yes, it is a thing people do in reality apparently) to get over his loss. The rental girlfriend, Mizuhara, turns out to be extremely hot and perfect that Kazuya decides to give her a low rating on the app because of his inferiority complex. She then berates him for it and things cut off there.

Or at least it should have but Kazuya instead rents her again to present her to his hospitalised grandmother. Then of course, grandma tells the family how hot and perfect this girl is and he is forced to continue renting Mizuhara and hijinks ensues.

Sounds like an interesting rom-com right? You wouldn't even be surprised if I told you other rental girlfriends get involved later because harems are apparently the new norm right? Sounds silly, sounds fun, sounds like a good time.

Well unfortunately, I do not share the same sentiment. The anime looks stunning and the voice cast is basically the Konosuba crew sans Ai Kayano who portrayed Darkness. Definitely a stellar choice there. TMS Entertainment is also a rather good studio from what I've seen. Again no issues there. The issues are actually completely independent of the anime.

Since the anime adapts from the manga, the issues lie there. If you've been watching the anime trailers for the show on YouTube then there is no doubt you'd have seen the comments talking about Kazuya being the main issue.

The manga has 14 volumes. That's 3 years worth of content. In 3 years of production, people usually expect a lot. Kaguya-sama has 18 volumes with 5 years worth of content and if you've been reading the manga, the characters are now completely different compared to how they started. Except Fujiwara because a perfect character clearly doesn't require any character development.

Now a lot can happen in manga. You can have stagnation for 3 years and BAM! A few months later, the whole world is in ruins and we are ruled by our canine overlords. But of course, when you talk about stagnation, what do you mean?

This brings us back to the main character of the series: Kazuya Kinoshita. He's what the youths would call a 'beta' or a 'simp' with absolutely no other emotional spectrum except for 'fluster'. He is embarrassed about even looking at a hot girl, he constantly puts the women up on a pedestal for their perfection and he never has any backbone to actually say or do anything to move the plot along.

This would all be fine if Kazuya was in high school. Except that he's a college student. There's no reason to mix high school romance nonsense into this because he should be at the age where there is at least some semblance of emotional maturity. Even if Kazuya is a virgin with zero experience, getting flustered and monologuing that he shouldn't be talking to Mizuhara because he's like a flea in her perfect presence is just straight out annoying. It doesn't matter if it's realistic because he's the main character of the story. There's a reason why stories don't have main characters who run away from the danger unless that's the whole point of it.

This is exacerbated by the author in numerous other ways. Firstly, it seems like everywhere they go, people are literally just commenting on the fact that Kazuya can't possible nab or bed any of these rental girlfriends because he's way out of their league. These bystanders then go on to praise the girl (whichever girl Kazuya is with at the moment) about how hot and perfect she is with supple assets and the face of a goddess. It literally happens every.single.time. And of course, this is all within earshot of Kazuya who then gets flustered because he's a flea in the presence of the perfect women.

The author could have subverted this by portraying it as Kazuya's point of view to reinforce his inferiority complex but no. It is as literal as it comes. The girls are meant to be perfectly hot beauties and the dude is just straight up looked down on by everyone in society.

This is the point of me bolding all the 'hots' and 'perfects' in the post. It is exactly what the author tries to do every single time. The women are all hot and perfect and we should all understand that they will only date Chris Evans and Henry Cavill because of that. Kazuya is only with them because he's the beta, simp MC and there's no other reason for him to 'tap that'. It is really annoying to read this manga and have that message constantly shoved in your face.

Next is the actual drawing of Kazuya getting flustered. It's a small nitpick but I really hate it. The art is great but some designs just rub me the wrong way. Especially if you're forced to see the same expression for the thousandth time.

Finally, the girls themselves all have their own issues. Ruka's character development feels too forced, Mizuhara's character development is way too realistically slow to the point where I'm questioning the genre of the manga, Sumi is great but under-utilised and Mami was just forgotten. I think the author literally forgot about his so-called antagonist.

The amalgamation of all these problems results in a story that is neither here nor there. It stagnates. Things happen but without character development, storytelling can only go so far. The main character is due for an overhaul because his 100th fluster to the same thing is getting really boring and predictable.

I'll leave it at that for now since I can't talk about this manga for long before it starts to irk me. The only reason why I'm still reading it is simply because I'm too far in to quit. How did I end up getting too far in? I thought that the rental girlfriend idea was unique and interesting! Until I learned that it is an actual thing. Now it disturbs me.

This is cute though