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Rent-a-Girlfriend is The Room of romcoms and I simply cannot get enough of it
This anime romcom rant is part review, part self-therapy session
In Kanojo, Okarishimasu! (aka Rent-a-Girlfriend aka KanoKari) chapter 239, the main love interest asks the protagonist if he’s really fallen in love with her, or the image of herself that she creates for her job. For a story that takes, as its premise, a service where women act as a man’s perfect girlfriend for a man for a fee, it is probably the most introspective the story has ever been about its characters.
In this moment, the story acknowledges the psychological toll of romance under capitalism. The economic mode of production we all find ourselves subject to forces us into a performance without end. To the point where even romance, an intimate and almost universal emotion, is rendered a commodity to be bought and sold on a market for profit. The chapter is the first time the story sheds a light on the owning class’s lol, lmao
but could you imagine? Like, KanoKari? Being profound? Ah, that’s funny, that’s funny.
Yeah, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. Rent-a-Girlfriend is doodoo. It’s really, really bad. Holy shit.
Content Warnings:
- Sexual Harassment
- Fan service
- Incels
- Spoilers (…duh? do you care? it’s KanoKari)
But what is a KanoKari?
So, just to get everyone up to speed, Rent-a-Girlfriend is a manga that started serialization in 2017. But it only really rose to prominence in Summer 2020 with the release of the anime adaptation by the same name.
Now, if it were 2020, I’d write a whole thing. A whole damn thing. About how KanoKari is super sexist. And the writing is terrible. And how it’s only popular because there are too many damn incels who would rather jack off to a pretty fictional girl than clean themselves up and get on Tinder. It would be this whole thing about how everyone basically ignored the fact that the main character of this thing acts almost exactly like an abuser. How I’ve watched this show with people who have various experiences with abusive partners and how they’ve told me those experiences track with the show almost 1:1. How people are mistaking a pretty girl with a spicy ‘tude for an actual, uh, character with agency and a personality. How the show is designed to make you think that progress is being made as it regurgitates the status quo again and again and again.
But it is not 2020. It is 2022.
Don’t get me wrong. This essay will still hit a lot of those beats. As usual I have a lot of Things to Say About Stuff (tm). But, until now, for various reasons, I’ve sort of just sat back and watched the discussion unfold. People I know have tackled this show, like the joyce-stick system who I will always say got it first and got it right with their video.
See, there was a time, in late 2020 to early 2021, where saying “Rent-a-Girlfriend is a bad show” was a hot take. It was the hot new show. The most popular anime podcast around, Trash Taste, called it the best new anime in Summer 2020, and the second-best anime overall after the returning anime Re:Zero. The show’s female lead, Ichinose Chizuru, was slated to be the best female character of the year, only missing out on the title in the 2020 Crunchyroll awards because she competed against the legendary Kaguya Shinomiya from Love is War.
I always figured “the KanoKari essay” would be an uphill battle. First, proving the story is not well-written, then, proving a lot of the show’s premises are false, then proving all the creepy shit and sexism that’s there is actually there.
But then, something magical happened. Something that pretty rarely happens in my very niche line of work in being a professional political anime hater. People, it seemed, collectively changed their minds about KanoKari.
It all came to a head, and I’ll be blunt about it so spoilers, with the release of chapter 218 in late 2021. In this chapter, the protagonist gets shown in a full-page spread, crying, under water, fully erect, you can see his entire penis bulge, okay? Full mast at the thought of being cuckolded by some hot guy.
By the way, just for the record, right? I think that the real kicker here was the 8 prior pages of uninterrupted sex scenes, that this dude is just imagining (I have to stress this, no one is actually getting laid here, he’s literally imagining it). The hot guy he’s fantasizing about cuckolding him while getting hard in public (!!) is wearing a beret, and for none of those eight excruciating pages does that beret ever come off. Personally, the fact that the beret stays on during sex is what did it for me. That took it over the edge.
People lost their goddamn minds over this chapter. There were memes. Oh my God the memes were fire. People who defended this show for TWO YEARS had to come out like “I disavow”. Dudes actually APOLOGIZED for recommending KanoKari.
People will apparently excuse the protagonist stalking his crush, literally following her around unnoticed for 6 straight hours, but then draw the line at cuckoldry. I will remind the observant reader that only one of these two things is illegal.
Everyone hates this manga now. Every other day now there’s a video essay about how KanoKari is bad. Even the Zoomers are getting in on it — every once in a while, I’ll see an anti-KanoKari TikTok.
This puts me in a bind! After all, I thrive off of being a contrarian. People are usually like “this thing is good” and then I go “no it’s bad it’s racist stoooop”. It’s a fun little game. It’s been working for me. But this is peak KanoKari hatedom fever season. Everyone who’s anyone cool hates KanoKari.
And as much as it’d be fun to sit here and argue that this piece of media that everyone hates is actually good (if you’d like to see me do that btw check out my High Guardian Spice take), I… can’t. I simply agree. KanoKari is shit. It’s bad out here.
So yeah, I’ll talk about why the shows bad. This was supposed to be a short thing but that’s actually harder to write than something long, here. I’ll talk about the political implications. I’ll do all the sexism. But I also want to take some time to explain myself.
See, if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know I’m OBSESSED with KanoKari. I’ve been live tweeting it for months. Mondays are KanoKari Mondays for me. I get excited for these. Every week I read this manga. And every week. It’s the same bullshit. And every time I just say, “inject this shit directly into my bloodstream”. I thought it could be fun to talk about why.
The TL;DR
Despite having so much wrong with it, KanoKari has proven to be a fairly difficult show to write about. I still think the hardest show I’ve ever done one of these for was Re:Zero. But KanoKari is up there.
As this essay will hopefully show, this show is not worth your or anyone’s time beyond my craven personal fascination with it. Yet, paradoxically, it takes a fair amount of thought to make what I’d call a “good” KanoKari essay.
What I don’t want to do is just list all the cringey things that happen in order. It would be funny. Others have done it and it’s worked for them. People would like it. But it wouldn’t be good to me. Worse of all, it wouldn’t be original. I want people who have watched a million of these to read mine and still feel like they’re thinking about the show in a new way.
So, here’s what we do instead. We try and answer two main questions up front:
- What is the root cause of why this story is so terrible?
- What makes this story uniquely frustrating (or fun, if you’re, uh, me) to read or watch?
My answers are this:
Rent-a-Girlfriend is a pretty standard, by-the-numbers harem anime built on a fundamentally incelist worldview. But, for it to work and have any sort of general appeal, Rent-a-Girlfriend desperately needs you to believe that it isn’t a harem show and that it isn’t steeped neck-deep in incel stench. It is the fact it tries so adamantly to deny being these things, despite this so obviously being the case, that creates a unique level of insanity in the viewer or reader that scratches all the right brain cells for me in a twisted sort of way.
But what do I mean by all this? Especially this idea of KanoKari “needing you to believe” something about itself that isn’t true?
We can build this up together, me and you. We’ll make this a semi-interactive anime essay experience, asking the same questions I’ve been asking since I started following this show in 2020. Hopefully, by the time you finish this essay, you’ll understand KanoKari on a level beyond simply being bad or cringey. If you do, I’d say I’ve done a decent enough job.
Characters and Summary
Miyajima Reiji’s Rent-a-Girlfriend is a romcom that stars schlubby loser and college freshman Kinoshita Kazuya. He lucks out into dating his very first girlfriend, Nanami Mami. Suddenly, she dumps him (and worse, blocks him on twitter).
Desperate, (and more importantly, horny, as his ex didn’t even sleep with him before he broke up) Kazuya stumbles upon a service online that offers fake girlfriends for hire. For a few hundred dollars an hour, he can Rent a Girlfriend (roll credits) to act all cute, hold hands, date, and do everything except kiss or have sex.
It’s on this platform that Kazuya spots the beautiful and hardworking Ichinose Chizuru, or, as she’s called in the rental girlfriend circuit, Mizuhara Chizuru.
Vaguely defined anime bullshit leads Kazuya to introduce Chizuru as his real girlfriend to his parents, friends, and dying grandma. Since Chizuru is so beautiful, and since Kazuya is such a massive fucking loser, Kazuya pressures Chizuru into pretending to date him until they can find the “right time” (read: never) to fake a breakup so she can move on with her life.
This is a romcom, ostensibly anyway, so all the fake dating leads Kazuya to real develop romantic feelings for Mizuhara Chizuru (my word-choice is important here, as we’ll see later). Likewise, it leads Chizuru to…
uh
well, she blushes a lot. And that’s supposed to mean she likes him? But she never says that, or acts like that, and never has a reason to feel that way ever after being pressured into saving some random guy’s social life. So.
Chizuru tries to get Kazuya off her back by convincing him to date one Sarashina Ruka, a high school senior and rental girlfriend, who falls in love with Kazuya because…
we’ll get to it. Just know for now it doesn’t make any sense. But it is important to know that Kazuya agrees to date Ruka, even though he doesn’t like her in the slightest, and Ruka knows this, because she had to blackmail him to get him to date her. And likewise, Ruka allows Kazuya to continue to date Chizuru. Because, like, uh…
Just roll with it or we’ll be here all day.
Also, there is Sumi. She’s a Komi Shouko rip-off. This essay will pretend she does not exist for convenience’s sake.
A typical arc in this story basically revolves around A) Kazuya reading tea leaves to see Mizuhara Chizuru acting like his girlfriend (again, note my wording here), is somehow a sign that she loves him for real, despite the fact that he pays her multiple days’ worth of his salary a week to act like she likes him. It is always her job to do the things that she does.
Then, the arc will develop. Either B) Ruka will apply pressure onto Kazuya to get him to stop dating Chizuru and start taking their actually real relationship seriously, or C) Mami will apply pressure to either Chizuru or Kazuya to get them to break up. Then, something happens that threatens to expose their secret. But they manage to keep it hidden in the end.
Finally, every arc ends with D) Ichinose Chizuru (wording!!) alone in her room, blushing, maybe gently kissing her leg, going “Baka, Kazuya! You’re nothing but a client to me!” all tsundere like. And the reader or watcher is led to maybe thinking, “this is it, she’s finally going to admit she likes him!” But she never does, and we loop to A).
There are a few exceptions to this pattern. Sometimes, when there is especially slow progress, a character, Yaemori Mini, will show up. She’s a Twitch streamer, YouTuber, weeb, and audience surrogate who appears periodically in the story to tell Kazuya that Chizuru, like, totally likes him, bro. He just needs to ask again even though she’s said no every single time he’s asked before, and, in fact, has tried repeatedly to get him to leave her alone.
And there are a few minor arcs with the aforementioned Sakurasawa Sumi*,* a shy girl like I said who works a rental girlfriend post alongside Chizuru to improve her social anxiety. She doesn’t exactly affect the “plot” so much, but people liked her enough that she got her own spin-off series.
Since the plot goes nowhere for 250 chapters, it’ll make more sense to summarize the characters instead. We’ll keep in mind two key points of analysis: “Who does KanoKari want you to believe this is?” and “Who is this really, based on what they actually do and say?” Later, we’ll also think about how and why the story tries to trick you into mistaking the former for the latter.
Kazuya
What Kazuya is supposed to be is a flawed, relatable male romcom protagonist navigating through the anxiety of seeing oneself as unattractive. Kazuya is horny and desperate to get a girlfriend. But he doesn’t just want a girlfriend to fulfill his physical and emotional needs. He wants a pretty girlfriend for the social status that having an attractive girlfriend can bring men. Both his family and friends apply a ton of pressure onto him to get a sexy girlfriend and to keep Chizuru once he’s got her.
The idea is that Kazuya is the center of a story about self-improvement and accountability.
The first time Kazuya’s horniness pushes him to rent Chizuru, he becomes unhinged the second he learns that the little things Chizuru did to make their date worth paying for were, in fact, things she does for her other clients as well, because this is a job for her, and she takes pride in doing her job well.
Incidentally, this is the only time in the story Chizuru will have a backbone, but we’ll save that for the Chizuru section.
What this seems to set up is a story where Kazuya and Chizuru’s chance encounter leads Kazuya to develop as a person. His lies wrap Chizuru into a mess of his own making. Through doing right by her and accepting that his ex-girlfriend broke up with him in a healthier way than literally paying for a replacement, Kazuya gradually becomes the kind of man women actually want to date. Maybe then he dates Chizuru or finds someone else. But the arc would be the focus.
There are lines where the characters talk about how many people use the rental girlfriend service as a way to get comfortable talking to women. When they improve as people down the line, they can get themselves a real, healthy relationship. In a vacuum, it is pretty thoughtful.
Kazuya, in reality, is just an abuser.
Well, he’s a business major, so that’s a given. But still.
So, here’s a dirty secret about redemption arcs. For a redemption arc to work, the character being redeemed has to already be a good person. It’s counter-intuitive but think about it.
In real life, in order to recognize that you’ve harmed someone else, and truly do what it takes to make that situation better, there are certain positive qualities you already have to have. You have to have the empathy to understand that you’ve messed up, the humility to accept criticism from others even when that criticism is hurtful. You have to have the discipline to stick to changing your habits and the dedication to closing all the loose ends with the people you’ve hurt.
Kazuya does not have any of these traits. He instead has the traits of a repeat sex offender.
First of all, there’s the fact that multiple women in the story, including both his ex-girlfriend, and Chizuru at times, state openly that his behavior makes them uncomfortable. It’s usually around the way he stares at women like an idiot.
But wait there’s more!
Wanna know why Chizuru and Kazuya keep dating after that first one? It’s because Kazuya emotionally blackmails Chizuru into dating him.
Maybe that sounds like a lot, but what would you call “go on a date with me or my parents will hate me forever and my sick and dying grandma will rest in the grave thinking she’ll never have grandchildren”? Because that’s what he says, even after Chizuru rightly points out that he can just take responsibility for his own family and tell his grandma no at any time:
Also, just rereading this for my sake, she SAYS it’s blackmail and he doesn’t even fucking deny it.
Oh, and let’s not forget the actual stalking.
It’s Christmas Eve and Kazuya notices Chizuru out and about with a tall, handsome, artsy-looking pretty-boy named Umi. The idea that Chizuru would date losers like him for money while dating an actual attractive person with common interests in her real life is such a betrayal for him that he decides to follow her around all day. He follows the two to the movies, to the mall, into public spaces, from the early afternoon until past sunset. Given when the sun sets in Japan around Christmas, that amounts to anywhere from four to six hours of following someone in public and seething.
I don’t think any words I write on this page can quantify just how gross and disqualifying this is for any romance protagonist.
Besides the fact that this sort of behavior is not funny, or cute, and besides the fact that stalking and sexual harassment by men are something that women and other marginalized genders have to protect themselves from daily, narratively, what this tells me is that at his core, Kazuya is a spoiled, entitled brat.
It is not a betrayal of Kazuya’s “trust” or “effort” that Chizuru, as beautiful as she is, date an equally beautiful man if she wants to. We are seriously not even one step removed from incels dot co-style rhetoric. “Oh, the Stacies just want Chad Thundercock that treat them like shit. No girl wants the nice guy like me”. Such embarrassing behavior.
These men admit that they are ugly and that they are losers, but will never in a million years date a woman they find ugly themselves.
So, on the one hand, every pretty girl that doesn’t give a self-described ugly guy the time of day is a horrible tramp singlehandedly responsible for his self-loathing and suicidal ideation. These women don’t deserve to be with men they actually like and should instead be stuck with them.
On the other hand, these men absolutely deserve a pretty and attentive girlfriend for themselves and it’s cruel to make them settle for anything less.
The reality is attraction isn’t logical. Period. Lest you take romance advice from internet Pikachu over here.
There are some trends and averages we can point out and agonize over all day. “Oh girls like tall guys”. “Oh girls like big dick”. “Oh girls like a maximum canthal tilt of 15°”. Shut up. No one cares. Every individual person likes vastly different kinds of people, and your only job is finding another individual who likes you back.
Any more whinging over what men “deserve” or about how women are sluts who just like hot guys is just pathetic and sexist.
Chizuru does yell at Kazuya for stalking, but not because it’s criminal, dangerous behavior. Well, she makes a passing reference to calling the cops, but her main concern is that, to her, this level of obsessiveness is something only her boyfriend should be doing. Which
whole other problem
(Jesus Christ babe are you okay?)
but
the point is this kind of behavior from Kazuya is never challenged.
Kazuya will lie to everyone he knows about dating an extremely attractive woman, he’ll get all the attention and social clout from people believing the lie. He’ll then apologize for dragging Chizuru deeper and deeper into his mess, for upsetting his ex-girlfriend further, or for getting Chizuru embarrassed or yelled at. He’ll do a bunch of super nice stuff for her. He’ll sit there and call himself trash, he’ll cry about how much of an awful person he is. He’ll do just about everything except for STOPPING THE SHITTY BEHAVIOR!
And that’s the key part.
In real life and in fiction, we often conflate self-flagellation and gracious apology-making for accountability. We think that bad people can’t hate themselves, and incorrectly assume that those who perform self-hatred must at least be good-natured.
But if those eloquent apologies don’t come with commitments, what you are is a manipulator with low self-esteem.
Kazuya is this manipulator, but the narrative framing is unironically on his side, and so is the entire KanoKari fandom. Reading this story fucks with you in subtle ways because Kazuya fucks with you in subtle ways.
Chizuru
Ichinose Chizuru is a character that seems fun to write an OC-character sheet for.
We’re meant to believe that Chizuru is a strong-willed, well-rounded character. A love interest with bite and personality. An anime girl who’s not-like-the-other-anime-girls.
On the face of things, Chizuru’s a struggling actress who’s using the rental girlfriend job, and the character she made for it, Mizuhara Chizuru (wording), to practice acting and save up enough to transfer to an acting school. Currently, she studies Japanese literature, but she lives for all things drama. When she’s not at university, she works with a theatrical troupe putting on local plays.
There’re also secondary things about her that are fun, and I actually appreciate it. She’s into working out — to the point that she has gym equipment lying around all over her apartment. She loves sports. Whenever she wants to let off steam, she’ll head to the local batting cage and swing a few rounds. She gets really excited when she beats her personal record.
The characters all go on a double date (where both parties are renting girlfriends, by the way) to this rock-climbing place. Chizuru is naturally good at it and it’s a lot of fun for her. The scene is undercut by everyone ogling her ass but yeah.
This is, by the way, the happiest Chizuru will ever look. When she’s doing her hobbies, you get glimpses of this character in a functional show, with a non-abusive love interest who’s actually worth the effort in supporting.
Chizuru, somewhat obviously, is really pretty. Partly because she’s drawn that way. Partly because Reiji can’t go five fuckin seconds without a scene where a bunch of random men stare at her body and make comments.
But, also, and this is the good bit, because she makes an effort to look pretty. Huge boobs and a cute face are genetic things but having those things doesn’t necessarily translate into being seen as pretty.
She does work out to keep her overall figure thin. She wears her hair in styles that evoke a specific feeling. Same with her make-up and clothes. Being pretty is a choice she makes to play the character of Mizuhara Chizuru. And she’s damn good in the role.
Not just good, actually. The best. She’s the most popular rental girlfriend on the platform. She only ever gets 5-star reviews. Not to mention she’s practically the best actress in her troupe. Surprisingly, Chizuru is allowed to be proud of these accomplishments. Not a ton of female characters get to be proud like she is.
Would you believe me if I said the fandom absolutely hates her? Well, they do. They call her Chorizo and everything. So.
The problem with Chizuru, for us, is not really her character in a vacuum. I understand that in a lot of media criticism video essays, having good characters means you have a good story, and having a good story means you have good characters. It may feel unnatural to claim that Chizuru is good, but the qualities that make her good contribute to KanoKari being awful.
I will try and explain.
Chizuru may be a complex character, but that complexity never serves herself. She is only complex and interesting insofar as it makes her more… bangable?
Actually, “bangable” is a short-sighted description. If Chizuru is an object for men to win, her character traits only ever exist to make her value as an object increase.
Her character traits are like the features you list on a used Nintendo Switch in good condition you’re flipping on eBay.
“New Girlfriend! Unopened! Plays sports and is a struggling actress. Ultra-pale skin and double Ds! Includes AC power cable, joy-cons, dock, HDMI cable, and verified tsundere attitude.”
Chizuru is the most highly accomplished, rental girlfriend in the country, but she will never prioritize another client over Kazuya to keep her job.
Chizuru may be actress, but she will never be unavailable to Kazuya because she’s pursuing her own dreams.
When Chizuru doesn’t get recruited into an agency after a big play, she is only disappointed so that Kazuya can be the one to cheer her up.
Chizuru is pretty, but only so that Kazuya’s ex is jealous of her body. She’s pretty, but only so that her very presence can cause men to break down and random other couples to break up.
Chizuru works out, but only in the sense that being skinny makes her worth more. She has friends, but they disappear from the narrative as her life begins to revolve around Kazuya.
On top of none of her character traits actually ever being about her, her constant obsession with Kazuya is unjustified, which is important if you’re doing a romance? Otherwise, it’s shameless pandering to an audience that gets zero bitches. I’m talking about zero play.
In short, Kazuya has zero uh, what’s it called,
fuckin,
redeeming qualities.
Yeah, that’s it.
He’s not good-looking, he has no ambitions in life, he is a menace to society. So, why does she even put up with him? At some point, it gets a little sad.
I don’t know what trope to call this. It’s not exactly a manic pixie dream girl, but a related idea. It’s seeing a female character not as herself, but as a piece in a fever dream of a man’s fantasy.
If you’ve noticed, I’ve drawn your attention to instances where I refer to Chizuru as Ichinose Chizuru vs Mizuhara Chizuru. Here’s why:
My assertion is that Mizuhara Chizuru is not a real person, and she is certainly not Ichinose Chizuru. Mizuhara is a character that Ichinose Chizuru plays when she is doing her job. This is super important to understanding Chizuru as a whole.
You’d think that in a story like this, Ichinose Chizuru, who spends all her time putting on smiles and faces for others, who has dedicated her life to looking “perfect”, would learn how to drop the mask around the people she grows to love. As Chizuru and Kazuya spend genuine time together outside of rental dates, and as Kazuya begins to change for the better, Chizuru would realize that she doesn’t have to play the character of Mizuhara Chizuru around Kazuya.
It’d fit the theme of her being an actress and everything!
In the actual text, though, Ichinose actually Mizuhara’s mask.
It’s little stuff. Like the fact that she puts on glasses to be Ichinose but never wears them anywhere else.
More generally, every Chizuru arc about “opening up” to Kazuya, always involves getting her to act like Mizuhara, acting like the dream girlfriend, in places she shouldn’t.
In KanoKari, romance is when women perform the role of the perfect girlfriend. The more the woman performs, the romancier it is.
Crucially, Kazuya never shows any attraction to Ichinose. In fact, he refuses to use her name. All his friends do:
But not him:
This is later in the same chapter
I mentioned 239 in the introduction. In it, Chizuru says the most insightful thing she has ever said in this entire manga. In fact, dare I say, the only good lines in KanoKari (in existence!) are said by her:
…Doesn’t it cross your mind that my job is to make people fall in love with me? You told me I could be myself, but it’s not like I’ve shown you the real me all the way through. There are still parts of me that are make believe. So, if you tell me you love me, I can’t help but think “Are you really okay with that?” Maybe the girl you really love is Mizuhara Chizuru, you know?
In this moment, the story gets dangerously, dangerously close to saying a thing. About a thing. Mizuhara Chizuru is a character Ichinose Chizuru performs. To her, a client who fell in love with her fell in love with a persona she can only realistically keep up for two, maybe three hours.
If Kazuya says he loves her, all that tells Chizuru is that she’s a good actress. What exactly is she supposed to feel, other than confused, guilty, and a little creeped out?
And yet immediately after:
WHY
And fucking Reiji knows he’s doing it because OTHER CHARACTERS POINT THIS OUT TO HIM. So, it’s on purpose. You can’t argue I’m not supposed to be reading into it.
It’s just so bad and terrible.
I mentioned the fandom hating Chizuru. In a nutshell, it’s because she refuses to perform this fantasy for Kazuya, even after hundreds of chapters of him displaying how “nice” he is. It is a transaction where him saying nice things is exchanged for her perpetual performance of Mizuhara Chizuru, exclusively for him.
We are watching a perfectly good and interesting character trapped in a story that refuses to see her as an actual person or even use her name. When compiled with the fact that Chizuru never even makes it clear she likes Kazuya at all, it is legitimately horrifying to read at times.
In this one panel here, Kazuya has been trying to contact Chizuru for weeks. He knocks on her door several times a day, sends her multiple texts a day, keeps her mail so he can “pretend” he found it as a reason to talk to her.
Chizuru is avoiding him because she was forced to kiss him to keep up the lie of their fake relationship, and this has exhausted her, and made her feel guilty.
She crawls away from the door, away from Kazuya:
Doesn’t even make it to a bed before collapsing:
What am I reading? This is cute? Free her. Christ on a stick.
Mami
Nanami Mami has done nothing wrong in her life ever. That’s it.
Ruka
Sarashina Ruka is supposed to be Kazuya’s girlfriend. She…
…
huh?
Explain Mami? I thought it was obvious. She did nothing wrong did you even read it?
…
Ugh, okay, wait wait I’ll explain. Relax.
Mami
Nanami Mami is Rent-a-Girlfriend’s main antagonist. We’re meant to see her as the spiteful, vindictive ex who uses her sexuality to manipulate Kazuya into breaking it off with Chizuru.
We are meant to dread whenever she shows up on screen. Like a bully kicking over your sandcastle at the beach, Mami’s role is to take anything Chizuru and Kazuya might have built and destroy it.
I will note that the character KanoKari wants you to believe Mami is could probably described as a number of vaguely sexist TV Tropes entries. She’s a vamp, a hate sink, a clingy jealous girl, and a woman scorned, just off the top of my head.
Mami’s list of alleged crimes, in the first season anyway, start from the beginning. We’re meant to think that she dumped Kazuya and blocked him on Twitter (Twitter!) for “no reason”. She embarrasses him, then tries to kiss him. She leads him on only to control him, apparently for no other reason than she just finds it fun to fuck with Chizuru and Kazuya.
Also, she makes this face all the time. This is an evil face, as we all know.
She will also go on megalomaniacal rants on her private twitter about how evil she is. Because she’s EVIL.
EVIL I SAY!!!
At some point there’s a chapter in which she gets a tragic backstory that I tried to find the reference for, but I gave up because I didn’t care enough about it. She pretty much had a boyfriend once in high school, but her parents ruined it. Now, Mami’s made it her personal life mission to destroy love wherever she sees it.
There are a few contrarians who claim to like Mami. The chief reason? If we’re being honest, 80% of the time, if something almost interesting happens in KanoKari, it’s because Mami started it. She is a plot device that forces tension and progress in a cyclical story where nothing truly changes. She is the Stealth Rock of romcoms.
Exactly one person understands what that means.
People will be like “yeah she’s a liar, but she’s fun to watch”. Or “yeah, she’s evil, but she creates drama”.
A guy like me? I don’t say stuff like that. In fact, I don’t even think stuff like that. Because I am not a pussy baby coward. I will insist that Mami is the literally the good guy of KanoKari. The only reason she looks evil is because the story is written from Kazuya’s point of view, and Kazuya, as we all know is a psychotic, stalker, incel little freak. Of course, by looking at the world through the eyes of a a psychotic, stalker, incel little freak, any woman that doesn’t like him will look like a bitch.
Imagine for a second: you’re in college and you’ve got a decent friend group going. You’ve never dated someone because dating is kind of a sore subject for you. Then, out of the blue, a friend introduces you to this guy. He’s into you. Like, really, really, into you. You figure you’ll go ahead and date him, not because you feel anything towards him, exactly, but because he’s… there? You decide to give this “love” crap everyone keeps telling you is so great a shot.
You date him for like a month. It’s never that serious. You do all the cute shit like holding hands and talking about how cute your babies could be. You kiss once, it’s just not working. Love still doesn’t make you feel anything.
On top of that, the dude you decided to date is just… weird. He was always horny. He was always staring at your body just waiting for the day he lets you under your skirt. He was quite literally always hard, sometimes in public. You kissed him that one time? Now he wanted it every time, and he was pushy about it too. He was constantly touching you, constantly taking you out drinking late in an obvious attempt to get you drunk enough to sleep with him. A generally unpleasant experience all around.
\You dump him as nice as you can and try and move on. But not even a week later he comes back with a new girl. She is seriously the most beautiful woman you have ever seen in your entire life.
He keeps bringing this supermodel of a gf to events that are supposed to just be you and your friends. Everyone’s staring at her, everyone takes her side over yours. You even hear some of them saying that she’s so hot, that if your ex has sex with her, it’ll ruin sex forever.
She makes you feel thoroughly replaceable.
So yeah, maybe you do kiss your ex-boyfriend and maybe it’s super poor judgement. You’re, naturally, confused, pissed, and jealous.
A little while later you see your ex again, with another pretty girl. You make polite small talk before this girl, Sumi is her name, quickly tells you that she is Kazuya’s “girlfriend”.
You have apparently caught your ex-boyfriend cheating on the supermodel for, like, fun, you guess, with another supermodel. Despite the fact that he does not deserve it, you tell your ex that his secret is safe with you, and you leave.
At this point you are miserable. You’re still alone, you still don’t “get” love, your friends hate you, and your ex-boyfriend, who was a loser when you dated, is now apparently drowning in so much supermodel pussy he can’t even go one at a time.
On a whim you decide to search for your ex’s girlfriend, who’s being cheated on by the way as far as you know, and discover she’s actually a something called a “rental girlfriend”.
It was all a lie.
Your ex essentially spent thousands of Japanese Yen (hundreds of US dollars) to spite you, to embarrass you in front of your friends, to make you jealous, to get in your head, and to convince you that he’s moved on when he clearly hasn’t.
All because what? You had the fuckin nerve to break up with him? After he was being weird?
I’d fucking go nuts. I’d go scorched earth. I’d make sure this guy never had a social life ever again. I would not let this shit slide. I would end this charade the first chance I got.
Maybe I’d be petty, but there’s nothing pettier than spending fucking, $300/week on a FAKE GIRLFRIEND just to spite me because you got dumped.
What does Mami do? Does she get justifiably angry? No. She literally just sits Chizuru down, takes her out on a date, gets her karaoke and a drink, calls her pretty, and just politely requests that she stop lying to all of her friends. Maybe. At some point. Whenever’s good for her. Because, understandably, it’s sorta pissing Mami off. A little.
She even points out how unhealthy this is for Kazuya, even though she has no obligation to think about such a thing.
The only thing she does that’s kinda shitty, I think, is pressuring Chizuru into kissing Kazuya, to try and expose them as a fake couple. Because that gets consent involved.
But even then, Chizuru promised her she would stop participating in what Mami would see as a targeted campaign against her specifically, and her social life. And she agreed that if Mami gave her an out to end this fake relationship stuff, she would take it. Instead, Chizuru prioritizes a fake relationship that only harms her and only exists to spite Mami over keeping a pretty reasonable promise.
I cannot even begin to describe how insane that actually is.
I just remembered that in this exchange, Mami calls Chizuru a “a common, back-alley whore”. She did a whorephobia. That’s one (1) bad thing. But it was funny, so it’s okay. And also, this is not something she would’ve said if the author himself wasn’t weird about this rental girlfriend stuff.
And after Kazuya basically emotionally torments his ex for a year, Chizuru has the audacity to be like “Hm well maybe you just have a crush on him? Ever think of that? Hm? Didn’t think so.” After all that, that’s what she has to say.
It’s like “Oh shit Mami mad. She goin ham” Yeah, nigga. You’d be too.
Mami’s the only person in this story who’s as sick of all of Kazuya’s incel bullshit as I am. We have the exact same energy: petty, spiteful, aromantic, and a commitment to the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism-Kazuya-not-deserving-shitism. She is the representation of how Kazuya’s behavior affects other people. Neither Kazuya nor the story can own up to that, so Mami gets villainized instead.
Nanami Mami, or as I will say from here on out, GOATami Mami, is the anti-hero that we all deserve. In a good story, she’d be best fucking character in the whole roster. Easily. EASILY. There are few things I am more passionate about in life.
I shouldn’t take all the credit in this observation. The video which really, I think, nailed what Mami actually does in this story was actually the joyce-stick ssytem’s. I feel like most people who are reading or listening to this have probably seen it. It’s a really good video that lays the groundwork for what I’m doing here.
Joyce also argues that Mami is probably a lesbian. She’s constantly calling Chizuru and Ruka pretty, she checks Chizuru out at least once, and that her whole character is based around the fact that dating men makes her feel empty and bitter.
Every time she tries to date a girl (it’s more than once) it’s framed as this sinister thing.
There’re panels like this, too!
So, there are arguments that Mami is not only othered in the story because she, unlike Chizuru, really forces Kazuya to face the consequences of his shitty actions from time to time. Mami is also othered by coding her as a lesbian. Which would make the story queerphobic.
It’s a bit of a read, but I am fully convinced of this. I am proudly the world’s only Mami x Chizuru shipper. These two together represent the story we could have gotten if only Miyajima Reiji was not messed up in the fucking head. But instead of going into it more, I’ll just let you know it’s been done better elsewhere already, so go watch that.
Mami works so well as a protagonist you think about it. Especially in a yuri about a girl finally understanding why romance never seemed to work for her.
Crazy thing is? None of this shit was intentional. If you just write from Kazuya’s abusive perspective, you’re railroaded into doing this to his ex-girlfriend.
Ruka
Sarashina Ruka is supposed to be Kazuya’s current girlfriend. See, she has a heart condition and,
sigh
it makes her heart beat slow. She can’t do strenuous exercise without passing out. As such, she’s looking for a man that can make her heart race back to normal. That means it’s true love or something. Ruka becomes a rental girlfriend to aid in her search.
Would a pacemaker eliminate the need for this? Sure. But this is what we have to work with here so there.
Some anime shenanigans later and Kazuya’ is already grabbing her boob which means she’s a love interest now.
It’s anime. Bada bing bada boom he gets her heart to go doki-doki and is now she’s convinced that Kazuya is her one true love.
KAZUYA of all people.
Okay.
Anyway, she, instead of asking him out, she blackmails Kazuya with a recording of him admitting that Chizuru is a rental girlfriend. So much blackmail in this show. What is this, The Boys?
Ruka is a little different from the other characters. With the other three, there was a clear “what the show wants you to think” vs “what the character actually says and does”. But here, there’s not that much of a delineation. I think I can keep this bit simple.
Ruka is clingy and annoying. She’s sort of like Mami, in the sense that she is another obstacle in the way of Chizuru and Kazuya getting together. Since Kazuya “technically” has a girlfriend, Chizuru feels bad for even being near Kazuya and making Ruka feel bad. Whereas Mami messes with Chizuru and Kazuya out of spite and antagonism, Ruka messes with Chizuru to compete with her.
The interesting thing here is that every bad thing Ruka does to Kazuya, Kazuya does to Chizuru or Mami. Ruka stalks him, she touches him when he doesn’t want to, she reads way more into their relationship than is actually there, she tries to get him drunk and manufactures sexual situations try and sleep with him.
It’s all framed correctly (as in, negatively) by the way. The story seems to be able to understand boundaries and creepy behavior when the victim is Kazuya. But when the victim is Chizuru, suddenly we’re all excuses, and that behavior is okay because it’s all just proof of how much Kazuya likes her.
Similarly, all of Chizuru’s cold behavior that’s framed as negative when done to Kazuya, is framed as understandable and even positive when Kazuya does them to Ruka. When Kazuya skips out on spending time with Ruka, or ignores her, or hides her from his family, going as far as to convince his entire friend group she’s a “pathological liar” when she tried to introduce herself as his girlfriend, that’s all cool, good, and normal behavior in response to a girl being clingy.
Meanwhile, Chizuru can never take a break from Kazuya. She can never ask for space. She shouldn’t dare miss his repeated texts and calls. All the times she’s asked him to maybe cool it with his obsession with her are all just her mistreating him.
It seriously makes me wonder why Ruka is even in this story. You’d think with Ruka in the story the double standard and cognitive dissonance would be super obvious. But, from my time on r/anime or r/KanojoOkarishimasu, most people don’t notice or care. Partly because the story doesn’t want you to, and partly because I think a lot of men are incapable of identifying sexual harassment if the victim isn’t male.
The question becomes: if Kazuya is supposed to be an incel, what’s the point of giving him a pretty girl who’s super, super into him? Since Kazuya is very much physically attracted to Ruka, them dating would solve the central conceit of the show. So, what’s the big idea? Why don’t they just date? The two would certainly deserve each other.
KanoKari wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants the victim complex of Kazuya’s perpetual virginity. It wants those jealous and bewildered men, wondering how bro pulled a baddie like that. It wants these scenes of Kazuya jacking off to jacking off to Chizuru’s shower noises, wondering if he’ll ever find happiness. It wants to revel the righteous persecution of being dumped for trivial things like “not respecting boundaries”.
But the story simultaneously wants a bevy of smoking hot babes orbiting Kazuya 24/7. His hot ex-girlfriend is secretly into him. His hotter, current girlfriend is into him, but Kazuya’s got so many options he doesn’t even see her. After all, there’s cute redhead side chick that’s into him. And of course, the hottest most perfect sporty actress girl in all the land is totally cool is into him too.
Like we asserted in our thesis, Kanojo, Okarishimasu! wants to be a harem. It just wants to be a “realistic” one. A harem that doesn’t “feel” like you’re indulging in all these sad, unrealistic tropes even when you are.
What it all means
When I that “KanoKari wants to convince you that it’s something it’s not” and “KanoKari wants to be a ‘realistic’ harem”, what that means is a lot of the features of the story people identify as writing “mistakes” are actually malicious.
I finished my series on isekai last year.
Last year? Oh my God, seriously?
Anyway, yeah, last year. And one thing I talked about in there was the rise of “post-ironic” isekai. A big thing that thrust isekai onto the scene was the male fantasy aspect. Stories about virgins and nerds who don’t fit in but were suddenly teleported to a world where what made them virgins in their past lives makes them cool, powerful, and loved by girls here.
However, it’s kind of embarrassing to watch something that so blatantly panders to this thinking. What started happening with isekai is that they got meta.
These stories went out of their way to prove to readers that they were not like other isekai. They were darker, grittier, and more “realistic” than those cringe baby stories. Or, they were wrapped up in comedy inviting you not to take anything seriously. With lines like “oh no it’s the famous isekai truck!” or “what is this? a gacha game?”
The key thing in my essay was to point out that this didn’t make those new stories different. They were just less corny. Viewers that wanted a true break from the isekai power fantasy stuff would have to look elsewhere.
This is where KanoKari is. It is probably one of the most self-indulgent harem manga ever written. But the story is aware of this and doesn’t want you to think of it like a corny harem manga. It wants you to read what is essentially an audience self-insert paying and manipulating hot girls into almost dating him, but it doesn’t want you to think you’re lame for reading it.
I feel this is most clear in season 2 of the anime. They balanced the manga content so that all the girls get the same amount of screentime. And it’s mostly different girls fighting over Kazuya. Mami and Chizuru fight over him. Mami and Ruka. Ruka and Chizuru. They all up the ante to get in his pants without establishing if they like him or what he brings to the table.
To accomplish this, it adds all this other bullshit. Bullshit like “Maybe, this story is REALLY about the pain of getting over your first break-up”. Bullshit like “Maybe, this story is REALLY about becoming a better person in the end”. Bullshit like, “Maybe, THIS waifu actually has a personality and she actually calls out the main character when he fucks up”.
It dangles the promise of subverting expectations over your head, because that promise makes you forget that you have in fact read this garbage before.
Please don’t bully me Nagatoro, Dress-Up Darling, Uzaki-chan wants to hang out! and Komi Can’t Communicate are all romance manga with anime adaptations that traffic in the same sort of “I am a virgin man between the ages of 16 and 25” demographic.
The main pairs in Komi Can’t Communicate and Uzaki-chan wants to hang out! are like, together-together, all before the 100th chapter. In Dress-Up Darling, the main couple, Marin and Gojo, are not together-together, but the girl confesses before chapter 50. In Nagatoro, there hasn’t been a confession yet, but they are actual friends who do couple things in half the chapters KanoKari has.
I’m not really a huge fan of any of these stories. I’d say Komi Can’t Communicate is a dumpster fire, Uzaki-chan is pretty bad, Nagatoro isn’t for me, and Dress-Up Darling is okay at best. The key idea here is that they’re all actual romances. Y’know, the genre where romance happens.
KanoKari is longer than every last one of these manga except for Komi Can’t Communicate, and it has far less progress than all of these. I can’t load up chapter 218 of Komi, after only having read the beginning, and understand what’s happening. But I can do that for KanoKari.
People keep talking about KanoKari like it’s a failed romance. It isn’t. It never meant to try.
The fake dating, the endless “we should break up soon”s, even the pervasive NTR stuff, is the point. You’re not supposed to want progress, you’re supposed to want to wacky premise, the incel fantasy, the fetish, and the fan service. KanoKari simply wraps it all in plausible deniability. The only reason that KanoKari is seeing a decline is because 218, understandably, made it very difficult to pretend that this story is ordinary.
But even then, the dip in KanoKari’s popularity is kinda minor in the grand scheme of things? KanoKari’s first season has a 7.16 on MAL, while its second season only dipped to 6.86. By contrast, when people turned on The Rising of the Shield Hero’s second season, it dropped from an 8.01 to a 6.56. In reality, most of the people who silently liked KanoKari for what it was… still like KanoKari for what it is. These people realize the truth: there is no progress in this story because there isn’t supposed to be.
According to KanoKari’s philosophy, the problem with Nagatoro, Dress-Up Darling, Uzaki-chan or Komi is that they are still for people who, deep down, believe they can find, say the Kitigawa Marin to their Wakana Gojo. KanoKari, by contrast, is a fantasy for people who straight up do not believe that romance is possible for them, to the point where a something with actual romance, where people flirt and stuff, alienates them.
It is much more comfortable and realistic to these people that the girl in the fantasy only really be interested in the man because he is paying her. That she only see him because they happen to live next door and go to the same school and have the same friends. That she don’t stop talking to him because leaving him would mean the end of her social life, reputation, and job and maybe also his grandma dead from the stress. All of this in hopes that maybe after all that coercion, the girl starts to like the guy for real.
That’s, y’know, sad.
And stuff.
Mo, why do you care? Can’t you read something else?
KanoKari fails on a lot of fronts, as we’ve talked about throughout this essay. It fails to advance its own narrative. It fails to develop its female lead. It fails to have an “evil antagonist” that does anything actually evil. It fails to meaningfully distinguish itself from typical harem schlock (though it tries hard to convince you otherwise).
But I think, most simply and strikingly of all, KanoKari is a romance that fails to have any romance.
Nowhere, in KanoKari’s now over 250 chapters are any two characters romantically attracted to each other.
All of the relationships in this story are blackmail! Or people just being miserable. Mami and Kazuya dated, but it’s questionable if Mami even likes men. Mami’s initial attraction to Kazuya was nothing more than a cynical attempt to try and feel something in her dead, aromantic, lesbian heart, and her current obsession with him is just jealousy over Chizuru.
If Chizuru does end up solidly falling in love with Kazuya, it’ll feel more like Stockholm syndrome than an actual romance. Most of their relationship is “our grandmas would be sad if we didn’t pretend to like each other”. And of course, from Kazuya’s perspective, their relationship is just him blackmailing to fuel his own insecurity, desire for status, and lust.
Would it surprise you to know that Kazuya and Chizuru never once voluntarily hang out with each other? Only very recently, in chapter 252, does Chizuru agree to join Kazuya for a drink. But, she’s actually joining their mutual friend Mini, so it barely counts.
The story will write itself into all kinds of bizarre situations that could easily be solved with having the main pair just… flirt once. But instead of doing so, the story will come up with even more bizarre solutions to these self-inflicted bizarre problems that only exist because someone tried to write a romcom, with absolutely zero rom.
Watching this story plod along, with all its excuses and eccentricities, confidently stumbling through chapter after chapter as if it isn’t missing the only thing necessary for a romance story to work, ACTUAL ROMANCE, is just so fundamentally interesting to me.
This trainwreck alone would keep me reading, but the cherry on the top is all the lying the manga does.
The story will lie about simple things that just happened. It will ask you to find Ruka annoying as if it didn’t just ask you to sympathize with Kazuya for doing the exact same thing. It will ask you to hate Mami without actually having her do anything hate-worthy. It will have Chizuru call Kazuya nice, and act flustered when she sees him, as if we didn’t just watch him stalk her or blackmail her. It will have you totally convinced that Chizuru will confess her undying love to Kazuya any day now without actually having her act like she likes him… ever? Ever.
The only comparable experience I’ve had is watching The Room with a bunch of friends a few years back. Where the thing takes itself so seriously, yet it’s so bad, and also, it hates women? And the guy who made it is just as much of a goofy character as the characters in the world of the piece. And Claudette goes “I got the results of the test back. I definitely have breast cancer😒”. And you know? How are you not invested after an incredible line like that? That’s the real question.
It is exhausting. It is ceaseless. And I think it’s the only time I can confidently say I’m legitimately being gaslit by fiction? I am in an abusive relationship with KanoKari. Though, unlike real gaslighting and real abuse, it’s honestly kind of fun and strange and exciting. And the tweets I get out of it are legendary. It helps I can just opt out of it any time I feel it’s getting on my nerves. But I find myself always coming back when I’m recharged and ready for more craziness!
Conclusion
There’s one scene from the film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse where Miles Morales, the titular Spider-Man, intentionally fails a multiple-choice quiz by answering every single getting question wrong. His teacher points out that selecting bubbles at random would award a student around a 25%, not a 0%. The only logical conclusion to that situation was that Miles knew the correct answers and failed on purpose.
Likewise, I think it takes skill and intention to write something as profoundly empty, wheel-spinny, and downright uncomfortable as KanoKari.
If KanoKari was poorly written blind and by incompetence, it would occasionally, accidentally, stumble upon something happening. I hate The Rising of the Shield Hero. Yet, Stuff Happens in that show. The fact that KanoKari has made no progress since its debut in 2017 tells me Miyajima Reiji KNOWS how to write progress and doesn’t.
If I were to take a guess, I’d argue that Miyajima Reiji doesn’t even really care about KanoKari as a story. He just wants to draw pretty girls going on dates with our main guy. He wants to do pin-ups of Chizuru in a bikini or in the shower or something. But that doesn’t make any money. So, he’s come up with a manga concept that is just plausible enough to make sales, with no commitment to make anything happen any time soon. In the meantime, he just fills the panels with waifus.
So, one day Reiji will draw a picture of Chizuru in his real-life shower. Or he’ll just paint Chizuru’s panties on his real-life carpet. And he’ll post it on Twitter, and we’ll just be like, dude, what is this? Why?
And look, I admit. The art is really good.
I do art and I would study this piece. Especially in the shapes and colors of the hair and the rendering of the skin. And I think we all know if the art wasn’t so pretty, this whole elaborate “gaslighting” scheme would fall flat on its face immediately.
On the one hand, if all Reiji really wants to do is draw cute little pin-ups and short comics of dates with his imaginary and unreasonably pretty college girls, he absolutely can do that. I will not stop him. I would suggest acquiring healthier views on women while he’s at it, especially since he is married
but for the most part you won’t hear from me on that.
On the other hand, he should also, maybe, never be allowed near a script again? Maybe don’t give the “blackmail and romance are the same” guy a new sibling romance manga. Maybe it’s okay if he just doesn’t write that. If it’s Crunchyroll or the Kanojo, Okarishimasu! Production Committee that’s making him write more because the figures and books and anime sell like hotcakes, it’s probably fine. We are probably good.
We’ve had enough KanoKari.
We do not need
any more.
Thanks.
.
.
God
FUCKING
damn it.
