The Spring 2020 Manga Guide

Rent-a-Girlfriend

What's It About? 

Kazuya has never had much luck with girls, and when his first girlfriend ever dumps him after a month and then blocks him on social media, the college student is feeling like things will never work out for him. On a whim, he signs up for the Diamond Rental Service, an app that allows you to rent a girlfriend for a day. Kazuya's date with Chizuru goes well, but cynicism sets in soon after, and he rents her for a second date and lets his anger show. Things are pretty well over when he gets a call from his parents that his grandmother's in the hospital, and Chizuru ends up going with him…and his overeager grandma believes that she's really his girlfriend! Now Grandma's getting demanding and Kazuya's not sure what to do – especially when it turns out that his rental girlfriend is not only a student at his college, but also his neighbor…

Rent-A-Girlfriend is written and illustrated by Reiji Miyajima and has an anime adaptation in the works. Kodansha Comics will release the manga in print in June for $12.99.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Human rental services may sound like a bad science fiction plot, but they're a real, non-sleazy thing in Japan. Depending on the service, you can rent a grandmother, a child, a spouse, or a girl-or-boyfriend for a set amount of time. The idea is to help alleviate loneliness and to provide a healing mental health service for those who need it. It's not about sex work; it's more about not being alone.

In the case of Kazuya, the protagonist of Rent-A-Girlfriend, it's also about trying to get over his heartbreak and frustration that he was recently dumped by Mami, his girlfriend of a month, and while there's definitely sexual humor (mostly at his expense), this isn't really a fanservice-heavy rom com. Although he doesn't really say it straight out, Kazuya feels like a loser for resorting to a rental service to experience going on a date with a pretty girl who's interested in him, and that's what gets the plot rolling. What keeps it there is a string of impressive cosmic coincidences and the fact that he really, really loves his grandma and doesn't want to upset or disappoint her.

Honestly, this was a very pleasant surprise. Kazuya's a pretty self-aware character in that he knows he can be a jerk and he knows that for some reason girls don't like him, but he has trouble putting two and two together without getting three. We start to see what some of the real problems are in the last couple chapters of the volume when he ends up at a pub with Mami and a bunch of other people and Mami uses the occasion to start complaining about how pushy he was with her. We haven't seen that in his interactions with Chizuru, but that's because she's very clear about what the rules are – both those stipulated in the rental agreement and what she herself is comfortable with, namely that he not talk to her at school. While some things ought to just be common sense for Kazuya, he's also being informed, it seems, but his kind-of-icky friends and the media he consumes, which, when he's cleaning up his apartment before a visit from Grandma, seems to be largely porn. None of those things are going to give him healthy relationship information (see Boys & Sex by peggy Orenstein), and when Chizuru lays down the rules, he really tries to adhere to them. The only times he doesn't aren't about touching her or propositioning her, either; it's when he feels the need to keep up the charade for his grandmother.

This is a comedy, though, so things aren't quite as serious as I'm making them sound. He and Chizuru are prone to yelling at each other over, well, everything, and there are some physical gags such as you might expect from a racier rom com, mostly about Kazuya's involuntary erections. The art goes out of its way not to be too fanservice heavy, instead relying on hints and glimpses (which I personally think is more effective), and if the girls have elastic spines, well, it's still nice to look at. There's definitely a heart at the core of this manga, along with the mystery of why Chizuru is doing this job in the first place, so if you're in the mood for a new slightly-ecchi romance, this is worth checking out.

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Faye Hopper

Rating:

Rent-A-Girlfriend begins with an interesting aside from the publisher Kodansha. It clarifies that the Rental Girlfriend service the manga's premise is built around exists in Japan and is very popular. This led me to believe the manga might be an engaging window into a world I had no idea existed, would focus on clarifying information about the practice and try to dispel a lot of gross, unwarranted stigma. This was an incorrect assumption.

Rent-A-Girlfriend is instead a rom-com based on mistaken circumstances and a lie that spirals out of control. Kazuya has just been dumped, in a moment of extreme loneliness he resolves to pay a rental girlfriend for a date and things spiral out of control when Chizuru (the Rent-A-Girlfriend in question) meets his grandmother and family. This not an unsalvageable premise, even if it was not what I hoped for, the issue is how the manga treats the relationship between Kazuya and Chizuru. In the first chapter, after their initial date, Kazuya grows extremely resentful of Chizuru. He detests her presumed inauthenticity, leaves her a bad review, and on their next date, berates her in public in front of a crowd. This is not ok. This is this woman's job, and even if her niceties were a front, she is still a person with feelings who does not deserve this kind of treatment. Chapter after chapter, Kazuya exhibits this same kind of bitter, toxic rage toward Chizuru. And guess what? Despite this, each chapter ends in them making nice and connecting and gradually building up to a romance. This cannot help but read as the manga saying that Kazuya's behavior is acceptable and that he will get the girl regardless of if he, say, bothers to treat her like a person. I am not here for that.

I understand what Rent-A-Girlfriend is trying to do. It is trying to punctuate a rom-com premise built upon absurd contrivance with authentic, if sometimes unpleasant, humanity and the intricacies of a real Japanese social phenomenon. That's a fine agenda, and one that other romcoms have succeeded at, the issue is when those two halves are never reconciled and it results in unpleasant, unacceptable behavior (like Kazuya trying to break down Chizuru's door, against her wishes, when his grandma is over) being apologized for and given real credence. While I at least appreciate that the manga does not look down on Chizuru for her profession, it is ultimately too reliant on uncomfortable situations (such as a really unpleasant instance of Kazuya becoming aroused as he and Chizuru are forced to hide from his grandmother in a hospital bed), repetitious plotlines and clichés of burgeoning attraction that are extremely not-fun when you consider how badly Kazuya acts toward Chizuru. Though it was educational in a certain respect, I would much prefer reading an article about the-day-to-day of one of these girls than to ever pick up another volume of this.