The Spring 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Rent-A-Girlfriend Season 5

Kinoshita Kazuya is a 20-year-old failure of a college student. He managed to kiss his girlfriend once, but was dumped after a month. "Ugh... Damn it. I never want to go through that again." Completely spiteful, Kazuya uses a certain method to date a girl. He goes to their meeting place and suddenly hears,"You're Kazuya-kun, right?" A beautiful girl brushing her long, black hair behind her ear was there, smiling at him. Her name was Mizuhara Chizuru. Something real is born after just a single rental! A reckless rom-com filled with love and excitement is about to begin!

Rent-A-Girlfriend Season 5 is based on the manga series by Reiji Miyajima. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays.

I have to give this premiere credit, I was genuinely invested in the first half of this episode, but that's only because it felt like I was watching a completely different show. Mami has always been a bit of an enigma in this show because she's been present throughout and is a big source of conflict, but season four showed her getting the most directly involved in the current situation. Season four had the audacity of ending on a cliffhanger regarding her just exposing Chizuru and Kazuya's relationship, but a big prevailing question throughout season four was "why?" I couldn't tell if she was doing it for explicitly malicious purposes or if she was doing it because of some kind of moral code regarding all of the lies that surround the situation. The show continues to play with a little bit of this theme of how lies can tear people apart and the first half of this episode does sort of play into that idea. Turns out that Mami is from a very wealthy family that practices some rather dated and messed up practices. Mami wasn't allowed to live a normal life because she had already been signed off to be married away to another family's son for I guess political reasons? It's not super clear. She tried to rebel when she was in high school by getting an actual boyfriend and experiencing her first real bit of emotional and social freedom. However, she was found out, the boyfriend was pressured to break up with her and now she's turned into this twisted version of herself where she doesn't really want anybody else to be happy.

I like that the first half of this episode showcases, once again, that Reiji Miyajima at least knows how to write some genuinely intriguing drama, even though there are still a lot of problems and holes with this backstory. It's implied that Kazuya has no idea that Mami has this past which on the one hand could make sense if the idea is that Mami's family is failing to establish an influential and political presence, which is why they need to marry her off. It also makes sense that Mami wouldn't talk about this, but you would think that a family that is wealthy and involved enough to be this controlling over Mami's life would have some presence off of just the back of their name. Secondly, Mami and Kazuya broke up relatively quickly and it was from Mami's side, so was she pressured to break up with him by her family or did she just date him for the hell of it as another act of rebellion? Mami admits that she kind of fell back in line with her family which also explains why she's so good at being duplicitous but what was it about Kazuya that made her think it was a good idea to risk more vindication from her father? I don't know because the backstory doesn't really connect what happened in the past to the modern day which is the problem.

I understand Mami being so bitter that she feels a weird sense of pleasure in breaking apart other couples. It sounds like it's very much a case of “if I can't be happy that nobody can” but I don't know if this is something that she regularly does with other people or if this is a first for her. Mami kind of has all of the cards on her side and what depresses me is that I know the show is going to find a reason for why she doesn't just come clean about everything because the show is still desperate to keep the current status quo. I do agree with Chizuru that Kazuya should be part of that conversation with his grandmother and he has tried to be open about the situation. The irony is that he at least wants to try to see if he and Chizuru can have a relationship first so that the lie doesn't become a lie anymore. This is a solid setup but I also don't really have a lot of confidence in this show's ability to actually do anything with those interesting ideas.

The second half of this episode felt like getting right back to the usual structure and I was bored out of my mind. I'm sorry, I don't care about Ruka's relationship with her former client, especially when having a basic conversation gets drawn out twice as long as it should be. When Ruka herself is commenting on how long it's taking for someone to say something, I almost feel like the show is trolling me because that's legitimately how I feel about these interactions. I can only think that maybe the show is trying to build a relationship between those two as a means of finally getting Ruka out of the picture which would be nice because I legitimately do not think she contributes anything to the show anymore, but again, maybe that's wishful thinking. Maybe season four messed me up a lot more than I originally thought because even when the show legitimately tries to do something interesting, I'm still left with this feeling that it's going to be fleeting or amount to absolutely nothing.

A part of me wants to be charitable and say that it's better to establish a villain's motivations late in the narrative than never at all, but I'm not in the mood to be charitable right now and especially not to this season five premiere of Rent-A-Girlfriend. The first half of this episode focuses exclusively on Mami Nanami, and finally explores her background and the experiences that inform her actions throughout the show thus far. Turns out she's a poor little rich girl who grew up in the exact kind of circumstances that can transform someone into a socially maladjusted sociopath thanks to her terrible parents. Not only did her father place her into an arranged marriage without telling her, but he also socially isolated her and robbed her of any opportunity to express her individuality or learn self-reliance. While I do appreciate that Rent-A-Girlfriend acknowledges that patriarchy is usually responsible for women tearing other women down or manipulating other people for a sense of control, this insight into the character is too little too late. We're six years into Mami being the poster child for the “woman who is evil and destroys a man's life for no reason” sexist stereotype and this reveal that she was abused as a child does little to blunt the frustration and social harm generated by the character.

The rest of this episode is aggressively fine by Rent-A-Girlfriend standards. Shots of Ruka Sarashina's bust are interspersed with her misunderstanding the current dynamics between her friends (that could be cleared up with a simple and direct conversation with any of them) and Shun Kuribayashi's being inhumanly awkward around her. Mami and Chizuru also have a more direct conversation about Chizuru and Kazuya's relationship and it seems like character growth and shifting character dynamics might finally arise from direct character action in this show…but Rent-A-Girlfriend has burned me so many times before and I'm not about to hold my breath again.

As this premiere required me to remember that Rent-A-Girlfriend exists once again I've just got to say…what are we even doing here? Like, I dated in high school, college, and as an adult and am deeply aware of all of the human drama and self-examination that can come from those experiences. None of that humanity is present in this or any episode of Rent-A-Girlfriend as all of these characters are far too alien and exaggerated in their experiences, values, and communication to provide any deeper insight into the human condition. I have no idea what this show is trying to accomplish with its misinformed pantomime of melodrama, and am actively upset every time I'm brought into the needlessly complicated entanglement of these characters lives.

Also, this season's OP is a big downgrade of the last seasons! Bring back the completely unrelated fantasy romp, it was fun!