April 16, 2024
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Author: Andrew Osmond.
rent a girlfriend is a risqué romantic comedy about a young man who goes online… as the title suggests. Kazuya, a college student, feels pain after being abandoned. That’s when he discovered a website offering girlfriends for rent. (The website says it costs “only 5,000 yen per hour”, with the show costing around £35 when it aired in 2020 and around £27 at the time of writing). As for whether Rental Girlfriends is an anime fantasy like Alien Girlfriends or is really popular in Japan…we’ll get to that later.
Soon, Kazuya was sitting in a cafe with a beautiful, smiling girl sitting next to him. The script constantly reminds us that she is no match for him. At the end of the date, she briefly holds his hand, and Kazuya lets himself think that she likes him. He then entered the discussion area and was surprised to find that this was how she treated all her customers.
Kazuya got angry again and gave the girl a one-star rating, but it wasn’t enough. He made another date so he could tell the girl named Chizuru how he felt in person. That day, she was impeccably smart and friendly again… until they went to an aquarium (a typical date spot for young Japanese people) and he started yelling at her. She drags him into a back room, breaks character, and explodes on him again. It’s very uncomfortable and charming from a human perspective, silly cartoon expressions and all.
And then we see the first ridiculous twist in the story. As they argue, Kazuya gets a call telling him that his beloved grandmother has been taken to the hospital. He rushes to see her, Chizuru not far behind because, well, she’s a pro and still on time as his date. When grandma sees Chizuru, she will naturally ask who this strange girl is, and Kazuya stammers that she is his girlfriend. Chaos ensues, as Kazuya’s relatives have given up on the boy continuing the family lineage.
Among a bunch of things you wouldn’t know, it turns out that Chizuru is not only a student at Kazuya University, but she also lives next door to him! At least Chizuru suffers from Clark Kent Syndrome; that is, she looks so sloppy and studious in her daily life that none of the supporting characters recognize her as the goddess on Kazuya’s arm. Oh, and Kazuya’s ex, named Asami, is still around and reacts strangely to the news that he has a beautiful new girlfriend. It was so fun to see Chizuru and Kazuya being tied together tighter and tighter. Then more girls came pouring in…
rent a girlfriend It was adapted into a manga in 2017, drawn by Reiji Miyajima, and serialized in 2017. weekly shounen magazine. As of this writing, the book is still running and has collected 35 volumes, launching not only the anime but also a live-action series on Japanese television in 2022. , he was influenced by a news report that this was not a story about Japan, but a story about China. It’s about “parents forcing their son to bring a girlfriend home for the New Year, so they rent a girlfriend and introduce it to their parents. It sounds silly, but I think it’s also cute.”
There seems to be no reason to think that rental girlfriends don’t exist in Japan. In fact, it’s easy to find Japanese-language websites that purport to let you contact them, or YouTube videos that ostensibly show the “service” in action. Whether Girlfriends for Rent is any less bizarre, or more sinister, than maid cafes or hostess clubs is debatable. There’s no denying that both exist, and both are businesses that make male customers pay to share the company of young women who wouldn’t look at them in real life.
However, it is worth adding here a postscript to the broader claims that have been made in recent years. In other words, “Rental Girlfriend” is a manifestation of a more extraordinary Japanese culture. April 2018, New Yorker Published an article of nearly 10,000 words about the “rental” industry in Japan. The article, written by Elif Bautman, claims that “renting” actors is used for everything from hosting family dinners for a lonely widower to hosting expensive weddings for marriage-crazy parents.
This article appears to be the inspiration for a 2020 documentary on the same subject called ” Family Romance Ltd. Directed by the esteemed Werner Herzog. On a less noble note, the article may also have been the inspiration for American talk show host Conan O’Brien’s comedy show.
I have a personal interest because I wrote an article for this blog about New Yorker article, pointing out some credibility issues raised by my Japanese friends. From that point on, my friends started making money. 2020, New Yorker It is admitted that some contents in the article were fabricated by the Japanese interviewees. For anyone interested, this book provides an excellent summary of the disaster new republic Ryu Spaeth’s website, titled “How The New Yorker Fell into the ‘Weird Japan’ Trap.” i still find New Yorker The clip holds up, but as fiction; someone should animate it.
Andrew Osmond is 100 animated feature films. rent a girlfriend Distributed in the UK by Anime Limited.
