Romantic comedies are hit or miss but, once in a while, one comes along that tends to stand out above the rest. Rent-A-Girlfriend (Kanojo, Okarishimasu) is the latest entry in the rom com genre. As the title implies, it’s about renting a girlfriend but is something so straightforward and simplistic in a position to break the mold and offer up something different?
Let’s Go!
First Episode Synopsis
Kazuya ends up getting dumped by his girlfriend after just a single month of dating her. Depressed, he finds a service online that for just 5,000 yen per hour, he could rent his very own girlfriend. He decides to give the service a try but then comes to the realization that the person he rents, Mizuhara Chizuru, is just putting on an act as part of her job. When Kazuya realizes this, he requests a second date and calls her out on her act.
Things don’t go so well when the two of them have a public confrontation at the aquarium. As they’re arguing, Kazuya receives a phone call that his grandmother collapsed. He rushes to the hospital but Mizuhara can let the argument end there and follows him. She ends up in a situation where she is forced to introduce herself as Kazuya’s girlfriend which pleases Kazuya’s very lewd grandmother (yay for lewd grandmas!)
After a fiasco at the hospital, Kazuya tries to explain everything to Mizuhara who doesn’t really buy any of it. Still, she says to call her if he ever wants to use the service again. Kazuya returns to college and the episode ends with him bumping into Mizuhara.
Worth Watching?
YES – I had a lot of fun watching this first episode. The comedy is more embarrassing than over-the-top and crazy and it makes it so that you kind of feel for Kazuya. He’s trying to dig himself out of a hole but the hole just keeps getting deeper and deeper with, seemingly, no escape. Mizuhara’s real persona comes out and she’s a bit of a tsundere but not really. I think she’s just frustrated because Kazuya called her out on her fake act and she simply took offense to it.
That grandmother, though. She’s got some spirit in her, that’s for sure. She really made the first episode a lot better than it seemed. Still, the banter between Kazuya and Mizuhara was pretty nice but grandma just put the episode over the top. Plus, when Kazuya got humiliated by his parents in the hospital room, that was a complete and total cringe moment. Whether they knew she was a fake girlfriend or not, why would you out your son as a loner like that!?
Still, this was a highly entertaining first episode and it has me excited to see more but I am a bit cautious. This episode kind of delivered a LOT and when a first episode typically does that, it simmers down and comes rather generic from the second episode all the way until the end where it would pick back up. The true test is still to come but I think they gave us enough here to make sure you come back for more each week.
