This is by far the most excrutiating and agonisingly painful read of my entire life. The last time I had experienced this level of pain was when I stepped onto a minefield on lego pieces.
Oh boy... this is about to dive into a lot of stuff.
1) Main Plot
To put it simple, Rent-A-Girlfriend is about this incel Kazuya, who gets dumped by his girlfriend after less than 1 month. He goes home, cries his eyes out, beats his meat and then goes onto a rental service like the "Beta male" he is, to try and cope with the fact that he just got dumped.
He rents out a girl named Chizuru and their relationship to this whole catastrophe begins. Kazuya and Chizuru have to then keep their "rental" shinnanigans up to appease the people around them by stating that the two of them are going out with each other.
2) Nothing Happens
Throughout the whole 242 chapters I read in this disgraceful manga, literally nothing happens. The plot does not progress, we are always at square one with the characters. Every chapter follows the same boring ass formula that the Author reuses and to demonstrate this I shall post this meme which will perfectly sum up every chapter of Rent-A-Girlfriend.
There are only two instances where something major happens in the story, but these two major points have nothing to do with the romance of the whole entire story. The first being Spoiler, click to view
Chizuru's grandma diesSpoiler, click to view
Kazuya and Chizuru make a movieI must say the movie arc of the manga was somewhat enjoyable, you see Kazuya go to lengths to help Chizuru with her acting career. I must say I was kinda rooting for Kazuya, that he finally fixed that loose wire in his brain and was actually developing as a character. BUT..... right after the movie arc, he goes back to being an incel and you are literally like...
3) The Characters
99% of the characters suck.
Ruka comes off as a sensitive and misunderstood girl from the beginning, but she turns into this clingy ass bitch later on and just serves no purpose but to annoy the reader.
Chizuru is just a child in a mature girl's body. She literally cannot come to express her feelings whenever she is given the chance to and always dodges the question. She is meant to be the mature character but acts like a baby and either runs away from Kazuya or just keeps him hanging.
Mami is meant to be the antagonist of the story. Her motives for constantly trying to expose Chizuru and Kazuya are literally meaningless, yeah she had somewhat of an emotional backstory but without any motive besides trying to cause harm to Kazuya for the sake of evil intentions, really makes her a one dimensional character.
Sumi is probably the only likeable character out of the main cast. I was actually excited to see what she was doing and what her impact was and she was more of a relief from the terrible chapters.
4) The dreaded 218
Spoiler, click to view
Now we come to Chapter 218, what more can I say about it, that hasn't been said already. As I've said before, I understand the character point of view how Kazuya felt after getting "rejected" by Chizuru. But him getting a boner in the middle of a pool over the fact of him getting NTR'd is absurd and it just shows how pathetic this story has become.
I mean the Author himself thinks Chizuru is his IRL girlfriend and hence will not end the story over the fear of himself getting NTR'd by Kazuya. So he will keep dragging out the story as long as he can.
Just do yourself a favour and don't read this garbage.
To all those who call this "Peak Romance" really need to get their heads checked out and actually educate themselves in proper story telling.
If you are looking for a good romance manga or anime, just watch Toradora, Golden Time, Love is War or Horimiya. These by far have way better characters and story than Rent-A-bitch.
