A man and four women become entangled in a web of jealousy, shame, and cuckoldry…

Once in a while, controversial anime like Kanojo mo Kanojo come along and strike a nerve with the audience. These anime can become successes and get praised by fans. Or they can become punching bags—a joke to the whole community. It would be easy to write off KanoKano as cringe, degenerate, and trash, as so many already have, but don’t be so hasty.

Accusing Girlfriend, Girlfriend of being cringe is like saying Gintama isn’t historically accurate. You haven’t figured out something that isn’t obvious. Of course, it is cringy, degenerate, and trashy—harem anime usually are. Most of them are testosterone-induced fantasies written by men. But they cover this fact with melodrama and superficial depth. KanoKano does not pretend—it digs deep into the recesses of your desires and pulls primal emotions kicking and screaming to the surface of your subconscious. It is like witnessing a violent car crash. You can’t help but gawk at it with morbid curiosity. Though it panders to harem fans with excessive fanservice, it works to bait unsuspecting viewers. To call KanoKano a “deconstruction” would be cliche. More accurately, it is a perversion of the harem genre that will appeal to those willing to read between the lines.

Girlfriend, Girlfriend fully commits to being idiotic and humiliating to watch. It leans into the cringe, and that’s why it works. It’s easy to write it off as another crappy harem anime. The characters are archetypal, seemingly generic, and they make illogical decisions that conflict with their interests. Naoya wants to protect his girlfriend and give her unconditional love, yet he refuses to reject another girl and becomes a ‘two-timer’. Saki wants Naoya to herself and fears he might cheat on her, yet she allows him to date another girl as soon as he begs. Nagisa wants to advance her relationship with Naoya, but she insists on giving Saki a head start. This circle of painfully obvious miscommunication fuels both the plot and our frustrations with the characters.

While I could pick apart the anime’s many flaws, like cinema sins, then pat myself on the back for being so above the latest trashy harem, that’d be doing it a disservice. I’m guilty of judging this anime before watching it—I called it garbage based on the trailer. Before avoiding it, you should take a look at every other harem anime and male-power-fantasy then ask yourself, isn't this the same tripe you’re used to, except amplified? I’m asking you to peek under the hood of this dumpster fire with me. There’s a method to the madness.

One bold harem author asks, what would happen if everyone wins? Saki’s plight is all due to his intervention. She is the heroine in a seemingly average romantic comedy. All of a sudden, her ideal boyfriend proposes an idea—what if they date another girl? Though she detests the idea of competing for her boyfriend, she is fascinated. Saki expresses attraction for Nagisa in a way that insinuates she is bisexual. Doubtlessly, this explains why she finds an odd excitement in watching Naoya and Nagisa be romantic. These netorare moments are more self-aware than the banal cuckoldry in Domestic Girlfriend. Either girl has an objective; to seduce Naoya, but their fatal flaws prevent them from achieving their goals. Saki’s envy for Nagisa’s curvy body, bodacious breasts, and attentiveness stifles her self-confidence. She feels an innate sense that Naoya is rightfully hers. After all, Nagisa is a plus one who they may eject at any moment. Nagisa understands why Saki is defensive of Naoya. That’s why she supports her. Like a sister-wife! Saki finds herself in these precarious situations because of her naivety. She could easily dump both of them and date a woman instead. In her daily life, she presents as a confident, upstanding student. Behind closed doors, where she lives with boyfriend and girlfriend, her id manifests itself. Watching her personality unravel as the straight man to Naoya’s dense behavior never got tiring. Every joke increases in severity. All manner of sexual desire and insecurities crawl to the surface—creating some truly cringe-worthy moments. I loved every second of it.

Nagisa is perhaps the most disturbing of the five characters. She has no backstory, no family, no friends, no aspirations aside from her boyfriend, and very little character depth. She is horny all the time, unconditionally in love with Naoya, masochistic and satisfied with being his side hoe. Her only ‘development (if you can call it that) involves coming to terms with her stupidity and reliance on Naoya for a purpose. If you imagine a cardboard cutout of the idealized anime waifu, you would see her face. She unconditionally loves you. She is willing to go along with anything you say. All harem anime present this fantasy—she is the final form. The author neither glorifies nor condemns it. He simply presents her unabashedly.

Naoya, however, is attracted to these... qualities.

Naoya grapples with being a societal pariah and maintaining his polyamorous relationship. His character arc isn’t about growing to love his girlfriends more because he already loves Saki and Nagisa unconditionally by the time they become a thruple. His growth is about overcoming shame. This shame is an intentional jab at fans of the harem genre—the humiliation of how society views his love of multiple people as deplorable behavior. People judge him with words like “Cheater” and “Two-timer”. We love the fantasy of having numerous people fall in love with us because it’s satisfying. In reality, it could never happen. You would be ripped apart by society if your fantasies were actualized. Naoya goes to incredible lengths to protect the secrecy of his scandalous relationship; he nearly pays a million yen to keep the truth hidden. At school, he and Saki pretend to be in a monogamous relationship while poor Nagisa sits alone. She sacrifices having a normal love life to be with Naoya: she avoids the shame potentially brought upon her partners if the truth came out through being stealthy. One of the primary sources of shame is Milika.

Oh, how I loathed Milikia from the beginning. Although she shames Naoya for two-timing, everyone can tell she envies his girlfriends. She forces herself into the middle of Naoya, Saki, and Nagisa’s complex thruple. Even though they plead with her to just leave them alone, she refuses. It gets to the point where she literally camps outside of their home, waiting for Naoya to fall in love with her. No one in their right mind would think this is an ordinary way to win someone’s affection, but Milika is certainly not in her right mind. She is a fantasy version of a harem heroine cranked up to insanity. Her love for Naoya is obsessive to the point she stalks him. The truth is, this is the kind of girl who exists in harem anime. She inexplicably falls madly in love with a generic male protagonist; to any average person, this seems insane. In reality, the fantasy waifu who will chase after your heart could never exist healthily. The most comparable character I can think of is Yuno Gasai from Future Diary.

Milika is a textbook narcissist. Her attempts to make Naoya fall for her are humiliating to observe. She’s so tragically unaware that not everyone is in love with her. She has a youtube channel entirely based around showing off her busty cleavage for her audience. And when asked what her favorite thing is, she says: “Myself!” Her vanity is one-dimensional, undeniably sexist, and hammered into the audience. The author intended for her to be cringeworthy. For me, it was a hilarious sight to behold.

Last but not least is Shino, Saki’s best friend and the audience’s avatar. For the first ten episodes, she is a background character who is fooled by the thruple’s monogamous charade. She becomes curious about Saki’s taboo love life, hiding her true intentions with the thin veil of ‘concern for her friend’. Truthfully, she is just like us, a passive observer who peers at the car crash from the rearview mirror. Instead of driving away, she becomes swept into the tornado of lies and humiliation. Shino’s concern for Saki quickly becomes an obsession; she wants to know if the scandalous rumor is true: Is her friend truly perverse? Or has she been manipulated by her depraved boyfriend? Her concern quickly turns to obsession, even stalking. Watching her struggle to understand Naoya, Saki, and Nagisa’s love triangle is exciting because I see my old self in her: Bewildered but morbidly curious enough to prod further.

I will admit, this anime kind of looks terrible. The best storyboards are ripped straight from the manga: such as the creatively framed cuckolding shots and innumerable over-the-top reaction faces. It’s a shame this subversive masterpiece got treated like dime-a-dozen harem trash. Girlfriend, Girlfriend is a genuinely ridiculous anime. But to me, it is fascinating as well. It appeals to the cynic within me. Though it does not have a deep story, it never failed to engage me. I was always able to laugh with it or at it. Still, it accomplishes something so subversive that it makes me wonder if the writers, artists, and actors were all in on the joke.