One of the most subversive and engaging series I’ve ever watched, and one that's unfortunately under appreciated and only viewed as “just another trashy harem series” by critics. I'm personally of the belief that the critics either don’t get the humour or look at the series with too critical a lens.
One such criticism I've heard flung against the show is, “How can the main character have two girlfriends? That’s ridiculous.” Yeah, well, it is. It’s ridiculous because it’s supposed to be. Girlfriend-Girlfriend never shies away from what it is; an over-the-top subversion of the typical harem anime.
To begin to illustrate on Girlfriend-Girlfriend’s deceptive brilliance and what makes it a masterpiece of a parody, we must first establish what makes a typical harem.
Few series have tried to subvert the audience’s expectations and set itself apart from the norm, but end up falling into the pitfalls of everything they were trying to sway away from. Osamake: Where the Childhood Friend Won’t Lose is a perfect example of this. The childhood friend typically never wins in a harem series, so Osamake tries to offer an scenario where one does; except it shoots itself in the foot by making all the girls the main character’s childhood friends, completely defeating the purpose of the title.
Girlfriend-Girlfriend succeeds in its playful mockery of the harem genre where others failed. Right off the bat main character Mukai Naoya professes his love to his childhood friend Sakisaki (endearingly called “Saki for short) and she reciprocates his feelings and accepts him. (Wow, a harem where the main character actually loves his childhood friend and NOT the popular girl? Heavens forbid)
Among many things Naoya lacks, self-awareness and shyness would be right up there. Even Saki quipped at him about not cheating on her when they parted ways for class, he took it seriously and professed his undying love for her, hugging her passionately right there in class in front of their classmates. In a less clever series, these types of blatantly cheesy dialogue would just be that; cheesy. The way Girlfriend-Girlfriend’s brilliantly spins this corny line into comedic excellence is with Naoya’s complete lack of social awareness.
Rather than acknowledging the outrageously sappy stuff he says, he doubles down and screams them with hyper-dramatic enthusiasm. It’s amazing! It makes every line he’s given super hilarious, giving me vibes of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures. Characters get into ridiculous situations in the aforementioned series, yet take them ultra-seriously, given hyper-dramatic lines of dialogue for the pure of insanity of it all.
Girlfriend-Girlfriend is exactly like a JoJo’s series with its insanity driven seriously by the earnestness of Naoya.
After parting with his girlfriend, Naoya finds himself on the rooftop to unwind. It’s here where our joint secondary main character and harem entry makes her introduction; Minase Nagisa, presenting a well-prepared lunch for him and admitting her feelings. She goes on to detail her resolve; telling him just how hard she worked for the express purpose of being with him.
Her determination impressed him so much that even after initially rejecting her feelings, he reflexively grabs her hand when she was about to leave, citing he would straight-up ask his girlfriend if he could date both of them.
After spending time with her since Saki thought Nagisa was cute, Naoya dropped the bombshell that he wants to date them both, hilariously getting flung across the map because of it. ^.^ I’m not the type of girl who usually likes all that girl-hitting-guy stuff, but honestly, it’s played so tastefully and understandably here that I can’t help but love it.
After Naoya demonstrated his determination to make both Nagisa and Saki happy, Saki relents and the three begin their bizarre life together living under the same rooftop.
The characters
Mukai Naoya – Despite being painted as a satire of the stereotypical harem protagonist, (he even has that basic token harem main character design), there’s one thing that’s quite clear; and that’s Naoya being a stand-up guy. He knows he was wrong falling for Nagisa’s perseverance, citing that he’s just a weak-willed loser, but he wants to do everything within his power to make his girls happy. He evidently wasn’t happy about keeping their three-way relationship a secret from everyone to protect their social status at school and tried to spill the beans just because he couldn’t bare to see Nagisa being alone. It was Saki who kept him from revealing their secret.
He's surprisingly sincere despite the series taking every chance to poke fun at him. Even when the third girl attempted to strong-arm her way into the harem, he stood steadfast and shot her down; displaying how shockingly proper he was in spite of being a “two-timing loser”. He honestly wouldn’t look out of place in a JoJo series. He's a refreshing take on a harem protagonist.
Sakisaki – The childhood friend and first girl of the harem. How often do you get that in harem series? The childhood friend winning? Rarely happens. Even more subversive, she ends up being the tsundere! The childhood friend in harem series are usually the bubbly cute ones. Saki’s a fan favourite among even casual fans of the series and it’s not hard to see why. She’s the most real one among them. Whereas Nagisa was depicted as the ideal “housewife,” Saki can’t do any of that. It was immensely funny watching her come to the realization that she hadn’t “done shit”, in her words, for Naoya. This leads her to feeling insecure and initially leaving the harem, feeling like she would never measure up to Nagisa. Naoya had to persuade her to come back with his shounen-esque willpower, staying up three days in one of the show’s most surprisingly sincere moments.
She even tries bonding with Nagisa through her love of games, though Nagisa was nowhere near as good as her as she quickly found out. ^.^
Minase Nagisa – The “cute” archetype of the harem. She’s presented as the ideal housewife; great figure, great cooking, and with a demure personality to match. She ticks all the boxes of what an average guy like Naoya would want in a woman. In a less written show, she would just be that; a one-dimensional ideal, but not here. She modelled herself on the perfect housewife because she loved Naoya so much it began to hurt. We later learn why she adores Naoya and it’s honestly touching. According to her, she was average, average at everything she did; be it music, sports, gaming, studying and the like. Her motivation to do anything hit rock bottom given her explicit lack of talent for anything.
That’s when she came across the love of her life, Naoya, professing his feelings for the millionth time to his childhood sweetheart. Despite being knocked back countless times, Naoya never gave up, raising the bar higher and higher from “Let’s go out, Saki-chan!” to “Let’s get married.” Such determination left a deep-rooted impression on her (her, who always gave up) and gave her a goal to aspire toward, being with Naoya.
And so, she trained, day in and day out; cutting her hand when practicing her cooking and falling over when working on her figure. This time, she never gave up, because her crush wouldn’t.
She has a beautiful character arc of learning not to hold back and accommodate Saki; that she, too, can also be Naoya’s number one.
Hoshizaki Rika, YouTube alias Mirika – The streaming YouTuber star (dubbed MeTube for copyright reasons) first unofficially enters the picture when the trio catch a thumbnail on one of her videos, noticing their school uniform dumped in the background that she had forgotten to move out of the way of her snapshot. She quickly removed it, as the trio noticed the next day, but not before Nagisa could take a screenshot as proof. This is the brilliant use of the times that give the trio natural ammunition against Mirika when she discovered their three-way relationship. She was initially going to mess with them until Nagisa flashed her the screenshot.
Feeling amused by it all, she then offers to become Naoya’s third girlfriend and by this point, you could be forgiven for thinking Naoya would just accept her, but no! This is where the series subverts the audience’s expectations and has Naoya rejects her advances! It gets better when this bruises Mirika’s ego, being rejected by this two-timing loser. She doesn’t go down without a fight and resolves to have Naoya fall for her, camping on his yard in a tent because proper Naoya doesn’t condone a man and woman(s) living together without being in a relationship. The irony is not lost on the show.
The wild antics paints Mirika has wonderfully tenacious. Even in the cold, she wouldn’t go home and ordered whatever she needed to survive the outdoors off Amazon. She even hilariously poured bottles of water in a black bag, wrapped it up, and let it sit for hours on end to heat it up before hanging it up and speedily poking holes through it to make a makeshift shower! Willpower 100.
There’s another wonderful sincere moment at the end of all this when her distraught father came to pick her up, having to discovered she was basically using her channel as a “only fans” account. He was about to delete it until Naoya stepped in like the honest hero that he is, citing how much hard work she poured into each video despite using her boobs for clicks. It gave her a valid reason to truly fall for Naoya. She even steals his first kiss off Saki or Nagisa.
It's interesting to note that she uses the “popular girl” archetype. Either the popular or tsundere girl would usually be the main one in a basic harem stories, yet here she’s the third wheel. Another example of Girlfriend-Girlfriend completely flipping the usual formula on its head.
Kiryuu Shino – Shino is more hands off than the other girls, not really having a steak in any of this. When she learns her friend Saki might be being two-timed, she understandably becomes concern and confronts Naoya at the hot spring resort the three were staying at. Mirika also tagged along, too, so Nagisa uses her to bounce. Her confrontation with Naoya was gut-wrenchingly funny, seeing her doubling down in her assertion even as it puts them both in a perilous situation will never not be hilarious. She actually brings up justified points regarding the downsides of two-timing and Naoya just took it all as a learning experience.
She didn’t get much screentime throughout season 1, but the last episode implied she has feelings for Naoya that she’s trying to bury for Saki’s sake so I’m interested to see what season 2 does for her.
In conclusion: Girlfriend-Girlfriend is a fantastic parody that uses typical archetypes and flips them in creative ways to create something so richly endearing and comedic, creating engaging and lovable characters that NEVER fail to leave a smile on my face. It saddens me that casuals only see it as "just another harem series" for the dumpster pile when it's anything but. Even more so when they like truly trashy series like "My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom." There's no point to anything that show throws at its audience. It's just about a stupid girl being surrounded by equally stupid characters falling heads-over-heels for her for little rhyme or reason. At least Girlfriend-Girlfriend gives Naoya's suitors valid reasons to fall for his determination.
My Next Life as a Villainess gives the barest of bones of the girl's suitors to land in her harem and keep the status-quo all the way to the end.
Compared to that garbage, Girlfriend-Girlfriend is a 10/10 masterpiece; one I was more than happy to revisit near New Years' Eve time and write a lengthy review for.
Can't wait for season 2.
Final score: 10/10
47.5 out of 60 users liked this review
