Name: Do you like Romcoms? Do you like Harem anime but hate how they never go anywhere? Well boy do I have an anime for you.
Item: The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You
Rating: 80
Author: arboux

Waifra

Do you like Romcoms? Do you like Harem anime but hate how they never go anywhere? Well boy do I have an anime for you. · Waifora

Do you like Romcoms? Do you like Harem anime but hate how they never go anywhere? Well boy do I have an anime for you.
100 Girlfriends is a fantastic romcom harem anime. Our protagonist Rentaro is very unlucky with girls, he's confessed to 100 different girls and been brutally shot down every single time. When he visits a shrine to pray for success in his love life the god of love appears to tell him not to fret, that he'll meet his soulmate in High School, actually he's going to meet 100 soul mates in highschool, and they'll be hopelessly in love with him (and him them) from the first time they meet each other. The twist is that meeting a soul mate uses up your whole lifetime's worth of luck and should you not get together they will die from unfortunate events.

The synopsis out of the way the show itself is actually sugar sweet. the first season focuses on the first 5 girlfriends he meets, giving each one enough time to properly set up their character, they're all generally well written with each one having their own unique quirks, like Hakari the deredere type that is ~~not so~~secretly incredibly horny for MC or Karane the walking tsundere archetype. Shizuka is my favorite, a tiny bibliophile that speaks through quotes in her favorite book, and i'll be honest her story actually had me in tears.

The strength of every harem anime is always in the characters, and each one shines. Rentaro for example, he's charismatic, honest and loves everyone of his girlfriends to a fault, to the point where he's willing to do crazy things, like

Spoiler, click to view

transcribing an entire series of books into text to upload into a text-to-speech program so Shizuka, his little Liberian girlfriend, can talk to people easier

. Or putting himself in harm's way to make them happy. He's genuinely a great guy and it's very hard to hate him unlike most harem protags. I personally feel like this the biggest weakness of the genre, too many protags are indecisive, unbelievably dense, or just generally unlikable and Rentaro suffers from none of that. He's a genuine gigachad, he loves and respects each one of the girlfriends enormously but also equally and is willing to do whatever it takes to make every single one of them happy. The girlfriends are no slouch in terms of character either, they're all very charming and unique characters that love Rentaro (and each other) dearly and going into depth on all of them would take too long so i'll skip it but i'll say they're all very cute and the series does a great job to keep them distinct from one another while letting their characters all shine in the various situations the story takes them

Plot-wise this anime is like your standard fair romcom it's character driven rather than having a normal story or plot structure, except instead of a single girl or maybe a love triangle it's a love pentagram. The series is like a condensed meta romcom rather than a harem anime, although it is a harem anime. It's got all the fixing of both but it's highly condensed (each romance arc lasts maybe 2 episodes), and not only does it pull it off, it succeeds in having genuinely funny and heartfelt moments.

it's a strong 8/10 for me, Overall funny, heartfelt, with great funny characters and a genuinely likeable protag. I did feel like the big drama towards the end of the show felt contrived but the resolution was pretty funny