There were a few months in 2018 and early 2019 when Kanojo, Okarishimasu by Reiji Miyajima was my favorite manga on the planet and I looked forward to new chapter releases more than I looked forward to payday. While this series has roots firmly planted in the “harem romance” genre where the story focuses on 1 character with multiple potential love interests, it sets itself apart from the pack by ignoring popular tropes and writing styles in the genre in favor of a different approach to how characters interact with each other.
Kanojo, Okarishimasu is the story of a college student named Kazuya who is down on his luck after his girlfriend dumps him for somebody else. On impulse, he downloads and uses an app to hire a “rental girlfriend,” who is a girl paid to go on dates with customers and pretend to be in a relationship with them for the span of 1 date. Kazuya ends up going on a rental date with a girl named Chizuru who he develops feelings for, and their lives begin overlapping in ways that cause their farce to continue past a casual client/contractor relationship.
As the story goes on, Kazuya meets more and more women who are using the rental girlfriend system for a variety of personal reasons beyond just making money. Each girl has her own motivation for working through that specific type of service, and each motivation is a core part of their character as opposed to a throw-away reason to introduce them into the series. The rental girlfriend service is presented as a well-kept secret as opposed to a popular dating app like Tinder, and rightfully so; At its core, this is a sexless escort service.
Before discussing the characters in depth, it is essential to understand the baseline of the harem romance genre. In this genre, the protagonist is essentially a glorified nobody. The typical protagonist will have a handful of interests and quirks that are presented as personality traits, but his actual personality does not often stretch beyond the boundaries of being an overall good person. He exists to be a crutch for other characters to use while trying to address their own problems. While he may have moments of development for himself, these developments are frequently just surface-level changes that do not impact his position as a tool for other characters to use.
The female cast of a harem romance is varied to present a lot of options to the audience with hopes that readers will emerge with a favorite and continue reading due to their attachment to that character. It’s a bit like a competition in the sense that the main character can only end up with 1 person in the end so the reader is hoping their favorite will “win” by being that person. Each harem member’s emotional attachment to the protagonist is usually flimsy and weighs heavily on very simple interactions that could happen with anybody but just managed to happen with the protagonist by chance. The harem romance genre is very telegraphed in its presentation, which makes it all the more notable when the pattern is broken.
Kazuya fits his role in the genre very well while also being established with some relatable traits that serve to prove how he’s more than just an everyman while also helping part of the audience connect with him. Right off the bat, Kazuya is shown going through the same process many people go through when they get dumped for another person: He’s upset things ended so one-sidedly, he works himself up into a jealous mess through his own delusions of his ex spending time with someone else, and he’s on the rebound to make himself feel better. Kazuya makes a lot of actions solely for his own benefit because he embodies the typical self-centered college-age kid.
Chizuru serves not only as the primary love interest of the series but also a contrast to Kazuya. While Kazuya is selfishly motivated by having some sort of active love life and does whatever he wants on impulse, Chizuru is fully focused on achieving her dream of being an actress and approaches her future with a serious demeanor while ignoring typical youthful experiences. She goes above and beyond with her rental girlfriend services and views her employment as good improvisational acting experience while also being a source of extra money for acting classes that she takes along with her regular college courses.
The relationship between Kazuya and Chizuru has a professional foundation even with the two of them needing to maintain their false love out of necessity. The strongest bond keeping the two of them together is their grandmothers, who are friends with each other and in different degrees of failing health. Kazuya and Chizuru both respect their grandmothers too much to disappoint them by revealing that their grandchildren have been lying to them just to make them happy, especially when any day could be their last.
That respect, however, does not extend too far into their bond. Chizuru is adamant about keeping one boundary intact in the form of Kazuya needing to pay her for her time, even on most occasions where the two of them need to be together in front of their grandmothers. Maintaining the employer/employee bond is a necessary measure in the structure of the story. Kazuya and the audience both need reminders that the relationship is not genuine despite how Kazuya may feel or what he may desire.
Kazuya’s ex, Maki, is a very interesting factor thrown into the mix. The story starts off with her breaking up with Kazuya to see somebody else, but she does not become a prominent cast member until a bit later in the series. Maki provides a much-needed antagonistic force in a story that could easily devolve into a cyclical flirtationship where the plot continues down a tiresome spiral of whether or not the romantic leads get together. As Kazuya’s ex, Maki is the villain to the protagonist’s hero who represents the conflict that brought him to his lowest point. The story starting with her betraying the main character’s trust brands her as the bad guy immediately.
Despite Kazuya and Maki being involved in the conflict that started the story, the most interesting dynamic is not between the two of them but between Maki and Chizuru. The typical harem romance trope is for all of the love interests to be friends as well as rivals, but Kanojo, Okarishimasu ignores that in favor of using that rivalry to help fuel the plot. Kazuya is a common point for all of his love interests, but that’s about all they have in common. There are very few reasons for any of them to be friends.
Each love interest reflects a different aspect of Kazuya’s life. Maki represents the past and the safety of going back to what is known because it’s familiar territory. Chizuru represents the future, the ideal, and what can be achieved with enough effort. A third girl, Ruka, represents the complacency in settling for what you currently have. A fourth girl, Sumi, represents the overlooked unknown that you would never think to look for so close. This is a much broader idea than is usually found in this genre, where the characters are often tweaks of classic archetypes such as “the sporty one” and “the clumsy one.”
Kanojo, Okarishimasu flourishes when it opens its female cast to character development in the face of the other members of that cast as opposed to Kazuya. Kazuya’s role is to be a positive influence in each girl’s life because of the nature of the genre as a whole, but that rule does not apply when Kazuya is excluded. With no Kazuya present to let the audience know that everybody is good regardless of what they do or say, the reader is free to make their own judgements regarding that. Even with Kazuya present, interactions between the girls hold so much weight that they initially steamroll his involvement until he asserts himself strongly enough.
By assembling a cast of characters with strong personalities and giving them room to be themselves, Kanojo, Okarishimasu shows that it is possible to write a harem romance without the protagonist needing to mediate every discussion. One day in the future I would like to go into more detail over the merits of a couple of characters, namely Ruka who was mentioned in passing here but is easily one of my favorite characters of all time. By that point, I hope that you will have caught up with the series so we’re on even ground. There is no official English release, but don’t forget that we stan most fan translators.
No comments:
Post a Comment