彼女、お借りします Season5

We're finally at 50 episodes of renting girlfriends! Just in time to check in on our protagonist and how he's stewing and depressed over Chizuru running away from him and effectively rejecting him. And in true Kazuya fashion he's absolutely beating himself up over how pathetic he is and how much he wasted his time and how he never had any chance with Chizuru. Now it's all over. Although the way his mind immediately goes to her having a threesome...like, dude, c'mon. I assure you, the panning shot of Ruka in her bikini adjusting her bikini bottoms was necessary to the PLOT! Especially when her sincere and earnest cuteness and affection might be just what Kazuya needs right now after getting dumped! Or maybe it'll just make him resent himself and his feelings more. Kazuya tries (emphasis on TRIES) to move past this, to enjoy spending time with his friends, to act like he did pre-Chizuru...but instead he walks past couples, people in their youth, while dwelling on all the memories he's made with Chizuru along the way. And interspersed with these memories...are visuals of Chizuru engaging in passionate sex with Umi. AND UMI STILL HAS THE BERET ON DURING SEX. And as if that wasn't enough, Kazuya's got a BONER in the pool while imagining Chizuru banging another dude. WHAT DID I JUST WATCH. And then immediately after that the guys start debating another couples' sex life. Stay on-brand, Rent-a-Girlfriend. Chizuru is back in a bikini and back to turning heads, which makes the idea of her being able to be with Kazuya all the more impossible, but it seems like she's going to go along with his breakup plan, even if she has her own complicated feelings about it. But Kazuya's intention to do what he can to protect her are utterly sincere. And so with Mami also back in a swimsuit and back at the pool, it seems like everything is going to be okay...just play everything out, have fun, and let the breakup wait until after so we can clear the air. Of course Mami being Mami couldn't let it lie there so of course she lets her phone slip with a picture of Chizuru's Rental Girlfriend profile...and EVERYONE SEES IT. Yeah, Chizuru's face says it all, they're screwed. The ED is nice with pretty visuals of all the girls in cute date visuals! Yukata Chizuru and Cat Maid Ruka are especially effective! WE can probably bet on this ED being the most we ever see of Sumi all season.

Maybe it's because they had already spoiled the scene to me, maybe in the manga it was portrayed differently, maybe it's because I never used Kazuya (or other protagonist) as a self-insert, so his being tremendously pathetic doesn't particularly affect me (on the contrary, I find it interesting), but honestly the pool scene, so hated and memed, left me indifferent. That said, I like to imagine that at the end of the episode, Mami has an expression / smile similar to Light's when he says 'I win'

Ah, the classic pathetic Kazuya simp spiral summed up perfectly by the image of bro crying at the bottom of the pool with a raging boner lol. Y’know, as pathetic as Kazuya is, I don’t think he deserves this bullshit. Man’s already a sad sack. He don’t need this grief. Is Mami ever going to see the consequences of her actions? Because at this point, she just does whatever the fuck she wants and nothing happens. She keeps fuckin around. When are we getting to the “find out” phase?

THAT SCENE IS FINALLY HEREEE, and it’s animated in a hard to catch way, but at least the final panel is done well. I think what pisses me off the most is the fact that he gets hugged and told “I love you” by Ruka, acknowledges that he should be happy right now and recognizes this is what he deserves for ignoring Ruka and her affections, and IMMEDIATELY UNDERGOES A CUCK GENJUTSU IN A PUBLIC POOL. Then he starts CREEPING ON HER AGAIN DESPITE BEING REJECTED. AND THEN FOR SOME STUPID REASON HE TALKS ABOUT SETTING THINGS STRAIGHT WITH RUKA BY REJECTING HER, THEN LOATHING THE FACT HE’S GOING TO BE ALONE AGAN?? If you’re sad about stringing her along, then get with her at this point! Absolute dolt. What the hell happened to recognizing her feelings? You already know he’s not actually going to get over Chizuru here either, which is stupid because he’s still being delusional over a RENTAL GIRLFRIEND. He himself acknowledges how utterly brainless that plan to confess to her and make it “real” was too. She literally has no reason to accept from his point of view since he dragged her into this and she’s breaking like every rule in the playbook. You shouldn’t have expected this to work in a million years in the first place. I have no idea why anyone sees this guy as “realistic” after all of this. These two don’t deserve to weasel their way out of this situation. His friends being creepy by talking about sex positions at the pool is weird af. Please don’t speak for other men and say they do that, Miyajima. And it should NOT be alright for Kibe to talk about another person’s girlfriend like that. And the pretentious narration doesn’t help at all either. Edit: Also the scream in the pool is a lot more subdued than I thought it would be

The guitar solo swells, rises to a major climax as our main character contemplates all of the time he has been with his rented girlfriend. All of the outfits. All of the situations. Not a sincere moment has been spent with him, nothing genuine as everything was paid for. But still. Look at those breasts. Look at how they jiggle for him to see. But who would touch those breasts? He thinks about a man who could do what he could never do. A guy who always wears a beret. He envisions them doing things to her while he watches. He's not even a participant in his own vision. And then he sinks. His friends wonder where he is (*he's in a pool... wouldn't they see him get out of the pool by using the ladder?*). He is, despite being in a crowded pool, isolated. He is utterly alone. He is crying with tears in his eyes despite being underwater. The guitar music swells further and as he sinks that part of him that will never get to touch a woman engorges until everything is released. With those new swimmers joining the pool, he can go back to his usual nosebleed voyeurism. Then we get fifteen minutes of people watching a cell phone fall. Surprisingly, despite hitting the hard pool concrete surface, it appears to not have cracked. A visionary masterpiece.

When Kazuya looks at the hairstyle of many girls, he reminds himself of Chizuru where he has problems working things out with Ruka. Chizuru and Mami are getting a friction here. But, OH, NOOOOOO!!!!! What the....?! Kazuya's relationship with Chizuru is EXPOSED! No, no, no, no, this is bad! Now Kazuya and Chizuru have to tell the whole truth instead of back in Tokyo, this is too soon but there's no choice after Nagomi discovers Chizuru's profile in the Diamond website in Mami's phone which shocks Ruka, Kazuya's parents, Kibe and Kuri, AND EVEN CHIZURU AND KAZUYA THEMSELVES!