The time has finally come (Rent-A-Girlfriend Ch. 220)

Mami is burning everything down, just as Chizuru long feared she would. The big question is how Chizuru will respond, but first, let’s take a look at how Kazuya’s monologue this chapter sets the stage for how he will handle his family. We’ll also take a look back at Mami’s path to this moment and why it may have come up short, as well as some wildcards that could change how this all plays out.

Two minutes to midnight.

Kazuya, poised to fall on his sword

This week’s opening section up through page 10 may have seemed a bit like the “same old, same old” material we often see, but I suspect Miyajima is trying to get Kazuya’s state of mind out of the way so we can jump right into the action next week. If so, I would call this a fairly smart trick: having Kazuya process this whole event in his thoughts could slow everything down, and Miyajima has instead gotten a lot of exposition about Kazuya’s point of view and state of mind out there for us to chew on. In particular,

• Kazuya questions why he went for it
• He ponders all the lines that have been crossed and implicitly blames himself for them
• He wonders about the Mami situation but decides it must be okay now
• He resolves to settle the Ruka situation and be alone for Christmas if that’s what it comes to

The second point here seems to be the most relevant for the Kinoshita family reaction. One expects that Kazuya’s family and friends will mostly be angry with him, but Nagomi or Kazuo might still take it personally that Chizuru has played such a role in deceiving them, perhaps even considering that she’s gone above and beyond the terms of being a rental girlfriend in maintaining the deception. Last week, we were reminded that Kazuya promised to protect her from any blowback if the secret came out.

Kazuya won't let Chizuru take the brunt of his family's anger. (174)

Now, the pieces are put together for us to understand Kazuya’s likely reaction and course of action before he even makes a move: he will shoulder the blame, saying that it’s his fault that all these lines were crossed and that Chizuru is not at fault. She was just doing her job and too kindly allowing him to bend the rules out of compassion (remember that word?). Of course, Kazuya doesn’t appreciate Chizuru’s real motivations for bending the rules repeatedly, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Ironically, this is precisely what Mami wanted to do—Kazuya would play directly into her hand. Speaking of Mami…

Mami’s underwhelming ploy and Miyajima’s ham-fisted use of her character

After all the buildup, all the scheming, Mami decides to cut bait on her grand plans and simply leave her phone somewhere Nagomi can see it, conveniently left on Chizuru’s rental profile. It’s difficult to imagine Mami coming out of this squeaky clean like her other plan could have done: someone is bound to suspect she has done this on purpose, all the way up to ingratiating herself with Nagomi and coming on the trip to make it happen, but with Mami’s plan of using Chizuru to put the screws to Kazuya on the outs, she has decided, seemingly, not to get stuck chasing sunk cost. Simply burning him can be fun, too.

I don’t actually have that much of a problem with this, though it is a little bit anticlimactic. I think that reflects on how Mami was unable to turn Chizuru against Kazuya fully, instead relying on Chizuru being too trusting to suspect that she would carry it out anyway, but let’s take a look back at Mami’s character arc in this story, as informed by her backstory a few chapters ago:

• Mami dates Kazuya and cuts him loose using the same line she was dumped with years ago. The implication is she was trying to hurt him like she was hurt back then. She seemed aware of how strong his feelings were, and over time, we see she is still fixated on him in some way.
• When Kazuya brings Chizuru to a get-together, she tries to tear him down brutally to show her power over him and humiliate him in front of Chizuru. She then tries to turn him away from Chizuru but fails. It’s implied that she offered to take him back to her place insincerely.
• She continues to try to win him back during the beach trip and seems to lose interest once he chooses to save Chizuru over meeting her.
• Only when she sees him with Sumi does she look into Sumi and then discover Chizuru is a rental too. She then hires Chizuru, but her goal for doing so remains unclear.
• She goes to try to meet Kazuya at his apartment but misses him, instead seeing the purse Chizuru left out in the open.
• She stops by Kazuya’s karaoke place again and is confronted by Ruka, which leaves her in a bad mood.
• She later sees Chizuru with the same purse, confirming that it was Chizuru’s. She then decides to look for, and finds, Nagomi’s twitter account, through which she makes contact and ingratiates herself with Nagomi.
• She googles Chizuru Ichinose on a whim and sees the movie kickstarter. She then confronts Chizuru once again, trying to sell her on this “saving” her from Kazuya idea.
• Then, she manages to get Nagomi to invite them all to the resort. She tags along.
• She approaches Ruka about making a move and overhears Chizuru and Harumi talking about the ring. She tries to make Chizuru make a move but fails.
• When Nagomi asks about what she overheard, Mami tries again to convince Chizuru to end it, but Chizuru refuses.
• Now, Mami exposes Kazuya herself.

Laid out like this, there’s a decent chance that Mami really does still want Kazuya for herself on some level. Her attempt to talk to him at his apartment is not clearly connected to Chizuru, and we’ve seen her dwell on why she’s so obsessed with him. Many of these events are provoked, directly, by seeing Kazuya with another girl: Chizuru, Ruka, and Sumi.

Mami mopes about Kazuya staying with Chizuru. (20)

Perhaps her plan all along was to truly win him back after getting Chizuru to betray him, playing herself as the good guy. Then, she could dump him again and show him misery, or she really could take him back for herself. That matter is an issue for another time, however. What I really want to talk about is how many of these events are incited by chance. By my count, there are at least seven different events here driven by one character running into another, or overhearing another, in a way you would not generally expect. I count Mami going back to the karaoke parlor here because in the end, it was a massive coincidence that she chose that parlor to begin with.

This manga has run on coincidences, such as Kazuya and Chizuru being neighbors or that their grandparents know each other, and Miyajima’s tendency to use this tool is alive and well, to the manga’s detriment. One gets the impression that if Mami hadn’t been triggered by Kazuya’s relationships being thrown in her face like this, much of the drama here might never have materialized. That can be a good thing–it makes Mami seem less one-dimensionally driven or antagonistic, but it also strains the suspension of disbelief, and it makes Miyajima look lacking in creativity.

Chizuru and paradise–or, the road to when the time comes

We’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time. I think now it’s safe to say that “The Girlfriend and Paradise,” though winding, has been the story of Chizuru trying to figure out what she would do when this moment arrived. She has dodged Kazuya’s confession attempts, feeling the moment wasn’t right to deal with them. She’s faced the threat of Ruka and shown how much the prospect of losing him affects her. She has allowed herself to feel the warmth of Kazuya’s family. She has steadfastly resisted Mami’s attempts to be turned against him, but now, it’s all crumbling.

Chizuru has known this moment would come. (184)

I said earlier I expect Kazuya to fall on his sword for Chizuru, protecting her against his family’s ire. I’ve also said it was conspicuous that Chizuru said Kazuya has been trying to come clean without commenting on how she herself has prevented him from doing so (217), even though she herself stopped him in several of those moments.

One satisfactory conclusion for Chizuru’s character arc here, then, is for her to face up to all of it. She’s dodged Kazuya because she’s scared. She’s asked him not to end it because she doesn’t want to lose him and this connection. She continued this charade, on her own, in spite of Kazuya’s willingness to end it repeatedly, because she wanted him and wanted it to continue.

But, if all that happened, I dare say Chizuru’s character arc would be over. She will have overcome it all. It’s not impossible to imagine that Miyajima isn’t done with this story yet, and maybe Chizuru lets the moment pass by briefly, needing to get a second chance with Nagomi or Harumi to fix it later. Or maybe she lets it all go completely, overcome by her fears, and we go into a new phase of the story with Kazuya and Chizuru further apart than ever. In any case, this moment will be defined by how Chizuru faces her hesitations and doubts, the temptation to belong vs the paranoia that it will all be ripped away from her. The moment when the time comes… is the moment of her worst fears coming true.

The wildcards: Ruka, Kuri, and Nagomi

Don’t forget that Mami doesn’t know what Ruka and Kuri’s actual deals are. As we see this chapter, Ruka has no place at Kazuya’s side. Kuri, however, already knows the truth and won’t be pried from Kazuya just yet. And it’s just a bit conspicuous that Nagomi is the only character who doesn’t audibly react to the phone; is she really as shocked as the others?

Nagomi's reaction remains less transparent than the others'.

Only time will tell. Just remember: even you think you know what he’ll do, Miyajima is always unexpected.