Wipe that lying smile off your face! (Rent-A-Girlfriend Chs. 221-222)

Welcome back, friends! With not much to chew on in ch. 221, I’ve gone ahead and combined the analyses for these past two chapters together, and boy did 222 deliver! This week, we’ll talk about Kazuya’s inability to get a word in, Mami’s shrewd new tack, and what Nagomi must be going through, but most importantly, we’ll take a look at Chizuru’s relationship with performance and lies, which this chapter wisely points out has been at issue from the very beginning.

Is the perfect smile as sweet if it’s the only emotion she ever shows?

Miyajima’s visual language and how Kazuya’s world has turned upside-down

Christopher Nolan is now considering directing a romcom.

Give Miyajima some credit here: the couple pages of Kazuya and the scene upside-down in 222 really helps sell Kazuya’s sense of disorientation. Miyajima’s humor is not always the most inventive: we’re all very familiar with his overuse of strangers in the background commenting on how beautiful Chizuru is and how Kazuya sticks out next to her, so much so that it’s only funny when they say something particularly outrageous or meta. Miyajima’s visuals, on the other hand, often do a great deal of work. Just in this arc alone, we have Chizuru by herself yet surrounded by the Kinoshitas and Kazuya’s friends (202) or the great use of deformation when Kazuya sees them talking about the condom wrapper (201). And, of course, there’s the entire back half of 218: the beret, the use of Kazuya’s memories perverted by those nightmare images—all of it. Despite Miyajima’s general overuse of the written word, you can count on him to deliver visually interesting ways to communicate ideas and concepts.

Miyajima makes another interesting choice here, redrawing crucial moments of chapter 1 for the beginning of 222, even down to reaction shots of Kazuya’s parents and the brief shot of Chizuru’s shoes.

As for Kazuya himself… well, he probably does something smart, trying to end the conversation in 221 only to get derailed by his father’s good memory. Trying to regroup with Chizuru is the right move, but fate isn’t kind to him. After that, it’s remarkable that Kazuya basically only gets to react here. Nagomi’s realization of the truth stuns him to the point he is still reeling. It seems it will be some time before Kazuya is ready to speak up for himself.

Nagomi speaks

Nagomi’s grief is palpable.

Since the bomb dropped in 220, Nagomi had yet to say a word until this week, silently looking up Chizuru’s profile on Diamond to verify that it was real. Surprisingly, her reaction is far from the nagging or irritation she often shows with Kazuya; rather, she seems genuinely a bit heartbroken that the dream of having Chizuru as a prospective granddaughter-in-law was too good to be true. This fits in with what we’ve heard in other ways: Nagomi genuinely wants the best for Kazuya (182). Combined with her persistent obsession with Chizuru, it makes sense that Nagomi’s first reaction here isn’t shock or anger but merely a sense of loss.

Mami’s brilliant move… and its weaknesses

If Chizuru has been duping everyone, then what is this?

We all knew when she dropped the phone that this was 100% intentional, but over the course of 221-222, Mami’s line of attack has become clear: Chizuru has been using Kazuya, leading him to believe something real could result and his family to believe they would get married, leading Nagomi to give her the ring. This is probably the best direction Mami could go with her assault: based on her conversations with Chizuru, it’s a plausible conclusion even for an innocent person. Chizuru keeps insisting there’s nothing there, and yet she allows herself to be taken way beyond the terms of service. What other explanation could there be than an insidious attempt to fool Kazuya and his family into thinking there’s more? Chizuru will know Mami has betrayed her, but even Kazuya can’t be sure unless Chizuru tells him what Mami’s been doing.

The only risks Mami faces are based on totally unforeseeable facts:

1. When Mami saw Chizuru’s purse in Kazuya’s apartment in chapter 60, it really was because Chizuru was trying to get into her apartment, not because they were fooling around.
2. Nagomi gave Chizuru the ring in chapter 91 explicitly with no strings attached. While certainly the possibility of Chizuru marrying into the family was on her mind, she did so at least in part because Sayuri was dying and Chizuru would be left alone, potentially in need of money. To be sure, Nagomi might never have given it if she had known Chizuru’s relationship with Kazuya wasn’t real, but Chizuru protested at the time, saying she couldn’t accept.
3. In Kazuya’s mind, Chizuru has already rejected him.
4. Kuri already knows about this relationship and could come to Kazuya and Chizuru’s defense.
5. Chizuru is the one who set up Kazuya and Ruka, so her presence alone points to a lack of deception.

Nevertheless, despite these weaknesses, I think Mami may have made the best move she possibly can in order to further drive a wedge between Kazuya, his family, and Chizuru.

I say may because the better move would’ve been to just let it play out further, once Nagomi realized the truth. As impressed as I am with Mami’s tactics, it’s her strategy that I question. She has exposed herself as an enemy here, which will become apparent to Kazuya in due time (as it already is to Chizuru). This is an all-or-nothing play, and if it backfires, she won’t be able to claim it was an innocent mistake. It’s just a matter of time before people put together that she’s doing all this as Kazuya’s ex in a bitter revenge play. Dropping the phone was bold enough; this performance is really too far and demonstrates how single-mindedly she is pursuing this destruction of Kazuya and Chizuru’s relationship, even if it leaves her with nothing after.

Chizuru and the perfect girlfriend

The perfect girlfriend never falters.

While Chizuru has various defenses I outlined above, the thrust of this chapter, and Mami’s greatest accusation, is that Chizuru always has been fake in this relationship. She plays the role of the “perfect girlfriend,” who always smiles when she sees Kazuya’s family and who shows great ability to act proper and supportive–the ideal woman. Nagomi may well have realized the truth of Mami’s words, that she never has known the real Chizuru at all, and only a couple times has it come out, like when she’s asked Nagomi if she would be loved if she were someone else entirely (18).

But Nagomi’s thoughts go to Sayuri here, based on Mami’s accusation that Chizuru was deceiving even her own grandmother. This point harkens back to Chizuru’s fears that if Nagomi learned they kept it from Sayuri, they’d be looked at with contempt (174). Given that apparent deception, does anything she thought she knew about Chizuru and Sayuri ring true anymore?

The pressure will come back onto Chizuru. She will have to defend herself. She’ll have to say that she deceived her own grandmother because, in that lie, there was a greater truth: that her relationship with Kazuya is real. The movie-making experience, the cheer-up date, the lunch date, the date to Umi’s party… these are not experiences predicated on some lie but between two people outside of the professional bounds altogether. They have been friends, and that has been precious to her. This is no longer about declaring love; who would believe her at this point if she did? This is about declaring who she really is, about meeting them face-to-face as Chizuru Ichinose.