Tell me sweet little lies (Rent-A-Girlfriend Ch. 224)

Hello again, friends. Kazuya is back on his bullshit, but this time, his lying serves a different purpose, and this small change plays into the relatively static nature of the characters in Rent-A-Girlfriend. We’ll also dig into the meat of Kazuya’s fully enunciated confession, which is lacking in words but not in the emotion of the moment, and we’ll consider how Chizuru might take it going forward. Finally, we’ll run down where Mami and Ruka stand, especially as Mami continues to press the issue. Let’s take a closer look.

Kazuya hasn’t changed, and that’s okay

Kazuya digs himself deeper.

As Kazuya shamelessly lies again, it’s easy to look back and say, this guy hasn’t changed at all. He’s lying with only the barest compunctions, asking forgiveness rather than being truthful. More broadly, he still gets flustered around women. He gets deterred by obstacles and agonizes over following through. He questions his own self-worth and can’t see himself positively, as somebody worthy of Chizuru’s love or the love of his family and friends. Why, after 224 chapters, should we put up with this?

To that, I say that Rent-A-Girlfriend isn’t about characters flipping a switch, transforming themselves to get through adversity. What gets Kazuya through the heartbreak of Mami dumping him is Chizuru’s willingness to listen, to be sympathetic but also tell it to him straight. In other words, a little bit of cushion, a safety net. What gets Chizuru through the prospect of her grandmother dying with her own dreams still unfulfilled is Kazuya’s willingness to go beyond their relationship at the time. Contrast this against Mami, who faced the most difficult time in her life and the person she wanted to back her instead abandoned her (215). Kazuya, Chizuru, and Mami could all be each other–all one step away from finding support to get through life… or from collapsing under the weight of adversity, as Kazuya did when he lashed out at Chizuru in chapter 1, or the times Chizuru didn’t land the parts she hoped for and was left in tears.

What gets Kazuya and Chizuru through life isn’t transforming themselves innately. Kazuya is still the same guy he was back in chapters 1 and 2, for the most part, and we only get small glimpses of how his outlook on life has changed (145). Chizuru is, similarly, for the most part the same girl. What has changed is her level of trust and willingness to be open. She’s still capable of throwing a crabby tsundere fit just like she was in the early days. What’s in her heart is different, but the person is largely the same.

That is not to say our understanding of the characters hasn’t changed. Our initial vision of Kazuya may have been colored by his outburst at Chizuru in chapter 1, but we learn about his persistence in life from Kibe (13) and his overall attitude about what’s important through his feelings about his phone (20). Similarly, the revelations about Chizuru’s acting aspirations and what happened to her family put her in a vastly different context. Our understanding has evolved, even though the characters are not different.

That confession was kinda lame. Was that the point?

You've told her she was the perfect girlfriend and that you wanted to be with her forever, but in the most crucial moment, all you could say was that she's cool!?

Kazuya had said it would be the worst confession in the world, but I expected it to be lame in a heartfelt way. Instead, it was just… kind of lame. His descriptions of why he loves Chizuru were profoundly lacking and generic. You could say he didn’t have the mental bandwidth to come up with something better, considering he is trying to sell a lie (a bit unconvincingly) while Kibe is all but threatening to deck him again, but it still rings hollow, even up to the point of using Chizuru’s fake name (which he must do, since her real identity is still a secret to others, even if Mami found out).

And yet, in spite of those underwhelming words, we get this spread of Kazuya weeping as he says it. The truth of the emotion has come out, in spite of the words that undercut it. Will Chizuru recognize that? Has she really understood his feelings all along, or has she misunderstood in some way, and this is the moment that the truth becomes apparent? It’s hard to say. After all, we don’t even see Chizuru’s reaction here, which means it’s being saved for a more crucial moment.

Flashback to 174… or is it?

"I'll protect you! I swear I will!" (Ch. 174 vs. 224)

Curiously, Miyajima uses new art for sections of the beginning, flashing back to chapter 174 but with different angles and emphasis. The “money shot” of Kazuya swearing to protect Chizuru is nearly, but not exactly, the same, but her reaction shot is different, and in this chapter, she seems more moved, while in 174 she seems more surprised. Incidentally, this chapter also elides a section in which Chizuru ponders if telling the truth would have been for Sayuri’s sake or her own.

Why does Mami continue to press?

Somehow this is a good idea?

I’ve said before that Mami continuing to push the issue was a mistake. She now seems really desperate to land a killing blow when she should settle for Kazuya and Chizuru still hemorrhaging trust. What does she think, logically, that asking them to kiss will accomplish?

Does she think Chizuru will refuse? That seems unlikely. She already concluded that Chizuru had been lying to her about how serious things were (206), and while that could be interpreted as the seriousness of the deception, the more likely angle is that it was the seriousness of Chizuru’s true feelings. She has also already seen the purse in Kazuya’s apartment, which most people would conclude means he and Chizuru are sleeping together. In other words, once Kazuya comes up with this story, does she really have any cards to play? She could say it’s a lie based on her conversations with them, but they could still deflect it, and they do actually love each other. To me, Mami seems to be totally out of gas.

But Ruka is the wildcard. She could blow this up, expose herself as a rental girlfriend or Kazuya’s provisional girlfriend. Mami clearly hoped that Ruka would take advantage if this situation came (200), but she didn’t know that Ruka has no leverage if Chizuru is exposed, and she also doesn’t know about the conversation Ruka had with Nagomi later on, which we still haven’t seen.

Mami is flailing, and if she’s counting on Ruka to bail her out, that’s less of an asset than she thinks.