Skip to main content

Kazuya might not know the real Chizuru after all (Rent-A-Girlfriend Ch. 240)

Over the last few weeks here at The Lungfish Diaries, I’ve attempted to move away from making predictions, mainly because I find spending energy on idle theorizing to be wasteful and often pointless. However, this week’s chapter plants several seeds that I think are likely to take root in the coming weeks:

  1. Chizuru thinks she played it too cool in asking him if he really loved “Mizuhara,” and this spurs her to reach out to him
  2. Kazuya begins to assume Chizuru has significant relationship experience and implicitly compares himself to a hypothetical ex-boyfriend of hers, not knowing that she very likely hasn’t ever been in a relationship
  3. Mini tells Kazuya he messed up in not affirming his love for “Ichinose”

Put these together, and we conclude that Chizuru is coming over to (1) open up more about her real self, rather than merely suggesting that Kazuya doesn’t know the real her and is in love with her assumed persona, so that they can truly discuss the issue without judgment or assumptions, and in doing so Kazuya will (2) realize there is much more for him to learn about the real Chizuru, so he can say (3) that while he may not know everything about her, he does love her, the real her, as far as he knows and would want to learn more.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these points.

Playing it cool, man

Chizuru regrets acting cool.

One of the few insights we get into Chizuru’s train of thought this week is that she played it too cool when she gently suggested that Kazuya could be in love with her persona, not her real self. I suspected last week that Chizuru was acting at this point, and her thoughts about this moment confirm that. It was a fake smile, and Chizuru was still shielding herself back then; she only let her guard down a bit later, once there were no excuses left.

Now, she regrets having been so guarded at the time. She wants to be more open with him, as this is the way she can “investigate” her true feelings. Moreover, as we know from point (3), Kazuya accepted there could be a difference between the real her and what she’s shown him, but that might not be enough to assuage her anxieties.

In any event, we know Chizuru feels strongly enough to take action, tying up her hair and changing clothes to visit unannounced. She has a purpose here; there is a definite goal in mind.

Chizuru has experience? Uh…

Is there really no way she would be interested in sex? Kazuya thinks…

Kazuya comes to a reasonable conclusion, here: there really is no reason Chizuru wouldn’t be interested in the physical aspects of the relationship. And for most other girls, he would be right that she probably has had real relationship experience to go along with her job.

But, this is Chizuru, so he’s wrong. Sayuri already said Chizuru had never brought a boy home before, and Chizuru told Ruka she didn’t have any sort of experience with sex. Kazuya fails to appreciate that this is Chizuru’s first overall experience with love. Not coincidentally, he spends most of this chapter wondering what Chizuru wants to “investigate”–ignoring the obvious reasoning that Chizuru simply has never experienced this and so has no grounding to understand her feelings.

Did Kazuya blow it?

Is there really no way she would be interested in sex? Kazuya thinks…

Mini suggests Kazuya should’ve made the bold move and said he loves Ichinose, the real Chizuru. Last week, Kazuya gave a surprisingly nuanced and compassionate answer instead. I actually felt it was the better answer because it doesn’t try to whitewash how Chizuru has acted in the past or pretend like that didn’t happen; rather, it shows understanding that Chizuru might not have been ready to be her true self, and that’s okay. Getting to know someone is a process, after all. Chizuru seemed to take that to heart last week, and it very well could be that she is trying to follow through on that idea.

But, I don’t think it would be a bad idea for Kazuya to affirm his feelings for her, the real her, so far as he knows her, either. He can be realistic about how much he knows her and doesn’t know her while also saying he wants to know more and that he loves the person he has seen so far, who he believes is closer to the real her than strictly some fantasy.

Putting it all together

Kazuya may have wrongly assessed Chizuru’s past experience, but he knows her kindness, her compassion, and her dedication to her dreams. He’s seen her at her weakest, when Sayuri passed away. He’s experienced her faltering, when she shut him out for three months not knowing what to do, and Chizuru seems ready to show more of herself, to admit how new this all really is to her or to confide in him her nervousness and fear. This is an opportunity for them to connect, and I hope Kazuya will admit, too, that his interest is not totally “pure”. It always has been a point of tension in Kazuya between his romantic feelings and his sexual urges; finding a way to channel the latter into furthering a relationship would be good for him and his sense of guilt about sexuality. But, one step at a time.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It was all for nothing: A Rent-A-Girlfriend Paradise retrospective

The Paradise Arc came to a close this week. It was, without a doubt, Miyajima’s most ambitious arc yet: the only named arc in the series to go more than 10 chapters (43, in fact, and 44 in total if you count Mami’s backstory). It was Miyajima’s Infinity War and Endgame , a massive collision of multiple plotlines all being brought to fruition over two days in Fukushima, but in the end, we see what it was really all about: Chizuru coming to grips with the fact that she has fallen in love with Kazuya and can no longer ignore her feelings. Love's taken root, but is it bearing satisfying fruit? And… that’s all it was. Chizuru was beaten over the head with a narrative baseball bat until she got it , put under so much pressure that she finally couldn’t ignore her true feelings, but in doing so, Miyajima overlooked or outright ignored the major themes of his series. Kazuya and Chizuru replaced one lie with another, not because it was something they felt they believed in but simply ...
Post a Comment
Read more

It was never about the confession (Rent-A-Girlfriend Ch. 238)

The grand confession finally got across in the clear this week. It was an aside, a footnote to a greater conflict. If you blinked, you might not have realized it happened at all. And yet, if you were paying attention, it was clear that the confession point point was never the real issue. It was, and always had been, a misdirection, a piece of narrative sleight of hand. Kazuya finally gets to say it in the clear. That goes back to the beginning, when it was clear, albeit not explicitly stated, that Chizuru understood what he was trying to say, at least in large part (175). And yet after that, Kazuya got tunnel vision. He became more preoccupied with the possibility of asking her out for real and following through the confession he thought had not been understood. That led us to Paradise, where we got one story about Kazuya, comically, trying to follow up on his confession attempt, while largely, but not completely, oblivious to what Mami was scheming or what Chizuru was...
Post a Comment
Read more

Chizuru's issues are what's keeping them apart (Rent-A-Girlfriend Ch. 233)

Even having read this manga pretty much from the beginning, it’s shocking to see Chizuru let things get this far away from her. It has been clear for some time, even before she fully acknowledged it, that Chizuru was deeply in love with Kazuya and yet still holding herself back, and her weak excuse about falling in love with a client was nowhere near satisfying, so why has she done this? But I believe the answer lies in the core issues of Chizuru’s character, issues that have been in place from the beginning: her fear of attachment, her drive to be independent, and the longing she feels for connection and love. These drives are in conflict and always have been. They are why her actions do not seem rational. This is, potentially, an exciting time to be following Kanokari because Chizuru may have to change, to confront her issues, in order to move forward. Chizuru's competing needs have pulled her apart. Run down the events we’ve seen so far of this new arc, and the paralle...
Post a Comment
Read more