Skip to main content

Carrying on with a shoulder to lean on (Rent-A-Girlfriend Ch. 247)

I won’t say too much about the obvious tease this week, with Chizuru asking Kazuya to wait while he’s still on top of her. Much has been said by other astute observers already about the evolution of her reaction here, from the first time in chapter 2, to the second time in chapter 59, where she got cut off after asking him gently to move. Miyajima loves his repetition and parallels, and I’ve said that a lot already, too, so there’s not much more to observe with that.

Instead, I want to focus on this look.

Chizuru says, “Oh?”

That look is the dagger! This game’s over!

Kazuya, my man, this is the look that tells you you’re in. Chizuru has been coy with Kazuya only a handful of times:

But none of those compare that look she gave him this chapter. Not even close! Chizuru teasing is one thing. She stares at Kazuya for a moment, taking in the deeply sentimental thing she said, mulling over whether to accept it, and she does. That is a look that says, “That was stupidly sweet to say, and I love you for it.”

Opening up and acceptance

As a sign of the changing relationship between these two, this was an important moment. Chizuru has opened up to Kazuya in the past about her family situation (61) and the importance of making a movie to her (136), but neither of those situations hits the same emotional note as this one. In one, Chizuru had felt lingering dissatisfaction and an urge to show gratitude, which she could only process by emphasizing how important it was… and so that her gratitude was equally strong. In another case, Kazuya had offered a gesture of care toward her, saying she could rely on him if she had no one else, and Chizuru, at least in part, may have thought that she had to make it clear just how much that would entail.

That’s not to downplay that moment, either, but here, Chizuru opens up in a more natural way, not pressured by a big moment or Kazuya’s feelings. This is her own thing to deal with, and she shows Kazuya that, despite her brave facade, this stuff really does get to her. She gets lost in the details, in how she should feel or should expect to feel, and Kazuya offers her clarity, a way to accept her feelings.

Chizuru dealing with the specter of being alone, and trying to withstand the pressure she’s put herself under, has been a major source of conflict in the manga. Even other times, she has sometimes felt dissatisfied or even rebuffed Kazuya’s support, like when she heard from the director about how Kazuya asked for his help or when Kazuya offered once again to lend an ear if she was in need after they agreed on the crowdfunding campaign–to which she only said that he had already offered that before.

Chizuru is already free with her feelings now. Certainly some drama can come along to clam her up again, but I don’t believe that such a thing will succeed in shutting her down. Since she ended the 3 month ghosting, she has been more open than ever about her feelings, and that is something she clearly wants enough not to simply give up.

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