The Lungfish Diaries

Greetings, friends. The Lungfish Diaries has been on a bit of haitus due to vacations and various other things, but I’m happy to be back to talk about Rent-A-Giflriend ’s latest concluded arc. What may surprise people in this arc is just how much of an obstacle Kazuya’s emotional dishonesty with Chizuru is. It’s well established how dishonest Chizuru is—including some prime examples this arc—but Kazuya’s reluctance to be open and honest about his feelings is part of what keeps them from moving forward, and it’s his one moment of true honestly—given while too passed out to be aware of his words—that convinces Chizuru to move forward. Let’s take a look. To some, Chizuru acting like Kazuya might not take her up on her offer may come as strange, but indeed, from Chizuru’s perspective, it may seem a real possibility. (255) Kazuya has long kept his fullest, truest feelings under wraps Kazuya has held back from Chizuru for a long time. He famously denied being in love w...

Chizuru Ichinose is one big, fat chicken, but the biggest chicken of them all is Reiji Miyajima because once again we get a glimpse of Chizuru’s true feelings only for the audience to enjoy while Chizuru’s actual affection for Kazuya remains hidden partly behind a wall. In this chapter, there are two moments that exemplify this. Chizuru laughs at Kazuya adopting her feelings on marriage. Backing down when the opportunity is there For Chizuru to back down when she had the change to push their relationship forward past a point of no return is no surprise. This is precisely what she did back in the Date (?) arc when she asked if he had feelings for her (174) . Given the opportunity to retreat back to safety, she did just that and attempted to reestablish a line between them and her position as the supportive rental girlfriend. Of course, Kazuya had already been pushed past that point; after all, Chizuru had no reason to withdraw the question unless she was invested i...

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: When going to meet the director, she momentarily teases him about needing to pay like a rental (117) She slips back into girlfriend mode to get a reaction out of him on the cheer-up date (158) She touches a soda can to his neck, catching him off guard after the premiere (167) But...

This past week on Rent-A-Girlfriend , Chizuru brought Kazuya to her childhood home, and much of how Kazuya acted reminded her once again of her departed grandfather, Katsuhito. Kazuya’s supportive attitude and optimism (at least when it comes to anything outside himself) are traits he shares with Katsuhito, and the association between Katsuhito and Kazuya has been explicit ever since Katsuhito’s introductory arc. Moreover, it was heavily implied, retroactively at least, that Chizuru took a liking to Kazuya and cut him a lot of slack in part because his attitude toward his family is relatable to her. In other words, Chizuru felt comfortable with Kazuya (to an extent) from the start because he reminded her of Katsuhito. Seeing Kazuya spare no effort, just like Katsuhito once did, Chizuru can’t help but remember… Given how strongly Kazuya has paralleled Katsuhito, it’s valid to ask, then, whether Chizuru really loves anything about Kazuya at all outside of that feel...

This week, we get a long overdue interlude with Kazuya confronting the fallout with Kibe after Paradise and the now-revealed secret of Chizuru’s true identity among their friends. This is a great opportunity to look back at Kazuya and Chizuru’s attitudes toward their friendships and how both sets of relationships have something lacking. Let’s take a look. Kibe saying he’ll gut Kazuya is supposed to be a sweet moment. Mmkay. Kazuya and validation The big thing to remember about Kazuya is that his friends and family constantly doubt him. Recall that when Kuri and Kibe saw Kazuya with Chizuru, they immediately assumed she was trying to sell him something (or trying to get him involved in a cult). Played for laughs as this was, it is a constant theme in Kazuya’s relationships, as his family couldn’t believe Chizuru could be his girlfriend, either, and his father once assumed Kazuya could only be giving Chizuru money because he must’ve borrowed some from her before. In...

This week, Kazuya once again found himself handling a piece of undergarments he believes to be Chizuru’s and trying desperately not to get caught doing so when it was through no fault of his own. Everything about this, from the clear chapter 40 callback to the way Kazuya’s mile-a-minute thinking intentionally distracts from deeper thinking about CHizuru’s state of mind, is Miyajima in a nutshell. These are his bread-and-butter techniques to get ideas across. Kazuya, in a compromising position? No way! Did you forget the panties? It’d be easy to forget chapter 40. Up until this point, it seemed like a meaningless gag chapter. The anime didn’t even bother adapting it, but there is a long, pregnant pause there in which Chizuru seems ready to back off in deference to Ruka, something that would be easily overlooked while Ruka is jumping on Kazuya to try to figure out what he’s got in his pocket (you should be careful, Ruka: that’s one way to get saddled with a Ring of ...

This week, Chizuru came out with her most blatant act of flirtation yet, promising Kazuya that she’d give it all she had to find him an answer and implicitly saying that she wouldn’t allow it to take long. This is tantamount to saying that she is almost there, and the content of the chapter bolsters this argument. They have hung out together for at least the second time (after their time at Saizeriya) in a completely casual way. They enjoyed each other’s company without further pretenses or objectives behind their time together. She’s givin’ it all she’s got, cap’n! But all this leads us to believe that what has kept Chizuru from reaching this point is no great misconception about love or a hitherto unknown interest in it. She hasn’t articulated any kind of hangup about what love really is (which would’ve been understandable but also deeply stupid , along the lines of many a simpler romcom). What it takes her to get to this point is simply the luxury of spending more tim...