English Dub Review: Rent-a-Girlfriend “Truth and Girlfriend”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Sumi Sakurasawa is introduced as a very shy girl with the goal of changing herself. She and Chizuru meet at a cafe where Chizuru reassures Sumi saying that all she needs is confidence and that there are guys that could like her for the way she is. Then we transition to Kazuya meeting with Sumi, and he tries to get her to talk and relax with a few activities like bowling and roller skating. However, Mami spots them on the way and follows them to those places. Kazuya saves Sumi from a trio of guys at the bowling alley and Sumi takes the chance to hold his hand making progress on improving herself.

After getting back from using the bathroom Kazuya sees Mami with Sumi and tries to come up with an explanation when Sumi starts acting more like a girlfriend. Mami requests that Sumi let them talk privately and after exchanging her thoughts on him with Sumi she makes an excuse to leave. Kazuya and Sumi finish their outing at the train station and Sumi thanks him. Meanwhile, Mami searches Sumi on the web and finds out about Chizuru. Kazuya and Chizuru meet up on the balcony where she tells him that she’s quitting the rental girlfriend for a role and that she’ll continue to be his girlfriend until then. The next day Chizuru waits to meet up with a client only to find out that it was Mami who booked her.

Our Take:

This episode gave a decent introduction to Sumi Sakurasawa, the shy rental girlfriend, and the final girl from the anime’s title poster. From her introduction, we can see her actions as a rental girlfriend, her desire to change herself, and her admiration for Chizuru as well.

Then we get to her date with Kazuya who realizes that she’s extremely shy to the point where she doesn’t say anything to him. That’s obviously a problem if she can’t communicate with her client on a date. Hopefully, there’ll be some explanation for her extreme shyness, but with only one more episode left it might have to wait another season. It’s pretty disappointing to introduce a relatable character and then have her go on a practice date with the result of her taking a step forward and saying Kazuya’s name to just hop back to the toxic ex-girlfriend. It’s interesting that Kazuya is the one leading the date along with helping Sumi become more relaxed since it is practice for her. They parallel each with their goals of changing themselves using the rental girlfriend business. At any rate, Sumi does give off that appearance that makes people want to protect her, and Kazuya does end up saving her from the trio of guys crudely flirting with her. That was a good scene for Sumi to be motivated to make progress from her side on the date.

There’s also the news from Chizuru that she’s quitting her rental girlfriend job to star in a role. It’s a pivotal moment in Kazuya and Chizuru’s relationship since it puts their fake dating act on a time limit and adds uncertainty on where they stand after that since they’re in different social circles. Additionally, there’s a bit of growth on Kazuya’s part by accepting that he has no right to tell that he loves her, not with the fake dating charade. While their relationship appears to be coming to an end, there’s still the matter of Kazuya actually getting a girlfriend to improve himself. Hopefully, we’ll get an answer to that in the last episode.

In addition, I didn’t expect Mami to be that fixated on Kazuya and his relationships considering how she was acting in the earlier episodes. The small tidbit on true love and her giving up on it does give a bit of insight into why she acts like this. However, it’s not enough to absolve her of treating Kazuya like garbage for me personally. Now with her using Chizuru’s booking to confront her on the exact nature of her relationship with Kazuya is really direct considering her methods back in the beach episodes. Now I’m just left in suspense on what’s going to happen between these two.

Overall the episode was a nice episode with a glimpse of the drama that’s about to unfold in the next episode. The animation and voice acting were good as usual. I won’t get my hopes up on the series concluding with Kazuya getting a girlfriend, but at least there’ll be a show for the last episode.