In the Rent-a-Girlfriend manga and anime series, college student Kazuya Kinoshita suddenly gets dumped by his girlfriend Mami Nanami without warning. Feeling sad and dejected, he comes across a rental girlfriend app and rents the cute and beautiful Chizuru Mizuhara. From then on, the duo’s fates intertwine as their relationship extends beyond rental girlfriend and renter.
When other people discover the true nature of their relationship, it only gets more complicated. While the Rent-a-Girlfriend anime series has a good following in the anime community, it loses various points to the manga that make the manga more endearing for fans that want to explore the series.
6 It Shows More Of Kazuya's Personality
The main male protagonist of the Rent-a-Girlfriend anime series, Kazuya Kinishita is a college student who majors in Business Administration. As an individual, Kazuya has low self-esteem, which makes him indecisive and often unsure of how to handle a situation. While Kazuya may be portrayed as someone who does not stand up for himself, he can also be confident and determined when the situation calls for it.
Although the Rent-a-Girlfriend anime series has portrayed much of Kazuya’s personality, other sides of his personality, such as his love of fish, are not explored as much. In the manga, Kazuya is shown to be extremely knowledgeable about various types of fish species and aquariums. Moreover, he owns a pet axolotl. As the manga series has more material on Kazuya’s personality, fans can more easily relate to the character and discover his defining traits.
5 Depicts Content For More Mature Audiences
The Rent-a-Girlfriend anime is framed as a rom-com that shows the relationships between Kazuya, Chizuru, Ruka, and other characters. In the anime series, various interactions between the characters are made more comical in order for fans to appreciate the series more. While that may be the case for the anime, the manga features more mature scenes that make it overall darker than the anime.
Many of Chizuru’s interactions use more mature wordings, showing her to be more mature and responsible than how she is portrayed in the manga. As the manga portrays more mature and adult-themed moments and interactions, the characters are portrayed more like adults than children, which gives the overall story more depth.
4 Ruka's Detailed Backstory
Born with an irregular and slower heartbeat than the average person, Ruka Sarashina was alienated from her peers in her early childhood. To cope with her condition, Ruka wants to get a lover that would support her. And the target of her feelings was none other than Kazuya Kinoshita.
Some fans of the Rent-a-Girlfriend anime series tend to see Ruka in a negative light. This is often due to her brash persona that makes her clash with Kazuya, and often Chizuru. While Ruka can be brash and obsessive to get what she wants, this is due to her complex backstory that the manga explains in a way that the anime does not. In the manga, Ruka gets a full chapter that explains her condition and the effects it had on her upbringing. However, the anime series only briefly explains it as a closing credit montage.
3 The Manga Has Better Art
The Rent-a-Girlfriend anime was animated by the Japanese animation studio TMS Entertainment. TMS Entertainment is known for having animated other shows such as Dr. Stone: Stone Wars, Lupin III, Detective Conan: Police Academy Arc, and Megalobox. While seeing the characters in color with natural movements is a plus to the anime, the manga ultimately uses a better art style.
While the anime series has a standard animation, the images of the characters in the manga are better and their proportions are more defined. The art style of the manga also portrays more details in the background. As manga panels do not move, they are more detailed and do not have the problem of being weird or having less-than-stellar animations.
2 More Character Development
Anime series often cut out or summarize manga panels to better fit it into the anime. However, this often leads to incomplete information from the manga being portrayed in the anime. And fans often understand a character less compared to when they read the manga.
Moreover, in manga, fans get to explore more in-depth the various character’s motivations and development. This is especially seen with Ruka, who is more childishly depicted in the manga with her health condition better explained. Other characters like Chizuru, Kazuya, and Mami are also more developed with their relationship better defined and their development as individuals better explained.
1 There Are Fewer Cringe Moments
As with various other romance anime series, there tend to be cringe-worthy moments that make fans want to hide in embarrassment. While cringe-worthy moments are subjective, the manga portrays things in an overall less embarrassing manner that makes it more readable for fans.
Various scenes in the anime are exaggerated for comedic purposes, which can cause a lot of secondhand embarrassment for viewers. However, the manga portrays things in a more balanced way, which helps fans smoothly transition from humor to emotion, without feeling embarrassed by the various characters' behaviors and interactions. While Kazuya is still an awkward young man in the manga as well as in the anime, his awkward tendencies, which have been exaggerated in the anime, are toned down.