Rent-a-Girlfriend is a romantic comedy whose manga slowly reveals itself to be a heartbreaking read. The story focuses on a young boy named Kazuya, who was dumped by his former girlfriend and started using a rental girlfriend service. This leads him to dating a girl named Chizuru and accidently lying to both of their families about the true nature of their relationship.
Kazuya also ends up meeting Ruka, a young girl who falls madly in love with him, and Sumi, a shy rental girlfriend, who has a hard time even speaking around strangers. As each chapter goes by, the dark inner working of Rent-a-Girlfriend's story are more and more prominent.
10 Ruka's Heart Condition
Ruka is a girl with a heart condition that her parents thought would easily kill her when she was younger. Ruka has a heart that beats slower than normal and has never really felt excitement, even when trying to force herself to be scared.
Ruka monitors her heartbeat even as an adult and is surprised to find out that when around Kazuya, her heart actually begins to beat faster, something that has never happened throughout her entire life.
9 Ruka's Withering Determination
Ruka is a character that gets harder and harder to watch for fans. While she just seemed like a bit of an obstacle to Kazuya and Chizuru's relationship in the anime, the Rent-a-Girlfriend manga has her look more and more pitiful.
Ruka constantly tries to inject herself into situations, growing more and more frustrated with herself as time goes on. This slowly makes Ruka feel less and less important, wearing down her self-esteem.
8 Ruka Telling The Truth
Ruka caused chaos after suddenly quitting the rental business and breaking up with Kazuya's friend in front of him. This prompted Kazuya to reveal his secret to Kuribayashi, who feels like his world has been shattered.
Kazuya goes above and beyond for his friend, and the story proves that the true nature of having a fake girlfriend may do more harm than good.
7 Chizuru's Family Life
Nothing about Chizuru's back story is easy. Chizuru lost her parents at a young age and went to live with her grandparents, who she looked up to. Chizuru, at first, was a very open and cheerful girl who had dreams of stardom.
As time went on, tragedy and the struggles of taking care of her grandmother wore away at her. The only person that Chizuru had left in the world was her grandmother, who was constantly sick.
6 Chizuru's Grandpa Dying
Chizuru was incredibly close to her grandpa, who helped inspire her to be a movie star, just like her grandma was. Chizuru made a promise to him to make it big one day and appear on the silver screen.
This, of course, didn't happen as her grandpa died early on, leaving only Chizuru and her grandmother. Due to the state of her grandma's health, Chizuru was forced to find her own way to pay for acting school.
5 Sumi is Selfless
Sumi is another rental girlfriend, who, unlike most of the girls that work for the app, has very low self-esteem. She has a huge problem with communication and can barely get a word out when she is placed around strangers.
Despite this, she forms a friendship with Kazuya, with who she falls in love with. Instead of admitting her feelings, though, she forces herself to help Kazuya with his relationship problems while forcing her feelings to stay hidden.
4 Chizuru Being Skipped Over
Chizuru was extremely excited to learn that she may get picked for a play. Getting chosen for a play meant that she would no longer have to work her rental job and would finally be free to focus on her studies and career.
Despite putting forth all her effort at acting, the scouter already had another girl in mind, which crushed Chizuru. Despite having amazing acting skills, Chizuru lacks the connections to make it into the career field.
3 Chizuru's Grandma Falling Ill
Chizuru revealed that her grandma had been in bad health quite some time, but fans were caught off-guard when she was readmitted to the hospital. As many fans guessed, her illness and progressed, and she wasn't doing well.
With Chizuru realizing her grandma was dying, her only wish was to be able to appear in a small movie that she could show her grandmother before she died, but time was extremely limited.
2 The Movie Process
The entirety of the movie process was a rollercoaster of emotions, from Kazuya almost not meeting the funding goal to having to pull together every seen while juggling Ruka and his job.
Kazuya went above and beyond to get a grew together, and even Ruka pitched in, knowing that Chizuru was the one that Kazuya was beginning to love more and more while helping her make her dream a reality.
1 Chizuru Loosing Her Grandma
When Chizuru took her grandma out to see the theater where they would show the completed film, she collapsed. As she was dying in the hospital, Kazuya rushed the completed footage over so that Chizuru could show her grandma the movie.
While her grandma was unconscious for most of the movie, she still got to see her granddaughter acting. After the movie finished, the two shared some final words before her grandma ended up dying that night.