Short answer: Hypocrisy. "It's only good when Friends, Big Bang Theory, The Office do it" mindset.

Real human growth is NOT linear. It is messy, full of setbacks, and people often revert to old habits more often than they don't.

The criticism (hate, actually) of Rent-a-Girlfriend is always a hallucination manifesting from a fundamental clash of expectations. A lot of viewers (their mother-tongue "coincidentally" the same!) wants to be fed a predictable story arc where a character goes from point A to point B and stays there. Japan doesn't do "asking out" casually. Watch some NBC medical drama, not anime, if your comfort zone is taking the top priority. Tension, drama, suspense don't have to play by the rules you've been conditioned to get accustomed to.

When Rent-a-Girlfriend mimics the slow, halting reality of unrequited or one-sided love, or complex feelings, especially within the cultural context of Asian dating norms (and it's really broad, not just Japan; try 75% of the population), it gets judged by formulas it isn't trying to follow; formulas even Hollywood shouldn't be following 60th year in a row.

The backlash against characters like Barney Stinson or Jaime Lannister is my go-to example of that Hollywood bias. Audiences, and your average holier-than-thou "critic" and "media literacy" folks got outraged so unreasonably because those characters didn't get a neat, permanent, one-directional, predictable, comfortable, sanitized, "redemption arc," even though real people around all of us, especially us, relapse into their worst traits all the time. "Kazuya bad, Ross Geller bad, Ted Mosby bad, somehow Rachel good, Carrie from Sex and the City also good" is the mindset that's "problematic" but some publication like "Anime Feminist" (lol) would never comprehend; their hubris wouldn't allow them to.

When looked at through that lens, the pacing isn't "stretching time for profit," to that extent as it is capturing how agonizingly slow and frustrating it actually is to navigate intense insecurity and unearned affection in real life.

"I'm determined now and will settle this once and for all" and "power of friendship" and "power of love" are speeches and not real-life boosters. The girl you now feel confident to confess might not show up for the next 3 months — that's the reality.

August 2022

My life had been at its worst in the last 18 months. Lost family members in 2021. Watched my aunt get cancer overnight. Failed to secure work after graduation. My father fell ill. My undergraduate institution refused to release me over a credit dispute. I had elaborate thoughts and had mapped out two futures in my head, one where I destroyed myself quietly, one where I went out taking others with me, and I was seriously weighing both.

One night, sick and exhausted, I finally clicked on that Rent-a-Girlfriend tab I had left open for months. I binged it in a single night and waited weekly for the then-ongoing Season 2.

It did not save me. But it watched over me while I survived.

July 2023

Studies distracted me. I nearly forgot the show existed. Kaguya-sama became my favorite anime. And I graduated.

Then three things happened in the final week of the month. My first job was confirmed. I accidentally discovered Rent-a-Girlfriend was back with Season 3. And I fell into anime so completely that for the next 1 year I started learning Japanese without any particular reason.

July 2025

Japan-related interests had collapsed entirely under overwork, grief over my dog, a long political rage spiral, and everyday stock market bloodbaths. Then, accidentally again, I found out Rent-a-Girlfriend had come back after these 2 years without announcing it before me. I rewatched everything, old seasons and new, subbed and dubbed. In the meantime, I started looking at jobs, as well as universities in Japan.

April-June 2026

For the first time, I actually knew a Rent-a-Girlfriend season was coming before it arrived. I followed it weekly while preparing for my JLPT N4 exam. And today I received confirmation of admission to a national university in Japan, with a scholarship, no less, to pursue my own research. This is the first time the world rewarded me for something outside my own control and did not reject me, my ambitions, and my capabilities.

Coincidentally, granted, but every time this anime came back, my life moved somewhere, and it was unexpectedly in a positive direction.

I hope it outlasts me.

Thank you for indulging in my narcissistically embarrassing soliloquy (God, I hope after all the writing and edits this sub does not refuse to have me post it).