The Worst Anime Of The 2020s Just Became Utter Garbage
The following article contains a discussion of sexual content that might not be appropriate for younger readers.
Warning: Contains spoilers for Rent-A Girlfriend season 5, episode #2.Few manga of the past decade have been more infamous than Rent-A-Girlfriend, and it’s fairly easy to see why. It’s one thing for Rent-A-Girlfriend to be a harem anime, as even the best harem anime are incredibly controversial, but by the time Rent-A-Girlfriend began serialization in the late 2010s, the genre had become especially controversial as people began seeking out more inventive romance stories, yet Rent-A-Girlfriend sticks to being a traditional harem anime, making it feel more boring than anything.
For years, Rent-A-Girlfriend has been divisive as a cliché harem anime with everything negative that could come with it, but for most of its run, it was less hated than it was simply seen as boring. All of that changed in the 2020s, however, when Rent-A-Girlfriend went through a massive shift in perception thanks to a chapter that was universally hated by fans, and years later, it’s even more cringeworthy in the anime.
Rent-A-Girlfriend Just Gave Us The Worst Scene In Modern Anime
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Rent-A-Girlfriend season 5, episode #2, after Chizuru’s latest rejection, Kazuya fell into another spiral of self-doubt and self-deprecation, and being at a water park, where all the girls were walking around in swimsuits, added a sexual element to it all. Suddenly, Kazuya’s head was filled with images of Chizuru having graphic sex with Umi, and not only did it bring him to tears, but worst of all, it gave him an erection. It was one thing for Kazuya to imagine himself as a cuckold in such explicit detail, but the fact that the fantasy aroused him made it impossible to take seriously, as it only made Kazuya look like a complete and utter loser. It was that single moment that forever tarnished Rent-A-Girlfriend’s reputation and turned it from a serviceable harem series into the anime community’s punching bag, and with how much effort the anime put into the music and intersplicing it with flashbacks to Kazuya and Chizuru’s relationship, it was even harder to see in animation. What makes it worse is that that moment wasn’t a one-off moment of bad writing for Rent-A-Girlfriend; in the years to follow, the series has doubled down on controversial elements like poor pacing, excessive fanservice, and making most of the cast unlikable through a combination of poor development and forced drama, all of which has only justified the outrage sparked by chapter #218. Nowadays, only the most diehard fans of Rent-A-Girlfriend continue to defend the series, but with each passing year, that becomes more and more of a challenge.
Is Rent-A-Girlfriend Really The Worst Show In Modern Anime?
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Kazuya’s cuckold fantasy is the definitive low point of Rent-A-Girlfriend, and for anyone who’s kept up with the manga, it’s only gotten worse in the years to follow by digging deeper into its worst elements. It’s a series that’s become increasingly hard to defend, and the more controversial it’s become, the more common it’s been for people to say it’s one of the worst shows in modern anime, if not the worst. While Rent-A-Girlfriend is certainly one of the worst new-gen anime around, calling it the worst anime around is still something of an exaggeration; as tedious and all-around bad as it can get, it’s still just a regular harem anime, and even within that specific genre, there have been far worse anime and manga to come out in recent years, with Rent-A-Girlfriend getting so much hate mostly because it’s more high-profile than other anime.
That being said, with just how far Rent-A-Girlfriend goes with its cliches, on top of some genuinely indefensible plot elements, even if it isn’t the worst anime around, it’s hard to find anything about it that’s worth defending; Kazuya’s cuckold fantasy was when most people came to that conclusion, and unfortunately, things will only get worse for Rent-A-Girlfriend going forward. Rent-A-Girlfriend releases new episodes Wednesdays on Crunchyroll.
Release Date
2020 - 2026-00-00
Network
TBS, MBS, CBC, Tulip Television, BSN, tys, NBC, HBC, RKK, i-Television, SBS, IBC, BSS, MRO, OBS, TUF, RSK, TUY, tbc, RKB, SBC, KUTV, RBC, UTY, RCC, MRT, atv, MBC
Directors
Shinya Une, Akira Mano, Fumio Maezono, Taku Yamada, Yurika Fukaya, Hidehiko Kadota, Naoyuki Kuzuya, Takashi Tanazawa, Yoshitsugu Kimura, Taiki Nishimura, Mizuki Iwadare, Ken Ando, Akira Yamada, Fumihiro Ueno, Yuki Morita, Hisaya Takabayashi
Writers
Fumi Tsubota
Masayuki Akasaka
Yoshiaki Kibe (voice)
Rie Takahashi
Sumi Sakurasawa (voice)
