Rent-a-Girlfriend

Rent-a-Girlfriend is TMS Entertainment's anime adaptation of Reiji Miyajima's romantic comedy manga, serialised in Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine since 2017, and it first aired in 2020. Its hook is a paid date that refuses to stay paid. University student Kazuya Kinoshita, dumped by Mami Nanami after a month, books a girl through a rental app. Then Chizuru Mizuhara turns out to live in the flat next door and study at his university, and his hospitalised grandmother takes her for his real girlfriend. Mizuhara is only a work name: Chizuru Ichinose takes rental dates while chasing an acting career.

Kazuya and Chizuru start as a transaction with rules, so the comedy runs on a lie that keeps needing bigger lies. Other rental girls widen the mess: Ruka Sarashina, who has a heart condition, blackmails Kazuya into a "trial" relationship, and painfully shy rookie Sumi Sakurasawa even has her own spin-off manga, Rent-A-(Really Shy!)-Girlfriend.

The show lives or dies on Kazuya, and fans split hard over him. He sulks, ogles and narrates his own panic, and even Anime News Network's 2020 manga reviewers disagreed: one called his anger towards Chizuru toxic, another credited his self-awareness. Progress comes in small steps, so if his dithering grates by episode three, it will grate for sixty. His rare decisive moves, like crowdfunding a film for Chizuru to star in across season three, land because they took so long.

Five twelve-episode seasons aired in the summers of 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2025, then spring 2026. Kazuomi Koga directed all but the third (Shinya Une). Seasons four and five, first planned as one split season, centre on the Hawaiians arc, set at a Fukushima spa resort rather than Hawaii. A sixth season, adapting the Cohabitation arc, was announced in June 2026 but has no air date as of October 2026. Season five ends at chapter 255, so readers can pick up at volume 30 of a manga that is still running, with volume 48 due in November.

It suits viewers who enjoy squirm comedy and a slow burn. Our Spring 2026 roundup calls season five strictly for viewers already four seasons deep, and our best romance anime list ranks it last of fifteen as the divisive pick, with Kaguya-sama: Love Is War the sharper alternative if Kazuya wears you out.