This is a very odd show for me to consider covering in episode reviews. I don’t consider romcoms and harem shows to be my cup of tea (though there have definitely been exceptions) and at first glance, this show’s title and premise don’t sound very appealing to me. To my surprise however, I actually quite enjoyed this first episode so here we are.
The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You revolves around Rentaro Aijo, a young boy who holds the world record for the most rejected bachelor. Poor boy has been rejected a whopping 100 times. Before his first year in high school, he visits a shrine and meets the God of Love (Shigeru Chiba), who assures him that he’ll eventually meet his soulmate. On the first day of high school, Rentaro has a mutual case of love at first fight with not one but two girls, a seemingly devious girl named Hakari Hanazono (Kaede Hondo) and a tsundere named Karane Inda (Miyu Tomita). As Rentaro struggles to decide on who he should date, the God of Love reveals that he accidentally gave him 100 soulmates and that any one of them will die if a relationship with him fails to occur. To prevent any of them from dying, Rentaro must now find and date all 100 of his soulmates (and convince them all to consent to a massively polygamous relationship but one thing at a time).
Putting aside how stupid and absurd this all sounds, one has to wonder if this show will actually feature 100 love interests? That’s a tall order for the original creators to fulfill. Most harem stories barely get to ten. I’m concerned that the story will eventually get bloated though to be fair, the magna the show is based on hasn’t actually fulfilled its 100 waifu quota. It’s fourteen volumes in and the girlfriend count is only a little over twenty. Unless the anime staff decides to deviate from the source material, it seems like the show will only focus on a fraction of the harem so the possibility of things getting overstuffed probably won’t happen for a long while.
Honestly, the show does a decent job justifying the polygamy route. The fact that Rentaro’s soulmates will die if they don’t hook up with him is extremely contrived but I understand that without it, the plot would fall apart. If you give Rentaro any other reason to date so many girls simultaneously, he’d come across as indecisive or sleezy and not the nice guy the show purports him to be. The show has Rentaro consider keeping his multiple relationships a secret from each of the girls, only to then immediately shoot the idea down and instead opt to be honest. That’s probably the best route for him to take in such a weird situation. Things would get unstable if he tries to keep secrets and it’d be increasingly infeasible anyway as the harem grows. I don’t buy Hakari wholeheartedly accepting that she’ll have to share her boyfriend with someone else, it just feels too soon, but I suppose the ball has to get rolling somehow. I do like however that this spurs Karane into begrudgingly agreeing to the idea, the girl being too smitten and too prideful to give up.
To this premiere’s credit, it is pretty darn funny. My favorite bit is at the middle of the episode where Rentaro offers Hakari a canned drink. Hakari schemes to have an indirect kiss with Rentaro by making an outlandish claim that she can’t finish her drinks and pleading with Rentaro to drink half of the can first. To her shock, Rentaro brings out a smaller can for her to drink instead so Hakari uses math so that Rentaro still takes the bait. Despite going through the hoop, Hakari still screws up in the end by accidentally spilling the drink. All in all, it’s a great scene that plays well into the characters’ personalities and the show’s absurdity. Some other good gags worth mentioning are Hakari and Karane faking leg injuries so that they have an excuse to walk with Rentaro to the nurse’s office and Karane chiding Rentaro for believing a romantic superstition regarding four-leafed clovers when she and Hakari both tried to find said clovers earlier in the episode. If the rest of the show is as funny as the first episode, I can see myself sticking around for the whole season.
Watch The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You on Crunchyroll
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