Recently dumped by his girlfriend, college student Kazuya Kinoshita tries to fill the void with an app that lets him rent a girlfriend. While Chizuru seems like the perfect girlfriend, reading the reviews online, he finds out it is an act.
He leaves her a bad review and this reveals her more sassy true self when she comes after him for it. Unfortunately, after his grandmother’s collapse, he introduces her as his girlfriend at the hospital, and thus they begin their fake relationship.
Lots of ho’s in this anime, including the spineless main character. He, too, is a ho. Maddening at times, but Chizuru is a lovely bright spot within it. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Rent-a-Girlfriend, then head on down below.
Anime Like Rent-a-Girlfriend
For Fans of Fake Relationships
Nisekoi
Ten years ago, Raku Ichijou made a promise with a childhood friend to meet again and use the key she holds to open the locket he wears around his neck then be together forever. In the present day, this heir apparent to an intimidating yakuza family continues to wait for his friend’s return while trying to be as uninvolved in family matters as possible.
However, when a rival gang invades his family’s turf, the family leaders decide Raku should start a romantic relationship with the other chief’s daughter, Chitoge.
While they pretend to be dating to maintain the peace, Raku is almost positive his classmate Kosaki Onodera is the girl he made his promise with.
Both Rent-a-Girlfriend and Nisekoi are built on the premise of a fake relationship that slowly becomes real. Of course, this is not without romantic rivals that are consistently popping out of the woodwork.
However, while both Nisekoi and Rent-a-Girlfriend are romantic comedies with harem elements, Nisekoi is often much more focused on the love triangle it establishes.
Oreshura
After being abandoned by his love-addled parents, Eita Kidou is a bit put off by romance. It also causes him to see through the love confession of one, Masuzu Natsukawa.
As it turns out, she just wanted a boyfriend to stop the daily love confessions. While he initially declines, she takes to blackmailing him to be her fake boyfriend.
Both series are about people who pretend they are in a fake relationship that start off under dubious circumstances. While Rent-a-Girlfriend is about paying for girlfriends, Oreshura is more about being blackmailed into being a boyfriend.
Both series have an element of harem in them, but Oreshura is more of a traditional harem anime where Eita gathers female attention be being a good guy.
More Than A Married Couple, But Not Lovers
Jirou Yakuin, third-year high school student and otaku, has had a crush on his childhood friend, Shiori. He hopes to be paired with her for their school’s upcoming marriage practical – an exam where two people are paired to live together in order to practice married life as they are observed and scored.
For popular Akari Watanabe, she hopes to be paired with the handsome Minami. Much to each other’s dismay, Jirou and Akari and paired together while Minami and Shiori are paired together.
Luckily, if both couples rank in the top, they can change partners, thus do Akari and Jirou venture to pretend to have a perfect married life.
Not completely unlike paying for a girlfriend, More Than A Married Couple, But Not Lovers is about students forced to live together in pairs as “marriage practice” at school. However, the similarities between these two series actually lie in the character relationships.
Both series heavily focus on couples that are, at first, only pretending to be happy couples. In Rent-a-Girl;friend it is to please their grandmothers, while in More Than A Married Couple, But Not Lovers they are doing it to get a high grade so they can switch to their preferred partners.
As these things go, of course feelings develop between the “fake” couple.
A Couple of Cuckoos
Nagi Umino, a diligent student, and Erika Amano, a social media star, seemingly have nothing in common until they discovered that they were actually switched at birth.
With this suddenly revealed to them, both families agree that in order to not uproot their life, the two of them should get engaged. The pair quickly reject this plan, but neither is really willing to back down either.
Both Rent-a-Girlfriend and A Couple of Cuckoos feature a main couple that is forced to be in a relationship due to their family. However, their relationship is a pretend one with each series having differing reasons as to why they aren’t in an actual relationship.
Of course, the rest of the series spends time growing the forced couple closer as actual friends before feelings actually start to develop. Neither show does this with without some love rivals getting in the way either.
Scum’s Wish
To the outside world, Mugi and Hanabi look like the perfect couple, but the truth is that they are only dating each other because they can’t be with the people they actually want to be with.
For Hanabi, it is her childhood friend-turned-homeroom-teacher and for Mugi it is his older tutor that has been teaching him since middle school.
In order to stave off the loneliness, the pair find solace in each other’s arms.
You know how Mami is just the worst person? Imagine if every character was just awful like Mami. Then you would have Scum’s Wish.
Both Rent-a-Girlfriend and Scum’s Wish are about couples that are just faking being together. In Rent-a-Girlfriend, it is to please their family, while in Scum’s Wish, it is really more a coping mechanism while they continue to pine for their separate love interests.
The big difference here is really in tone. Rent-a-Girlfriend is often comical with moments of drama while Scum’s Wish is often melancholy drama as everyone is just awful to each other.
Love and Lies
In order to encourage successful marriages and to combat the low birthrate, the Japanese government now assigns marriage partners at the age of 16. Unwilling to face the severe repercussions that come with denial, Yukari Nejima goes along with it, despite confessing to his long-time crush.
However, is his reciprocated love doomed to be crushed when he gets his marriage notice?
Both Rent-a-Girlfriend and Love and Lies feature characters that are forced to be in a relationship and not really wanting to be. However, while Rent-a-Girlfriend only has Chizuru really against it in the beginning, the displeasure is gender-swapped in Love and Lies.
Both anime series explore the main character’s relationship with other women, but they also start to develop feelings for the women that they are faking a relationship with.
For Fans of Ho’s
My First Girlfriend is a Gal
Although he has reached the spring of his youth, Junichi is finding it harder than expected to get a girlfriend, but that is due in no small part to his friends brazen habit of reading dirty magazines in class.
In order to “help” him, his virgin friends submitted a love letter in his name to the resident gyaru of his class, Yame Yukana. However, while she may dress like a gal, this tough-looking girl is actually as pure as the snow.
Both shows surround a romantic relationship between your typical horny young man and a girl that would be considered a loose women either because she engages in compensated dating or because she is gyaru.
However, what you find out is that the girls are actually quite sweet and innocent despite how they look or what they do.
While Rent-a-Girlfriend has its moments of horny, My First Girlfriend is a Gal is the pinnacle of horny romantic comedies.
3D Girlfriend
Tsusui Hikari is an otaku that mostly avoids social life. He only really has one friend at school and is otherwise mocked by his classmates. One day, he ends up having to clean the pool with Igarashi Iroha.
She is blunt, truant, and a troublemaker, but she stands up for Hikari when people make fun of him. While he is harsh with her, she never dismisses him. Could real 3D love be in the air?
In both series, you are introduced to girls who might be viewed as loose women for various reasons, but they are either misunderstood or hide their profession well like in Rent-a-Girlfriend.
Both Rent-a-Girlfriend and 3D Girlfriend explore a building relationship between these girls and a male main character that is kind of easy to dislike.
As 3D Girlfriend has a fair amount of character drama to explore, it isn’t a harem or filled with love rivals like Rent-a-Girlfriend.
Domestic Girlfriend
Natsuo is in love with his teacher Hina. In order to try and forget his feelings, he goes to a mixer and meets a girl named Rui.
Oddly enough, she asks him to do her a favor – to have sex with her. He does so, but soon he is faced with a unique problem. His father has remarried and he now has two new stepsisters that he knows too well – Rui and Hina.
If you like cute, kind of complicated girls that are inexplicably attracted to a rather boring guy, well then Domestic Girlfriend can fill the void.
Like Rent-a-Girlfriend and its various girlfriends, there is quite a bit of relationship drama as the two sisters fight over their new stepbrother who ultimately can’t decide on who he even likes best.
Rent-a-Girlfriend can be considered a trashy romance due to its premise of paying for relationships, but Domestic Girlfriend is a fun trashy romance due to its characters and their actions.
Girlfriend, Girlfriend
After loving her for years, Naoya Mukai finally confesses his love to his childhood friend, Saki. However, just as he settles into dating her, a girl named Nagisa comes out of the woodwork and confesses her secret love for him.
Instead of shooting her down, he is charmed by her feelings, and suggests to both her and Saki that he date both of them.
People find fault with Rent-a-Girlfriend for it being about paying for female attention and time. However, Girlfriend, Girlfriend catches an entirely different level of criticism by being about a guy getting a girlfriend, being confessed to by someone else, and making her his girlfriend also. Of course, Girlfriend, Girlfriend isn’t a cheating anime, its a harem anime so he and his girlfriends (four, in total) all live together.
However, unlike Rent-a-Girlfriend that is a rom-com with some moments of drama, Girlfriend,. Girlfriend really embraces the comedy of the situation. They all live together, and each girlfriend is trying to force the others out so they can be the “winner”.
For Fans of Hiding Your True Nature
Love Hina
After making a childhood promise with a girl who moved away, Keitaro is dedicated to getting into the prestigious Tokyo University. Unfortunately, he is hopelessly stuck failing his entrance exams.
In order to continue trying, he moves out of his parent’s house into his grandmother’s inn to work as a manager.
However, what he doesn’t know is that her hot springs inn is also an all-girls dorm.
Both Rent-a-Girlfriend and Love Hina are college-set romantic comedies where a cute, nice, and studious girl falls in love with a guy that is kind of a pretty average failure.
While Rent-a-Girlfriend has Kazuya explores other girlfriends, Love Hina is a more standard harem romantic comedy where Keitaro helps all the girls with their various problems with a clear main girl whose relationship with each other slowly progresses.
As Love Hina is an older harem anime, it embraces ecchi a little more as well as common older tropes like violent tsunderes for comedy. Rent-a-Girlfriend, as a more modern harem romantic comedy, is a little more subversive.
All that said, the biggest similarity between Love Hina and Rent-a-Girlfriend is that both Naru and Chizuru have a bookish “school mode” where they look so much like each other it makes one wonder if Love Hina served as its inspiration.
His and Her Circumstances
Yukino Miyazawa is the perfect student to her peers, but it is all just a front to get the praise and admiration she thrives on. So, naturally, when Soichiro Arima takes her spot as number one in the class rankings, she goes a little batty.
Yet after Arima finds out her true personality, he begins to blackmail her with it.
Both Rent-a-Girlfriend and His and Her Circumstances have female main characters that put on different facades in different situations. What people think of them is important, and they change themselves to reflect that.
However, while Rent-a-Girlfriend is a harem romantic comedy, His and Her Circumstances is a more drama-driven romantic comedy where the characters start to slowly reveal their true selves to the world.
The biggest difference sits with the male main characters. Kazuya isn’t really hiding himself, but Arima, while pleasant, has a bit of darkness in there.
Horimiya
Although lauded for being likable and intelligent, Kyouko Hori hides the fact that she has to take care of her brother and the housework because her parents are always working.
Izumi Miyamura, on the other hand, is seen as a brooding, bespectacled otaku. Outside of school, he sports tattoos and nine piercings.
By happenstance, the two outside school personalities of these two classmates meet and they get to know a side of each other they don’t show their peers.
While Horimiya is not a harem anime, it features a similar concept to Rent-a-Girlfriend where the characters often put on a different face in front of other people and aren’t quite being their true selves.
Like in Rent-a-Girlfriend, you get to see those “true selves” come out as they meet someone and spend time with them. However, Horimiya keeps things a strictly monogamous rom-com with no rivals.
The Quintessential Quintuplets
As his family is in some serious debt, Fuutaro Uesugi is a serious penny pincher. However, his great grades have landed him a higher than normal paying tutor job.
The problem is that his five wards, all sisters, are dumb as door nails and think he is a complete idiot.
However, to get his pay, he has to think of a way to get these five unique girls to study and learn.
Rent-a-Girlfriend and The Quintessential Quintuplets are innately similar as pretty standard harem anime. However, while Rent-a-Girlfriend had an interesting initial hook by having the main character pay for various girlfriends, The Quintessential Quintuplets elevated itself from other harem anime by not only being about quintuplets, but not having a clear “winner” of the harem either.
Throughout both Rent-a-Girlfriend and The Quintessential Quintuplets, you discover that various girls are not quite the same as the persona they put out to the world. You enjoy a main character of varying likability help them with their problems and slowly win over all their affections.
Oresuki – Are You The Only One Who Loves Me?
Jouro is your average high school boy that dreams of a love story. He is thrilled when he lines up two dates, but unfortunately, both girls confess their love for his best friend.
Of course, his friendly face is just a facade. Schemer that he is, he decides to make his friend fall for one of the girls so he can swipe the other.
Unfortunately, his efforts are threatened by Pansy, a gloomy girl who knows of his secret personality.
While Rent-a-Girlfriend is faulted by being about paying for girlfriends and the main character being wildly difficult to like at times, Oresuki is what you would call a “scumbag harem” anime. The protagonist is scummy, the girls are scummy, and it is all used for comedy without forgetting the core concepts that people enjoy harem anime for.
If you enjoyed Rent-a-Girlfriend for how the characters often changed their personalities for various situations, Oresuki is that, but in played up to the extreme for comedy.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Rent-a-Girlfriend? Let fans know in the comments section below.
lit
dangt i already saw all of these oh well thanks for the recommendation tho