The 100 Girlfriends Who Really Really Really Really Really Love You is this season’s brilliant, hilarious, utterly indefensible fave

Anime and manga have, over the years, opened my horizons and gotten me into all kinds of genres I might never have considered before, and I’m all the better for it.

But the genre I’ve grown most skeptical about, the one I really do judge by the cover, is shonen (aimed at boys) romance. I always start to feel bad for these explicitly-designed-to-be-perfect Stepford Waifus as they pursue and fight over some shitty misanthrope viewer-substitute who never has to grow or change.1 And the fans are always angry, and the series seem engineered to make them fight.

Not that it isn’t dated, but I tried Kimagure Orange Road recently: the animation was beautiful, but I couldn’t get past what an exceptionally lousy guy the protagonist was, how lame his excuses and coincidences, his invincibility in the eyes of two girls whose time he does not deserve. Back in the modern day, I didn’t get through the second chapter of Rent-A-Girlfriend, either: my god, the entitlement of that little shit.

Well, 100 Girlfriends is about a real man and a real hero. The best kind of genre parody— a loving one— 100GFs blasts the “harem romcom” premise all the way into full absurdity in its every aspect. The heroines are ridiculous but endearing, the stories are full gag manga horny stupidity cut gently with heartfelt emotion, and when the hero says he’d make the girls happy, even if it kills him… he makes you believe it.

The premise of this show is that God made a mistake while watching TV2, and assigned chronically in-love, chronically dumped Aijou Rentarou (this is like naming your hero Love-Dove Romanceton) 100 perfect soulmates. But he has to be with all of them, or they will die. Those are the rules; the only rules, really, because 100 Girlfriends smashes through pretty much all other laws of established reality.

The heroines are standard types taken to a comic extreme, named for their characteristics— Karane3 the tsundere, Shizuka the small floof4, Kusuri the mad scientist5 and so on. But 100 Girlfriends isn’t just filling out a checklist; it has honest affection for these characters, and gives attention to making them feel like full people well past their initial appearances. This first anime season only gets to six girlfriends— the manga is up to twenty-seven?— which makes for a very lively ensemble cast. (I cannot imagine— I doubt anyone involved can imagine— what the anime would even look like a few seasons in.)

What literally ties 100 Girlfriends together is the hero, Rentarou. The series imbues its hero with the do-my-best, go-for-it, never-say-die spirit of a protagonist from a sports or a fighting series. When faced with the realization that he must date 100 girls, he stumbles on the morality of it for a moment before realizing “No, I’ll just make all of them happy,” and devoting all of his waking energy to the task.

Rentarou is attentive, sincere, and loving to an extreme, superhuman extent that only a gag manga character could possibly be. One girlfriend can’t speak but only read out of her favorite book, so he singlehandedly converts it to a text-to-speech app. When put into a lie detector test and asked how much he loves his girlfriends, the lie detector test can’t keep up with how truthful he is. He is unconditionally supportive, no matter the situation, and would never dare to put down one of his girlfriends. If Rentarou’s capacity for love is his power level, then his power level is infinite. This Boyfriend Superman is not an insert for the audience: he’s a figure to aspire to.

The situations these characters wind up in are fittingly ridiculous: 100 Girlfriends maintains a breakneck gag-manga pace for most of any given episode, before it inevitably takes a surprise jab at your heartstrings. Unlike most shonen romcom attempts at comedy, it’s also actually really funny. The second episode features a doomed Rube Goldberg-esque plan to determine which of the first two girlfriends will claim Rentarou’s first kiss. Another highlight is “The Resident Evil of kissing,” which I will let you experience for yourself. And of course, as you’d expect from any good romcom, the season peaks with an extended Mission: Impossible homage as the gang break into a heavily guarded mansion.

One of the reasons 100 Girlfriends works so well is that it isn’t ashamed of what it is or insincere about its intentions at all. It loves all these characters, and the tropes of “harem” manga, very much. It’s never self-deprecating and unabashedly horny: the girlfriends want Rentarou, aggressively, droolingly. The stale “oh no! I fell on your boobs” contrivances of shonen manga are brought to comically bizarre extremes. Stupid, trashy, and sweet, 100 Girlfriends is as sincere about its tearful declarations of love as it is about that scene where Karane gets her stomach rubbed.

If that’s a dealbreaker, if you’re looking for good taste in this series I’ve praised to the heavens… I’d advise you stay far away. I haven’t loved a show this indefensible since Keijo!!!!!!!!.