Rent-A-Girlfriend Vol. 1 (Kodansha, 2020)

Anime coming July 2020! You can rent a girlfriend, but can you buy love? Reeling from a bad breakup, Kazuya rents the beautiful, polite Chizuru for a date. But rock bottom might be so much lower than he thought! Chizuru is much more than the pretty face and sweet demeanor he thought he'd bargained for… In today's Japan, “rental” services can deliver an afternoon with a “friend,” a “parent,” even a fake girlfriend! After a staggering betrayal by his girlfriend, hapless freshman Kazuya gets just desperate enough to give it a try. But he quickly discovers how complicated it can be to “rent” an emotional connection, and his new “girlfriend,” who's trying to keep her side hustle secret, will panic when she finds out her real life and Kazuya's are intertwined in surprising ways! Family, school, and life all start to go wrong, too… It's sweet but naïve boy meets cute but ruthless girl in this 21st-century manga rom-com!