The God of Love makes a clerical error that dooms ordinary high school boy, Aijo Rentaro, with a grand total of a hundred potential girlfriends! But this is no problem for Rentaro, who has plenty of love to go around!
This time, the girlfriends try their hand–or perhaps their legs–at spoiling their boyfriend. Blue sky, warm sun, and a cool breeze. All he needs now is a soft place to rest his head upon. It’s time to find out which of his girlfriends has the comfiest lap!
The 100 Girlfriends Who Really x5 Love You, Vol. 7 (My Kindle Review)
Rentaro’s ever-growing girl group gets a pretty odd addition in the form of his “very” distant cousin Chiyo, a junior high schooler who is apprehensive and a serious neat freak. After they all shamelessly show off their new merch and have a pillow royale, girlfriend number 13 is a really unique one. Miss Naddy is a cowgirl-dressing gal who has a huge embracing to American culture while learning about her tough past, and she wonderfully helps the girls express their freedom with fashion. A- (91%/Excellent)
I really hate the cousin thing...why we gotta keep making this gross? But I love the cowgirl one..this has so many fun redeeming qualities. I will keep reading but I wish it wasn't also so weird sometimes.🙃💕
The march to the (presumably) inevitable baseball chapter (prove me wrong) continues as the usual nonsense gains another couple of girls and all usual boundaries are as nothing before the might of this silly-ass manga.
This might be one time where basically being force-fed insanity for 200-odd pages does get to be a bit much, as this isn’t the easy win I normally just throw at this series and move on.
Don’t worry, it’s still excruciatingly funny in places. The chapter with the lap pillow battle royale starts off as praise for how hard Rentaro works for all the girls and then turns into a rapid fire series of dream sequences that are… interesting… to say the least…
Special shout out, as usual, to Karane, whose tsundere antics and secret ‘normal girl’ side absolutely steal the show. Yes, she makes out with Hikari again, don’t worry, but she often gets the best jokes and asides.
There’s one chapter where the manga literally spends the whole time shilling its own merchandise that they’re releasing and it goes above and beyond showing the many, many silly ways you could use the merch. Plus it has a very sneaky Karane and Hikari joke for the attentive.
As the story continues to creak under the weight of its burgeoning populace, it still manages to be rather entertaining. The phrase ‘Ameriboo’ has been helpfully added to my urban lexicon, for example. And I laughed very hard at the VHS labelled ‘American Film (evil)’.
The new girlfriends are okay, but not exceptional. It’s the nature of the beast - as the cast sprawls ever outward it becomes harder to get attached to those who haven’t had much time on the page. Even the chapters devoted to later girls aren’t quite as strong.
Really my issue is mostly with Rentaro’s cousin Chiyo, whose thing is that she’s so responsible she’s got anxiety-induced OCD that goes haywire when things aren’t in order.
It could be from me suffering from it that makes it less exciting to see on the page, but that character trait can be kind of annoying (although the manga helpfully reframes her as a chihuahua and that did lessen it a bit). Especially the chapter where she meets the other girls and tries to “fix” them.
You may notice that I have glossed over the fact that Chiyo is Rentaro’s cousin. And in junior high. I mean, I could point it out, but the story already acknowledges that she’s checking off both the ‘kiddie’ and ‘family’ boxes for the audience, AND it acknowledges the taboo of it all, so I don’t think there’s much left to say there.
Besides, Rentaro ends up with a teacher next, just in case that wasn’t enough. Naddy is the epitome of every horrible ugly American stereotype with her cowboy hat, flag kerchief, and chaps, although the brutal “gunboat diplomacy” line is a howler.
Her backstory is genuinely pretty funny and her subsequent chapter where she encourages the girls to all live free, which means cosplay aplenty, is actually a lot of fun. Especially, yes, Karane. Look, she’s just that good, I don’t make the rules.
So, the rare stumble here - it’s not that Chiyo is terrible, but the manga’s tendency to always amp up to a hundred makes her come on way too hard, way too fast and in her case the gets a little annoying.
Everything else is pretty much as before - the art is stupendous; there’s a double page of just kissing that’s really cool and the expressions and reactions are always a treat. And, lord help me, there is a vore joke in this one that nearly killed me and it made perfect sense in context, no less. I mean, this story is nuts, but it is written far more clever than it seems.
4 stars - minus Chiyo, I would have given this a 4.5 and rounded up, I think, just for that merch chapter alone. Whatever a given volume ends up as, audacious and funny are always going to be in the mix somewhere, so it continues to be a very reliable source of gags.
Easily the weakest volume in the series so far. I found the entire thing with Chiyo gross and unnecessary. I hated it. It only made matters worse that her personality was annoying too. The merch chapter was amusing at first but went on for wayyy too long. The first half of this volume was a total miss for me.
Naddy, while being problematic in her own right, at least put an interesting twist on the "American in Japan" trope. She brought some fun back into the latter half of the volume to save this from being a 1-star for me.
Two more new girls and as unique as the others. This continues to be the funniest manga printed today. It never ceases to make me laugh hysterically and the artwork is stellar. A bonafide classic manga series!
Oh boy…can’t say I’m fond of the cousin thing..it’s just kinda..Ick. Usually it would make me drop a manga..but I’m still enjoying this series way to much so..I’m just gonna pretend it’s not a thing!
Otherwise..decent volume. Chiyo hasn’t won me over yet (because of that being hard to ignore..) but the American-boo is a fun character!