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ENTER PLAYER 3

Even after an intense hot springs trip with his rental girlfriend, things are complicated for the still hapless and deeply confused Kazuya. Though he finally gets some time away from Chizuru to gather his thoughts, a mysterious new figure enters the picture, one who seems to know quite a lot about his "romantic" life.

200 pages, Paperback

First published April 17, 2018

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363 people want to read

About the author

Reiji Miyajima

175 books69 followers

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5 stars
301 (33%)
4 stars
317 (34%)
3 stars
240 (26%)
2 stars
33 (3%)
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19 (2%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
Profile Image for Subham.
3,070 reviews103 followers
March 8, 2022
This was a fun volume!

Its pretty much Ruka finding about their relationship and I iove her origin and why she wants Kazuya to date her and its so cute and you feel for her and then in the other area you witness Kazuya's feelings for Chizuru and you see him stalking her and the funny thing there when he misunderstands a sitauation and we her real goals and I love it and it makes him sort of admire her and its fun and really well done but apart from that, more random and cute happenstance and weirs situations and a big move by Ruka in the end maybe?!

Its getting good and yep spicy in a good way as we delve into the characteristics of these people and really the mangaka excels at making complicated situations but giving a good and cute conclusion to them and the art compliments it. Plus its getting so much interesting now with the world being established and all and the next set of challenges to come forth, it will be interesting now!
Profile Image for James DeSantis.
Author 17 books1,205 followers
July 28, 2021
Probably the weakest volume for me so far.

So first half is Kazuya trying to talk to Chizuru about what is happening with Ruka, another girlfriend to rent. But then when Ruka shows up at his place, all hell breaks loose, and you find out the real reason she's being so pushy. She LOVES Kazuya...of course she does. Anyway you get some background on Ruka, which is actually pretty good, and then we get a little Christmas special. Which in itself is a cute idea with a nice ending, but the idea of Kazuya stalking Chizaru is pretty creepy.

But yeah a messy volume. There's good bits here and there and moves quick but also some dumb choices some of the characters make and do is questionable. I really disliked how stupid Kazuya was in this volume, and while sometimes he is a bumbling idiot, in this volume he was shown to be even more insecure than usual and a stalker, ew.

Anyway, it was still solid with good comedy bits, but not great. a 3 out of 5.
Profile Image for Hailey Vieira.
79 reviews3 followers
October 11, 2024
So. this was a Ruka heavy volume and my girl is a bit crazy... and honestly I'm kind of here for it haha. Like, it makes sense why she does what she does (even if it is a bit off the rocker) but, I don't hate it... though it can be kind of annoying sometimes lol.
All that being said, I would not want to be in Kazuya's shoes at all right now! I'm getting second hand stress for him!
Chizuru does need to stop giving him semi mixed signals because he literally just runs with everything but she also needs to figure out her feelings as well...
These characters are causing me stress and also second hand embarrassment... which isn't good because I'm not even halfway through the series yet!
Profile Image for Chesney Infalt.
Author 16 books83 followers
April 6, 2023
There was an element introduced just when things were getting too repetitive—but I haven’t made up my mind about how I feel about it.

Contains:
-Sexual Content
Profile Image for Jon Ureña.
Author 3 books123 followers
October 31, 2020
Three and a half stars.

At the end of the previous volume, a girl who was supposed to be dating the protagonist's friend surmised that the protagonist's relationship was fake, because the coprotagonist was an escort. After the protagonist's prodding, this girl (called Ruka) admitted that she sells her time and dignity for money as well.

It seems that this Ruka person is destined to serve a similar role to the one Misa Amane had in "Death Note", which is to be such an irrational, unpredictable and generally annoying obstacle that it risks derailing the entire series. Some day after the protagonists found out that they risk social death, this Ruka girl appeared at the protagonist's college searching for him. She's "cosplaying" as an imouto kind of deal; I suppose that she's hired to fulfill those kinds of fetishes. In any case, she seems interested in the protagonist beyond ruining his life. He pushes her into an empty classroom to avoid being seen by his friend, the guy who rented this Ruka originally. However, Ruka is focused on getting some physical interaction with the protagonist while she monitors a heart rate app on her phone. When the friend does find them in the classroom and fails to understand why they would be meeting, the protagonist attempts to lie, but Ruka bows and thanks the friend for renting her services, therefore outing the friend as someone who rents escorts. The friend is mortified to have been found out, and flees in tears. The protagonist understands very well the terror his pal feels, because he's dreaded feeling it for months already. He abandons Ruka to find the guy and explain to him that it's fine, that he's trash as well. However, the guy is long gone and from then on doesn't answer his phone.

When the protagonist goes back to his apartment to speak to his escort, who lives next door and who now prefers to speak to him through her door, he suggests that he'll just tell the guy that he himself had rented an escort; it wouldn't be fair for the guy to suffer such shame when he's guilty of the same thing. But at that moment this Ruka girl, who had followed him, approaches him and says that she recognizes that he's speaking with the escort. She hates that they are close to the extent of living next to each other. The escort gets out and calmly attempts to negotiate a peace between this troublesome girl and them. However, Ruka states that she believes she's fallen in love with the useless protagonist, that for a long time she had been searching for someone that passionate and who would go out of his way to risk his life for some "stranger" like the escort he had hired, and particularly that nobody else had made her heart beat so fast. We later learn, in an elaborate flashback sequence, this girl's backstory: she's someone with a heart condition, something like bradycardia, which over the years made her feel emotionless, but the protagonist is the first person who made it beat fast, or some shit like that. Very odd backstory.

In any case, they convince Ruka to wait outside of his apartment for a bit. The escort wants to know if he would actually want to date this girl, which could solve their problems, but when he refuses because he doesn't feel anything for her, she says that they should try something else. He's surprised that she didn't just tell him to go for it; after all, her helping him in life was supposed to consist in getting him a girlfriend. In the end he decides to escape through the balcony to visit his mortified friend, who had been hiding from his pals since he got found out, and tell him that he's been hiring an escort as well, and through that revelation stop the secret from spreading further. However, Ruka catches him trying to escape, and the three end up making a scene on the streets. Ruka threatens them with revealing their secret unless he dates her. He doesn't want to, but this time his escort convinces him that he should go for it, because other wise this dangerous person, who is at that point bawling her eyes out, could easily ruin their lives out of spite.

The protagonist started as someone who would have given anything to have a girlfriend, any kind of contact with a female, but after a time jump of a month during which he hasn't seen his escort, Ruka has been suffocating him with constant messages and dates that he doesn't feel he can avoid. He dreads dealing with her and acts as cold as possible with the deranged girl. This being Japan, they haven't done anything physical beyond holding hands, hugging and stuff. I'm having some trouble remembering the order of the remaining events, but at some point the protagonist meets with the escort in order to figure out what agency this troublesome girl belongs to, and how they can blackmail her into staying quiet. They meet in a coffee shop or a restaurant, her in plain clothes, and the protagonist is mostly distracted by the fact that he hadn't had to pay for the time of the girl he actually loves in order to spend time with her. When she realizes that fact, she decides to cut their meeting short and go their separate ways.

The biggest development in this volume happens one day that the protagonist was walking through town. He sees the escort all dolled up and he figures that she's going to meet one of her clients. He loves her and can hardly deal with the reality that she's actually meeting other men, but when she meets the guy, the protagonist is mortified to face that the guy is well put together, attractive and of their age, and he now realizes the possibility of something worse: that this escort he has fallen for actually has a boyfriend. That emphasizes that both protagonists belong to different worlds, and that he's never had a chance to begin with. He stalks this dreamy couple as they buy gifts for Christmas, eat in a restaurant, and do the usual date stuff. At one point it's clear for him and he refuses to keep following them. He experiences the extreme pain, one of the worst for a man beyond getting dismembered or eaten by a lion, of losing the woman he loves to a man who is objectively better in every respect. The protagonist starts crying in the middle of the street.

He gets to a bathroom in order to clear his head, only for the escort's date to enter as well. The protagonist gets to listen to a phone conversation in which the guy talks about the escort as if she were an object, telling the other person on the phone that he'll get her measurements. The protagonist has the sense that this guy has bad intentions towards her, and he keeps following them. At one point the guy looked as if he was going to kiss the escort, and the protagonist jumps forward and demands some explanation.

I must give it to the author(s) that at this point I dreaded turning the page, because I didn't want to witness the hurt that would follow, with the escort likely telling the protagonist to go eat shit. However, it didn't play out that way. The escort teeters between assuring him that this is a misunderstanding, and suggesting that he shouldn't have followed her because he's just her client. She says that the guy is a classmate and aspiring filmaker she knows from her acting school, because she's actually studying to become an actress. Apparently working as an escort that didn't involve fucking was her way of gaining life experience and a window into how people actually are. I don't know how I feel about this development. I'm on the same side as the protagonist in now feeling that this girl is further away from him, and therefore from the reader, as she's someone with big aspirations that'll drive her far away from the idiotic protagonist, and she has the looks that would pave the way.

I don't recall if that very same afternoon or some other, they are walking home together when Ruka spots them and she flies into a teary tantrum because the protagonist must be cheating. He denies it while the escort stands there poker faced. This Ruka girl decides to drag him to a date right then and there as a way for him to pay for meeting the escort behind her back. She goes as far as blindfolding him as she guides him somewhere, and when he takes the blindfold off, he's in a love hotel. It seems that this girl's goal is to pulverize the guy's virginity so she can say that he's truly hers.

This is for me the most polarizing volume so far. This Ruka character annoys me, as I don't like wild, emotional people, and now the escort coprotagonist, whom I'm very fond of, seems like a different person, as if she had been lying all the time. In any case, I'm hooked and I'll jump to the next one.
Profile Image for MusokaSakebi.
679 reviews1 follower
August 4, 2021
Devo dire che questo numero è molto carino! Anche se non si entra tanto nell'infanzia di Ruka
Profile Image for Jeffrey.
142 reviews1 follower
November 21, 2025
Light, fun, and exactly what I need between my heavier reads. Unrealistic in the best way, and it brought out my 18-year-old self again. No complaints from me.
367 reviews2 followers
September 17, 2021
4.5 Stars

This volume contains my favorite chapter of the first 100, chapter 28, Ruka's backstory. I am a little salty with Kodansha's translation, they made it the narration seem a bit flat rather than serene. But, that's the only major problem I've had with translation so far. But chapter 28 is where I went from enjoying the series to loving it. Ruka is written so intentionally, with how her disorder (for those keeping track at home, likely either low blood pressure or arrhythmia, maybe both.) has such a profound effect on who she is as a character and has informed so much of who she grew up to be. Not only is she younger than the other characters, so very naturally less mature, she also didn't get to have much of a childhood, and she's tried to recapture that as she gets more and more freedom and gets her condition more under control. That's something the whole series is good at, but I think Ruka might be the best example.

Now for the rest of the volume I mostly enjoyed it and where the story goes from here. The early present day chapter with Ruka are good, as we move from these two character (three counting Mami) who are always trying to think out every situation, to this chaotic wreckingball of "simply *does*. It adds a very fresh dynamic to the comic. Also, this genre is notorious for having girls fall for crappy main guys for no discernable reason, or really dumb ones. I LOVE Ruka's reason: If you care so much for a rental girlfriend, I can only umagine how well you'd treat a real one. That's a great reason. That feels real.And lastly as we end that arc, I just have to commend Reiji's art, because he does a phenomenal job of getting across how hurt she is when she starts to cry.

I'm not fond of the stalking arc, because very little of it pays off, Umi comes back, she could've left Kazuya's present in front of his door, and her acting would've come up eventually as they got closer. But at least it's a short arc.

And lastly what about our main pair? Well, honestly they spend so much of the volume dealing with Hurricane Ruka that not much goes on between them. We do see that they've gotten more comfortable with seeing each other outside Diamond Dates, but the only other thing that really stuck out to me was that she freely admitted that she gave her other renters gifts, but she won't call what she got Kazuya a gift, and more thought went into it, which is her subtle way of setting him apart. It does end on a melancholic note as Ruka takes Kaz away from his date, and Sayori messages Chizuru that she's about to go into an exam and that she'll be fine alone.

Overall, mostly a positive reading experience, but we also get the only arc I recall that's mostly wasted space.
Profile Image for 47Time.
3,452 reviews95 followers
January 29, 2023
Profile Image for Drake Nichols.
13 reviews2 followers
December 30, 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...


ENTER PLAYER 3


Even after an intense hot springs trip with his rental girlfriend, things are complicated for the still hap-less and deeply confused Kazuya. Though he finally gets some time away from Chizuru to gather his thoughts, a mysterious new figure enters the picture--one who seems to know quite a lot about his "romantic" life. **

781 reviews4 followers
January 25, 2022
Our boi is becoming a stalker, and much hilarity ensues.

Oh and our guy's REAL gf not only catches him on a date with Chizaru, but also catches them holding hands! She immediately drags him off, leaving Chizaru standing there confused. Well, Miss real gf makes our dude put on a blindfold. She leads him on a strange path - he can hear traffic, a key card opening a door, and was that an elevator? Finally, she sets him down, and tells him to remove the blindfold. He sees he's in what appears to be the bedroom of someone who has money. Then, Miss gf starts to strip...
Profile Image for Evelyn.
214 reviews
July 2, 2022
The biggest yikes about this volume is that here kazuya has become an actual creepy stalker. And it's not even seen as that severe in the manga like chizuru is kinda creeped out but then gives him a gift. That's just the biggest yikes so far in this series. This also just shows how with kazuya he seems to kinda improve and then he just does creepy shit like this again. So 2 stars for that stuff alone and I also just don't really enjoy ruka's character. Atleast they gave her a nice backstory which makes sense why she is into him. But that doesn't make her anymore likeable.
Profile Image for Casey.
677 reviews11 followers
January 19, 2021
The SOLE reason this volume even get's 4 stars is because of Chizuru. Ruka alone would send this volume spiraling into the 2-star or lower range. She's such an annoying character. I do not sympathize. I do not empathize. I do not like her Sam-I-Am. Even Mami is not as bad as Ruka.

Thank heaven there is a main character who is still worth reading about.
Profile Image for Hisgirl85.
2,376 reviews52 followers
February 17, 2021
3 stars. My enjoyment of this is waning. Unless there's something to move the series forward in the next one I may be out. One of my least favorite tropes in these types just happened, and I'm just not feeling the rest of it as much. The art is still gorgeous and one of the best I've seen of the style.
Profile Image for Sheepy .
2,614 reviews14 followers
March 5, 2021
Ruka was a nice Introduction as she throws the current status quo into disarray.

She is cute but can be a little annoying but after seeing her backstory I started to really feel for her

The last panel looked interesting, wonder what Kazuya will do?
Profile Image for Moa Lupuianu.
178 reviews
March 10, 2021
Well, this got me bad! I even had to take the story with me in the showers LOL!

I gave the third volume a lower rating.. and as the days past.. I started to miss the series.

I do not regret jumping back in it again!!
Profile Image for Shin Donghae.
2,256 reviews8 followers
October 18, 2021
Kedatangan Ruka dalam "permainan" Kazuya ternyata sangat std dan "mengecewakan". Bisa dikatakan meskipun cukup menarik, namun sejauh ini, vol. 4 adalah jilid y terkesan lemah dan Miyajima sensei seolah terseret arus pakem biasa utk romcom ecchi harem LOL
Profile Image for Ray Rappisi.
373 reviews4 followers
January 16, 2023
The introduction of Ruka-chan and where this story really takes off. I can’t help but speak positive of Ruka and her background, very unique and original. It it was me I’d be one happy dude with someone like Ruka and her absolute love and affection. Better things to come…
Profile Image for Shirley McMillan.
3 reviews
May 26, 2025
Ruka chan is CRAZy! Like obsessive crazy. I would run the other way if I was him. I get that ruka knows about Chizuru is a rental girlfriend but at this point I wouldn’t care who knows if I’m making money lol. It’s going to be interesting to see how book 5 plays out.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for ジェファーソン 劉.
134 reviews3 followers
October 4, 2020
//谢谢Moe酱的借书分享!!!!!!!

本当にありがとうございました!!!!

封面人物:更科るか

太过瘾了吧,圣诞节跟踪千鶴;可惜用自己的一腔热血和无限大的脑洞。。。风俗店什么的変態
最后被ruka酱给绑架走了,啊啊啊啊啊,我好期待下一本!!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for -moonprismpower-.
2,970 reviews15 followers
May 16, 2021
Oh I just want Kazuya and Chizuru together so badly but this series is 20 something volumes long so who knows how long I’ll have to wait for that!!!!!!
Profile Image for Pinky.
7,034 reviews23 followers
May 16, 2021
Ruka asks Kazuya to be her boyfriend. Kazuya finds out that Mizuhara is trying to get work as an actress.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Grace.
776 reviews13 followers
October 15, 2021
okay if this turns into a harem im suing
Profile Image for Tom.
135 reviews10 followers
December 25, 2021
See my other reviews on volumes 1-3 of this manga, since not much has changed.
Profile Image for Luisav.
67 reviews
April 5, 2022
I actually really enjoyed this one, i am now truly invested in the story and can’t wait to buy the next one!
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