The Fall 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Girlfriend, Girlfriend Season 2

After their hot springs trip, Naoya continues his relationships with both Saki and Nagisa. Bringing along Milika (who kissed Naoya) and Shino (who secretly has romantic feelings for Naoya), they embark on a summer vacation full of romance with a fireworks festival, camping, and Okinawa. Milika's younger sister Risa also appears, making the romance in this neo-standard rom-com heat up even more. A season two filled with summer and swimsuits is about to begin!

Girlfriend, Girlfriend Season 2 is based on a manga of the same name by Hiroyuki. The entire anime series streams on Muse Asia's Official YouTube channel and Crunchyroll on Fridays.

Girlfriend, Girlfriend is the type of show I could write a thousand words about. A part of me felt a warm sense of comfort returning to the show as it was technically the first I ever reviewed seasonally for Anime News Network. Looking back, writing reviews for the first season was rather difficult because while I did find myself buying into a lot of the comedy, I also went back and forth on whatever type of story this series was trying to tell. You could argue that it's pointless for me to look into the story for a show that's trying to be absurd for the sake of it. But I would argue that even if it wasn't the writer's intention, they, at the very least, accidentally stumbled into some pretty interesting talking points about open relationships and ended up writing a pretty solid poly couple with good chemistry.

In a different world, you could focus on Naoya, Saki, and Nagisa for a funny yet interesting story about various topics. Maybe that's why I found Rika one of the weaker parts. While she occasionally acted as a catalyst to move things along for our main three characters, she has no place in this show outside of constantly making me wonder why she's not in jail. Even in his episode, she probably broke several laws, and while she doesn't get what she wants, she still gets away with WAY too much. The fact that half the episode focused so hard on her kidnapping Naoya and trying to coerce him into dating her on the pretext that he'll get a little sister out of the deal was incredibly uncomfortable. But then the show justifies itself in a rather humorous way by pointing out how absurd it is and how what's being proposed probably isn't a good idea.

That's the strange enigma of Girlfriend, Girlfriend; it's idiotic, and all of the characters are at different levels of stupidity or in denial about something, whether it's Rika breaking the law, Naoya being so honest that it genuinely makes me loop all the way around to wondering if he's kind of a terrible person or even Saki displaying constant signs of bi-panic. But the show also has every character play the straight man to each other. It's like everyone is keeping everybody else in line. It's a bizarre dynamic that frustrates me as a writer and makes me laugh occasionally as just a casual fan.

Season two seems like it's going to focus on the addition of a fourth girl, Shino, who is Saki's best friend and is brought into the spotlight towards the end of season one. She acts as an interesting contrast to all of the other characters because she's not an idiot and, surprisingly, the most selfless one of the group, considering that she is explicitly holding back and putting other people first. That was Nagisa's arc at the end of season one, so I hope they're not going for something similar here for two reasons. The first would be how repetitive and boring that would feel. But the second one is that it would be peculiar if the lesson revolving around this character is that she shouldn't hold back and add more fuel to this contrived fire. Let's be honest; that's probably exactly what will happen. Oh, whatever; if it keeps me guessing with this bizarre balancing act of mind-numbing stupidity and genuine comedy, then maybe I'll find some way through it.