The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You
Most of the cast are Deconstructed Character Archetypes of standard anime archetypes, particularly in harem shows: open/close all folders
Girlfriends 1 - 10
- Hakari and Karane are the first two girlfriends, whom Rentarou meets at the same time. Why do they accept sharing him instantly? Because they are in love with each other just as much as they are in love with him. Furthermore, both act the way they do due to feelings of inadequacy: Hakari is entirely ruled by her feelings, so has no problem with manipulating others so as to satisfy her own desires, while Karane acts like a tsundere because of her inferiority complex.
- It's later explored that Karane resents the way she Cannot Spit It Out even for mundane things like saying "thank you", to the extent that she takes Kusuri's "tsundere unmaker" drug without prompting. The ensuing cheerfulness and honesty Karane gains makes her resistant to the idea of going back to the way she was before, as she hates how dishonest she was about what she felt and what she wanted to do. It takes a pep-talk from Rentarou to change her mind.
- Shizuka is a Cute Mute due to her shyness... which causes people to think she is creepy and bully her, which destroyed her self-esteem and made her even less able to talk to people, causing them to bully her more, and so on until eventually, she spends all her time in the library away from people reading fantasy novels as a form of escapism.
- Nano is what would happen if someone were to try to be an Emotionless Girl. She thinks that emotions and relationships of any kind, even positive ones, are inefficient and as such, she has cut them out of her life, which as a result is stale and unfulfilling.
- Kusuri deconstructs the Mad Scientist characters in Transformation Fiction who exist solely to create a contrived experiment that leaves the main character transformed, and then brushes it off and leaves the story since the viewers only care about the transformation and not what comes afterwards and the cute scientist girl who tests things on her friends. She invented a drug that makes the drinker obsessed with kissing their significant other to the exclusion of all else, even rational thought, and when she tested it on her friends, unlike most of these kinds of stories the effects turned out to be irreversible. Meaning that she regards the whole episode as My Greatest Failure that left her isolated when no one wanted to be near her and, when it happens again, resolves to never use her drug-inventing abilities again.
- Hahari is Hakari's mother, who winds up joining the harem despite this... because she is just as much of a Love Freak as her daughter, and falls in love with Rentarou as soon as she sees him. He isn't the first boy that she fell in love with: when she was in middle school she had a crush on a classmate who was terminally ill, and as such she pulled some strings to get artificially inseminated so that they could be a family before he died. Once he did, she regretted her choice, and now that her daughter is in love with someone, she is paranoid that Hakari will follow in her footsteps, so she forces her to break up with her boyfriend, forbids her from seeing him, and even tries to have him assassinated before she actually meets him and falls in love with him instead. Hence, she demonstrates that an Absurdly Youthful Mother would have a lot of issues.
- Kurumi is a Big Eater because her metabolism is so much faster than a normal person’s. While this means she doesn’t get fat, it also means that as soon as she’s finished eating, she’s hungry again, and as such can’t even overhear others talking about food without craving whatever it is they mention. This throws her off for the whole day, or at least until she can get something to eat, and when she is hungry she flips out at people, pushing them away and causing her to hate herself.
- Mei deconstructs the sort of devoted servant who will willingly do anything her masters order, no matter how dangerous, who lives to serve with no thought for anything else. The only thing that matters to her is being of use and value to her masters, and she sees no value in anything else, not even her own life, health or well-being.
- Iku is the obligatory girl obsessed with her sports team who tries to get all passers-by to join up, which turns out to be because her teammates were all even crazier than she is and moved to America to master baseball, despite this meaning that they can't actually win the championship they are training for. Moreover, she puts herself through Training from Hell constantly, not just because she is obsessed with winning, but also because she is a masochist who enjoys pain of any kind. When the others leave practice because it's getting dark, she tells them that she's staying behind to get a little more practice in, and they think nothing of it. When they come back to school the next day, they find her still there, having done more than 100,000 practice swings, and so exhausted that she immediately collapses. Then once she wakes up, she tries to sneak out and continue training even harder despite her body not being able to handle it.
Girlfriends 11 - 20
- Chiyo is a deconstruction of the diligent class representative/only child. The more everyone around her kept telling her how proper and responsible she was, the more she felt like that was how she had to be, trying to live up to expectations. Her wants and needs never entered the equation, until Rentarou came along. She suffers from a rather realistic portrayal of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which almost caused her to burn her bridges with all the other girls.
- At first glance, Naddy appears to be one for Eagleland, but she really deconstructs the Yamato Nadeshiko and the reverse Occidental Otaku. The reason why she’s so obsessed with America is because her parents forced her to learn and uphold the behavior of a proper Japanese lady despite her immense dislike of it, and watching an American film she found in the storehouse they would lock her in for making mistakes inspired her to eventually take on a more "free" and rebellious look, in response to which her parents kicked her out and prohibited her from ever returning. Once Rentarou blows her cover as a Japanese woman she fears that she'll be rejected for disgracing her roots.
- Yamame is a deconstruction of the Nature Lover. She was unable to make friends growing up due to being unusually tall for a girl her age, and the few people she got along with she always did things for without receiving anything in return. She learned how to value herself through protecting and looking after plants and animals, but didn't have anyone else who'd value and protect her until Rentarou helped her with her gardening and saved her from a sudden gust of fire.
- Momiji deconstructs the Happy Ending Masseuse. Her desire to become a world-class masseuse leaves her with No Sense of Personal Space. While she's able to make such quick work with her talents that entire sports teams can get massages in a matter of minutes, she also has no restraint when it comes to groping sensitive body parts and/or touching other people's bodies with her face.
- Yaku deconstructs The Ageless. She’s certainly got several decades of life experience under her belt despite having the body of a grade schooler, but even with the immortality drug locking her physical age in place, she still isn’t immune to the mental problems that come with old age, such as being a slow learner and struggling to remember certain details of what she was told in the last hour. She also deconstructs May–December Romance, in that she actually turns Rentarou down the first time, due to the age gap being so great that she could not view him as anything but a child, and it is only after he proved he really meant it that she accepted him after all.
- Kishika deconstructs Promoted to Parent. Because of having to grow up quickly due to her parents' absence, she quickly became someone who would take on other people's burdens with or without gratitude. Because of this, she is deprived of affection and has to hide the fact that she wants to be pampered like a little child.
- Aashii (or "Ahko", as she prefers to be known) deconstructs the stereotypical Gyaru Girl. Her behavior is rooted in an underlying medical condition, which led people to be off-put by her apparent inappropriate emotions, in turn leading her to fill the myriad gaps in her life with Retail Therapy.
- Uto, much like Naddy before her, deconstructs her initial archetype, the philosophical Wandering Minstrel, by not actually being that archetype; she's a Chuunibyou who pretends she's a Wandering Minstrel. On top of that, she keeps undermining her attempts at being philosophical by constantly going "maybe it is, maybe it is not." And as if that's not bad enough, she possesses absolutely zero talent for any aspect of music, save for the heart she pours into it.
- Mai deconstructs Big Sister Worship. She worships Mei to the point of becoming a maid herself so that she could call her an older sister. However, as a result of her devotion, she is nowhere near as good at her job as Mei is, and her attempts at making the rest of the harem "suitable" friends for Mei fail miserably and earn her scorn from Mei. She's painfully aware that her lack of competence only serves to maintain the distance between the two of them.
Girlfriends 21 -
- Rin deconstructs the Nightmare Fetishist, in that she realized immediately that if anyone else knew of her love of fictional violence, they would think she is a pervert and a freaknote . Therefore, she concealed this fact about herself from everybody for years, only slipping up accidentally when Rentarou takes her to an arcade where they end up playing violent video games. At that point she immediately thinks Rentarou will reject her. Fortunately, he loves everything about all the soulmates and gives her a heart-to-heart about how it’s nothing to be ashamed of since she’d never hurt anyone in real life.
- Suu deconstructs the Number Obsessed. She has a lifelong love of numbers to the exclusion of everything else. Not only does this cause her trouble in learning math, she can't remember people's names or even their faces due to the fact that they aren't numbers. The only time she's able to engage with people is if they're able to involve numbers in some way.
- Eira deconstructs Charles Atlas Superpower. She's perfectly trained in the art of capoeira, and is more than capable of using it as she needs to. However, this becomes a case of Crippling Overspecialization to the point where she's absolutely terrified of anything that can't be dealt with through capoeira, as well as a concern of accidentally harming something that would too easily get hurt by her.
- Tama deconstructs the Lazy Bum. She struggled with studying and working her entire life to the point where it nearly drove her to suicide, so she decided to live life as a cat rather than suffer further. Additionally, while she wants to kick back, relax, and be coddled, she's considerate of others and doesn't want to be a burden on them, so she can tolerate working if it's for Rentarou's sake.
- Himeka deconstructs I Just Want to Be Special. She has been called a genius her whole life, to the point where it doesn't make her happy anymore. To that end, she tries to act abnormal to make herself stand out. However, since she's actually a sensible person, her attempts at being abnormal end up making her look stupid instead of weird.
- The typical Elegant Gothic Lolita in fiction is usually presented as if they're middle or upper class, with the polite speech to match. Matsuri is working class, and speaks very informally with lots of casual swearing. She doesn’t even understand what Gothic Lolita is, thinking these are just English clothes that her parents gave her.
- Shiina deconstructs Hates Being Alone. Her fear of being alone is so strong that she ended up stalking Rentarou and his girlfriends before she had any reason to believe that she was one of his soulmates. When she slips into the crowd, all the girls are disconcerted about her knowing so much about them despite never meeting her before. When Rentarou learns the truth, the All-Loving Hero tells her that he'll only let her join if it's because she has feelings for him and not just because of all the other girls he's dating. Her fear of being alone is near-crippling too, as she nearly has a panic attack when on a nearly empty train platform until Rentarou gives her a Cooldown Hug, and she makes mention of having accidentally driven other friends away with how clingy she can be in her desperation to not be alone.
