Middle school graduate Rentarou Aijou is in a funk over his latest romantic confession being rejected. He explains to Anonymous Friend "A" that this is his 100th rejection, with his desire for a girlfriend going all the way back to when he was 8 months old. While disturbed at how early a bloomer Rentarou is, his friend is still baffled that he could confess to 100 girls and not have a single one of them reciprocate his feelings. The two part ways with Rentarou being assured that his rejection streak is bound to grow leaps and bounds through high school.
Later, Rentarou visits a shrine and prays that he get a girlfriend, whereupon the God of Love emerges and informs Rentarou that he will get his wish. Although initially skeptical of the deity and his promise, Rentarou quickly learns that he is destined to meet and fall in love with 100 girls during his high school career.
Fast forward to Rentarou's first day of high school, and he crashes into two girls walking in the hall. Looking them in the eyes triggers a sudden ZING!!, the telltale sign of meeting one's soulmate. As they recover from the sensation, Rentarou tries to help the girls up, with one of them flirtatiously acting like she hurt her leg and the other flusteredly mimicking the former. Rentarou buys the charade and beats himself up for hurting his first two soulmates before escorting the girls to the nurse's office. On the way there, the two girls, Hakari Hanazono and Karane Inda, overhear two other girls discussing a rumor about pink four-leaf clovers and how they supposedly guarantee an accepted confession, prompting them to run off in search of one from the school garden.
Four hours after school lets out for first years, Rentarou has finished helping a teacher search for a missing pair of contact lenses and spots Hakari and Karane searching the school garden for pink four-leaf clovers. Hoping to get into their good graces, Rentarou buys two cans of juice for the girls, with Karane fighting up gratitude and Hakari attempting to get an Indirect Kiss through the can but failing. As Rentarou tries to help Hakari clean up the mess made as a result, she immediately confesses to Rentarou. Karane then shows up, having wanted to give Rentarou something in return for the juice, but didn't know what flavor he preferred and ended up buying every single kind. After chastising Hakari for upstaging her, Karane also confesses to Rentarou.
Unable to decide which confession to accept, Rentarou returns to the shrine to ask the God of Love for advice. He tells Rentarou that since they're both his soulmates, he'll never be able to choose one over the other. While most people are supposed to have one soulmate in their life, the God of Love accidentally racked up Rentarou's soulmate count by two figures while watching Castle in the Sky. Furthermore, if Rentarou doesn't reciprocate the feelings of a soulmate, she'll die. With this in mind, Rentarou considers secretly two-timing both girls to ensure neither of them feels rejected.
However, he quickly beats himself up for considering such an idea, and so he decides to accept both confessions simultaneously, presenting each girl with a pink four-leaf clover. Karane is skeptical that he can possibly be sincere, but Hakari is quickly charmed by his sincerity. Despite this, the girls both decide that he does mean well and agree to both date Rentarou simultaneously.
However, this is only the beginning, and Rentarou still has 98 more girlfriends to meet.
Tropes:
- Betty and Veronica: Defied. Rentarou is unable to decide between Hakari and Karane as a girlfriend, but after learning what would happen to whoever he rejected, he decides to accept both confessions simultaneously.
- Crash-Into Hello: Rentarou's first encounter with Hakari and Karane.
- Early-Bird Cameo: Shizuka and Nano walk past Rentarou in the hall right before he crashes into Hakari and Karane. In the anime, they and Meme can also be seen in the opening assembly.
- Establishing Series Moment:
- The God of Love reprimands Rentarou for repeating everything he says, as he's wasting panels, establishing that the manga has No Fourth Wall.
- Rentarou briefly considers secretly dating both Hakari and Karane, but dismisses the idea in disgust and instead opts to explain the situation to both of them and ask if they will agree to date him at the same time, on the promise that he'll do everything he can to make them both happy. Thus establishing that he's not a regular hapless harem anime protagonist, but a person of integrity who cares deeply about doing right by others.
- Also, Hakari and Karane quickly warm up to Rentarou dating both of them at the same time, establishing that none of the girls will be jealous of anyone else dating Rentarou.
- Shout-Out:
- Rentarou's soulmate count was racked up by two orders of magnitude because the God of Love was watching Castle in the Sky while filling out his paperwork.
- The God of Love calls Rentarou a Tokyo Ghoul.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Hakari pretends to have hurt her leg from the Crash-Into Hello as an excuse to flirt with Rentarou, with Karane flusteredly following suit.
