I know that I’m late to this party but I’m here now. And it was a wild ride. You see, like many of you out there, about three years ago, I saw Gigguk’s video about this show. I thought it sounded fun, thought about looking it up, but forgot about it. Thanks to a friend, I got Crunchyroll. And I looked this show up after remembering it. And, I’m not going to lie, this show broke my damn heart. Hold on to your butts, this is going to be a weird one.
Just a second. Before we get into this one, I want to explain that I’m not going to do an episode by episode breakdown of the show. Instead, I’m going to talk about the characters, their journeys through the show, and why this show made me cry. Also, this is going to be filled with spoilers, so I want you watch the show, and then come back and read this. It’s a 5 out of 5, okay? It’s only 12 episodes.
Our story starts by introducing us to the main male character, Natsuo, a high school student. He’s just slept with a girl he’s just met named Rui Tachibana, who just wanted to have sex just to try it, basically. After this, we get introduced to the girl that Natsuo really likes, one of his teachers named Hina. Next, we have the thing that makes this show what it is: The fact that Natsuo’s father is going to marry another woman (Natsuo’s mother died ten years ago), who turned out to be Hina and Rui’s mother. So, Rui and Hina are sisters. And Natsuo is going to be their step brother. Yeah. You think this would be the makings of a romantic comedy, but it’s really not. Sure, there’s going to be some things that make us laugh, but you’re probably going to cry more than laugh.
So, who is Natsuo? He’s an aspiring author (way to hook my interest), but a relatively normal teenage boy. He isn’t a terrible guy, from what we’ve seen. He has emotional depth, and empathy, but he’s very clearly a teenage boy. He isn’t a cardboard cutout, he seems nice enough, but aside from his desire to be a writer and his infatuation with Hina, there’s not a lot about him that I picked up on the show.
Let’s go to Hina next. She’s a new teacher and that clearly attracts the boys at school. She’s dismissive of all of them, but seems to show some affection for Natsuo. This is something I didn’t quite understand. While he’s not as crude as his two male friends, there’s nothing he real does besides being nice. Maybe that’s the thing that makes Hina like him. I don’t know. Anyway. Shortly after the show starts, we find out that Hina is dating a man who’s married to another woman. And when Rui finds out, she’s less than pleased. You see, Hina and Rui’s father cheated on their mom and left her for the other woman. Only happenstance allows Natsuo and Rui to find out that Hina is doing this. Now, Hina has a good reason for liking this older man, Shuu, as he was the one person who was nice to her when she was in high school, but he was a teacher. I get the sense that this was done to have Hina draw parallels between her feelings for him and Natsuo’s feelings for her, but that didn’t quite connect for me. For one thing, Hina didn’t get involved with the teacher until after she was in college, when they happened to run into each other (it’s later revealed that he had a crush on her when she was in high school but didn’t let it be know). The other thing is that Shuu was just trying to be a nice guy to her, as she turned up in his class room to each lunch, because she was accused of flirting with another girl’s love interest (behind her back, because teenage girls). There’s a totally different dynamic between Shuu’s actions as a teacher compared to hers. Shuu saw someone in a difficult time in their life who needed someone to be a friend and he stepped up. If he fell in love later, I can understand. When it comes to Hina’s friendliness to Nasuo, I don’t know what there is. There’s only two, maybe three times shown with them interacting in any significant way before they become surprise step siblings. However, once she commits to being with Natsuo, she commits hard. This is after she’s broken things off with Shuu, but also after she’s caught Natsuo and Rui kissing (don’t worry, we’ll get into it) and has moved into her own place. I think Hina just let herself get caught up in the emotion of love without thinking about it. Perhaps because she was the “other woman” or perhaps it was seeing so much of her teenage infatuation reflected in Natsuo’s for her, or maybe both, that let her lose herself in this love affair. And what does it cost her? Everything. You see, Natsuo and Hina hook up (for the first time, I think) during the school trip to Okinawa and a photographer catches them kissing in the background of a picture. This is found out by the school principal and she’s forced to transfer at the end of the term. She TELLS NOTHING TO NATSO about this, moves without telling him, changes phone numbers, calls her mother ONCE to let her know that she’s okay, and pretty much starts over. Without telling Natsuo. That’s the part that kills me. She got caught, took all the blame, and destroyed her whole life for his love for her, and then cuts him out of her life completely afterwards. And, because we see a ring he gave her in the final shot to the show, we KNOW THAT SHE STILL LOVES HIM. This, this right here, is what gutted me. Also, since I have spoilers for the manga, I know that it’s also an allusion to that ending. And it hurts even more.
Anyway, let’s talk
about the best girl, Rui. Okay, there is no “best girl” in this
series. All of these girls are complex and very human girls that are
all equally good and deserve the best. Like Gigguk, I just wanted
everyone to be happy. But you don’t show me a girl with short blue
hair and red eyes and NOT want me to give her everything. And it
doesn’t hurt that she reminds me of a lot of versions of Rei
Ayanami in the various AU Evangelion stuff I’ve read, it terms of
her personality. Rui is one of those characters that you see and you
don’t know what to make of her right away. When she discovers that
Natsuo is going to be her step brother, and then later her classmate
when she changes schools when they all move in together, she just
wants to pretend that the two of them having sex never happened.
Which was her intention when she had sex with a boy she’d never met
before, because she wanted to know what it was like. However, as the
story goes along, she becomes friends with Natsuo and ends up
starting to really like him, like that. Before Natsuo makes it
official with Hina, but is still lusting after her, Rui says she
wants to try kissing and stuff, just to see what it’s like and
wants to keep doing it. This leads to what happens with Hina walking
in and seeing them. One thing I like about Rui is that she can
communicate clearly when she wants to, she also has some tact. After
she’s caught kissing Natsuo, she has a talk with Hina about it. And
she flat out says “it’s not like we’re related by blood.”
Yeah, she’s that kind of girl. And she’s the one who is driven to
push Hina away from Shuu for moral reasons. If I remember correctly,
she even says something like “what would mom say about this?” But
she doesn’t tell her mom. She’s not that mean. Instead, she
argues logically from an emotional point of view. Rui would probably
be seen a neurodivergent in some circles, but I think that’s not
quite right (I mean, it could be). What I see with her is someone who
can articulate what she wants, when she knows what she wants, without
getting caught up in things. She’s cute, she’s smart, and she’s
got a good heart. So, seeing her kind of end up with Natsuo at the
end makes me feel okay. Rui is better suited to Natsuo, in my
opinion, because they’re closer in not only age but personality
that Hina and Natsuo. Hina is passionate love, Rui is devotional
love. There’s a difference. And I know that if the same thing
happened to Rui that happened to Hina, Rui would handle in a mature
way. So, yes, I am Team Rui, manga be damned. One of the things I like the best about the relationship between Rui and Natsuo is that we see Rui fall in love with him. Sure, it might be after they've already slept together, and she's kind of been the instigator of things between them, but she starts to feel things and expresses herself. That makes her, in my opinion, one of the better characters. She doesn't overtly lie about things and when she realizes what love is, and that she wants it from Natsuo, she says something. She even told Hina that she had feelings for Natsuo, making her better than most everyone else in the show.
Now, one other thing that Rui does is she makes friends with Momo. Momo is precious and must be protected and deserves only the best. Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, Momo is (to use an old phrase) the “town bicycle.” Everyone has had a ride. She admits to Rui that she’s been with 30 guys. Did I mention that she’s a high schooler? Yeah. Now, this has caused to have a bad reputation with both the boys and the girls at school. When some of Rui’s friends approach her about hanging out with Rui, she just lays down the law: “I choose who I get to be friends with.” When someone says that, you know they’re a winner. But, with just the one real episode we get with Momo, you understand why Momo is the way she is. You see, she’s been in a lot of abusive relationships and was even held captive for a few days by a guy. And you know that means that she’s got some serious damage. Which is that her parents are in a loveless marriage and she spends most of her time alone, which is better than having them around and arguing. If anyone deserves Natsuo’s passion, it really was Momo. But, when he sees the scars on her wrists as they’re getting undressed, “I keep them covered up, people only see them when I’m getting naked,” he stops. Instead of fucking her brains out, he makes her dinner. This is a point for Natsuo, but it also shows Momo that she doesn’t need to have sex to have someone keep her company, it’s just the easiest way when you’re a horny teenager. Oh, and she’s one of the smartest students in the school, too. And that, too, I feel is a factor in to why she was suicidal, because she was smart enough to know what was happening to her life and what it would mean. Plus, being smart is a great way to become depressed, just ask every kid who was in any sort of “bright kids” program when they were younger.
While there are other characters, I don’t think we get enough time with them to really get into them here. They’re important, yes, but I want you to learn about them yourself. While they’re important for the plot, they’re not the emotional core of the story. The three main characters, Natsuo, Rui, and Hina are who the story revolves around. Momo is important because she shows that Natsuo is more than his dick, but she also asks Rui if she can date him, which makes Rui have to face facts that she does in fact have feelings for him. And that’s important to the emotional story.
I do not love triangles. I don’t like most love triangles in most stories because they’re not well done. And I don’t like the idea in general because someone has to lose. Unless we’re working with different cultural norms, or are operating in a power fantasy, people usually couple up. Which means that someone who loves someone who doesn’t love them is going to end up hurt. This love triangle, this emotional conflict, is very well done. It hurts but in a good way. It twists the knife but you welcome it. Because it does something that all art should aspire to: It makes you feel something.
Domestic Girlfriend is one of those series that I know I’m going to think about again and again, and hopefully revisit in the future. I’m currently looking at picking up the series on physical media, that’s how much it hit me. And I hope it will hit you the same way.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Suggestion: One of the
best things I’ve ever seen, please watch it.
