Kazuya Kinoshita vs. Nasa Yuzaki: The Importance of Character Flaws

 When the anime adaptation of Tonikawa: Over The Moon For You(also known as Fly Me To The Moon) aired almost immediately after the first season of Rent-A-Girlfriend ended, it was only natural that people would compare the series, both romcoms with significantly different premises. The main characters couldn't possibly be any more different, with Rent-A-Girlfriend's Kazuya being a loser, while Tonikawa's Nasa is nearly flawless. Unsurprisingly, Kazuya is rather divisive while Nasa is well-liked, but Kazuya is ultimately the better character.

Life Stories

First, let's take a look at the protagonists' life stories.

Kazuya, the scion of a family that runs a liquor store, has mostly lived an ordinary life, but has not had much luck with the opposite sex. All that changes when he meets Mami Nanami, a girl who seems to be interested in him... then dumps him after a month, merely because she was done using him. Even with Kazuya's many flaws, which Mami cruelly brings up in front of their friends, he didn't deserve that heartbreak.

There are other aspects to his backstory, which are revealed over time. He's fond of his grandmother, who kept the family business going after her husband's death, and realizes that she'd like nothing more than for him to find a girlfriend and keep the family name going. As irresponsible as he seems at time, he cares for those close to him.

Nasa, however, ended up with a chip on his shoulder because he got the same name as the acronym for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which resulted in him getting teased as a child. He ended up studying so obsessively that he could get into any high school he wanted... but then the accident happened. This results in Tsukasa saving Nasa's life and him promising to marry her.

Despite almost dying, Nasa is left with no permanent damage, although he is unable to take the entrance exams that year. The following year, he takes them anyway, then chooses not to go to high school because he didn't feel like it. He then enters the workforce as a mere middle school graduate, choosing service jobs in hopes of seeing Tsukasa again, and manages to easily earn enough money to make a living. His parents become concerned about how hard he's working, so he moves out and gets his own place, vaguely seeming as though he doesn't care about how they feel. On his eighteenth birthday, Tsukasa shows up at his front door to make good on her promise.

This is a good time to bring up one of my main grievances with Nasa's character- he never seems to struggle with anything. The accident would have derailed his plans to go into a prestigious high school, but then Nasa manages to get into a good high school anyway, only to choose not to go. Working for a living can be a grueling endeavor, and some people may struggle to make ends meet, but not Nasa, who's surprised by how he saved up 5,285,621 yen (a little over $50,000 US) within two years. When his apartment burns down, he quickly finds a place to stay. Having him be forced to struggle a little and not always succeed would make the story more interesting and realistic.

Personalities

Next, let's look at the characters' personalities and development.

Kazuya is deeply flawed, to put it mildly. He's rather immature and often naive, such as when he doesn't realize that Chizuru's persona on her rental girlfriend job is merely a facade. He's cowardly enough that he's willing to lie to his own parents, rather than let them down. He's also a bit of a pervert, and is prone to masturbating in private. He's painfully aware of how flawed he is, and has terrible self-esteem. These flaws end up making him the butt of his friends' jokes.

Despite that, Kazuya ends up growing as a person over time. He goes from relying on his parents' money to taking a job at a karaoke bar. He even refuses to take 200,000 yen ($2,000 US) from his father when the latter assumes he borrowed money from Chizuru and wants him to pay her back, despite the fact that playing along would help with his money problems and keep up the lie. Over time, he reconsiders his decision to lie to his loved ones, and insists that Chizuru come clean to her dying grandmother. He becomes disciplined and strong-willed enough to keep a cool head when others make advances on him. He does fall back on old habits sometimes, but people don't change overnight

As for Nasa, he's a nice guy- not the kind of "nice guy" who feels entitled to women's affections, but the genuine article- and this isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but it can make him seem boring. For example, when his apartment burns down, he's not really upset, partly because he prepared for this and partly because he was more worried about anyone else being hurt (no one was). Showing some vulnerability or making a bad decision due to a personality flaw would have made both him and the story more realistic and interesting.

Skills

Now for a list of the characters' skillsets.

Kazuya is a more or less standard business student in college, and while he knows what he's doing, he isn't by any means exceptional. After shelling out much of his cash on renting Chizuru, among other expenses, he has to take a menial job at a karaoke bar to fund his rental dates.

Eventually, he's able to help produce a movie for Chizuru to star in, but he has to run a Kickstarter campaign for the money and recruit various other individuals to play key roles. As impressive as his later achievements sound, he couldn't have accomplished them alone, and wouldn't have managed them at the start of the series.

Next up is Nasa. We could be here for a while if we listed all the things he's good at, but here's some of the more notable examples.

• As mentioned above, he's good enough of a student to get into top-ranked high schools.
• Also mentioned above, he works multiple part-time jobs with only a middle school diploma.
• He's knowledgeable enough in taxes and running a business that he saved the Arisugawas' bathhouse from ruin with a few pieces of good advice.
• He's an exceptional repairman, enough that he was able to do emergency repairs on the case preserving Tsukasa's moon rock despite only having seen it once.
• Perhaps the biggest one is the fact that he gets a job teaching a high school programing class, educating both students and the teachers despite never having even attended high school, and appears to be the only one at the school with a basic grasp of the subject.
• He also understands a formula on the blackboard that makes the calculations for a one-way trip to the moon, then corrects it to make it a round-trip. This doesn't have as much impact on the story as the others, but it's still a remarkable feat.

This is only a partial list, but the point is that when the plot requires him to do something, he can usually do it. When he can't, it's usually laughed off as an endearing quirk of his. As a result, he generally doesn't have to learn anything and doesn't need to change much.

Conclusion

One significant problem with Fly Me To The Moon is that it skips over all the hard work and struggle involved in the narrative. Nasa's efforts to improve himself are only told about in passing, so it seems as though he's always been a wunderkind. The years of waiting for Tsukasa are passed over in a narration, making it seem as though Nasa was barely affected by the events of that time. Nasa has a wealth of skills at his disposal, so he can do whatever the plot needs him to do, and if he can't do something, it's likely something insignificant that will result in his friends laughing at him. As such, not only is Nasa a fairly unrealistic character, but he's also rather boring.

Rent-A-Girlfriend is by no means perfect, and has its share of problems, such as pacing issues (to be fair, Tonikawa does, too). Despite that, while Kazuya may not be a better person than Nasa, he's certainly a better character, by virtue of being better-rounded, having more room for growth and his flaws resulting in genuine conflict and drama. Kazuya isn't perfect when it comes to writing but he's a good example of how imperfect people make better characters than perfect ones.