The Summer 2026 Anime Preview Guide

The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You Season 3

Aijo Rentaro tried and tried again, but after asking a hundred girls out on a date, he was rejected every single time. In desperation, he prays for guidance...only to be told by a god that his rejections were due to some cosmic error! Now the god is going to set things right by making sure that Aijo gets one hundred dates. Except, as things often do with gods, the dates come with a catch: one hundred girls are destined to be Aijo's soulmate, and unless he returns their feelings each and every time, they'll die in horrible accidents! Sure enough, girls start confessing their love to Aijo left and right. But how is he supposed to choose?! He doesn't want to kill anyone! When he looks at each potential soulmate, it feels like a bolt of lightning. Can someone really love a hundred other people? This hilarious romantic comedy takes the harem concept to a wild extreme!

The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You Season 3 is based on the manga series by writer Rikito Nakamura and artist Yukiko Nozawa. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

If there was any doubt that 100 Girlfriends could ever be anything other than joyfully abnormal, the first episode of the third season begins with a fourth-wall-breaking, continuity-smashing skit that even manages to suggest that protagonist Rentaro somehow exists outside of time, and is therefore god-like in nature. Is that the real reason he continues to attract such a voluminous and eclectic harem of devoted lovers?

The actual God of Love, who caused all of this mess in the first place, is as confused as the viewers with this unexpected flash-forward that introduces several new girls to the Church of Rentaro-who-must-be-loved. I pity the poor TV presenter who interviews each of the girls in turn about each of their boyfriends, who is of course the same boyfriend. The pièce de résistance is when she snags a soundbite from Rentaro himself, who gives one of his impressively long lists of why he loves each of his destined life partners. It's all so ridiculously silly and fun.

Rolling the opening credits halfway through the episode now seems entirely par for the course. Next week they're probably start with the ending credits, mirrored and played in reverse or something. After said credits, we meet the next unsuspecting victim who must devote her life to Rentaro: his first year middle-schooler cousin Chiyo. Now, to be fair to Rentaro, he does repeatedly check with the anime's production committee “are we really going there?” He does seem to have some relatively normal qualms about, you know, dating a child who also happens to be his uncle's daughter, and therefore is also his first cousin. I know that cousin marriages are common in many countries, but still, ewww. Also, we have to remember that in the rules told to him by the God of Love, Rentaro must reciprocate the love offered to him by any woman, otherwise she'll die. Rentaro is forced into dating his child cousin.

What's even more nuts is that Chiyo's dad seems all for this state of affairs. In fact, he has been doing everything he can to facilitate the situation. I'm pretty certain someone needs to call child protective services. Maybe the best thing for her is to leave and move in with Rentaro's harem. We know that Rentaro is an uncommonly good guy, and he's not likely to abuse her. Still, I don't want to sound like a child marriage apologist!

The best thing to do with 100 Girlfriends is not to take any of it all seriously. It's show constantly pushing boundaries to see what kind of ridiculousness it can get away with. I'll keep watching because it's really bloody funny, and very creative too. Please don't judge me for it!

Anime's most powerful polycule is back for Round 3, and still growing by the minute. Between the world's hungriest girl, the world's most talented maid, and the world's most masochistic baseball player being amongst last season's roster, you'd think this show had already drained as much lifeblood as it could out of its premise—but there's always more girlfriends to be had. This premiere is even nice enough to skip the theatrics and jump straight to introducing a bunch of new ones as we've got a tall girl who likes plants, a small girl who likes giving out massages, and an adult cowgirl filling out nearly every bad American stereotype you can think of.

Now to the uninitiated, a couple of those character descriptions sound like blaring red sirens, but if you somehow managed to make it past Hahari's insane levels of degeneracy to get to this point, there is simply no choice but to accept that the world of 100 Girlfriends is one where such trivial as social taboos or moral decency can never get in the way of true love, and Rentaro Aijo has enough love in his heart to accept anyone, no matter who they are. With how much the anime staff loves to break the fourth wall, I honestly wouldn't have put it past them to commit to skipping over a few girlfriends to get to the next batch faster, but while that does end up being a fakeout on their end, the fact they held up this threat so convincingly to pull it for a straight 10 minutes is proof of how much the team at Bibury Animation Studios is going above and beyond with this adaptation.

I also got a good kick out of how it uses those 10 minutes, as each of the girls interviews a local reporter to talk about their beloved and express to the world why Rentaro Aijo is the greatest man to ever live. Whether it be nearly breaking his back to save one of his new girlfriends from taking a fall, resisting Hakari's seductions by knocking himself out, or swimming Nano across a river when she's too scared of heights to cross a bridge, there are no lengths he will not go to make sure each and every need of his girlfriends is met—and they're all as sweet as they are absolutely hysterical. With how this show's core conceit works, I was almost certain that the reporter was going to turn out to be another one of Rentaro's soulmates as a punchline, but alas, that didn't actually come to pass as they interact with nary a zing to be heard. That said, I also wouldn't put it past the show to say that she wasn't wearing her contacts when their eyes met, so while there may not have been any sparks here, it's never certain that any woman can escape being brought into the loving embrace of Rentaro's orbit.

Still, it wouldn't be right to have a season premier of this show without a proper girlfriend introduction, and true to form, this one's out to test your limits. The lucky lady this time is Chiyo, a precocious girl obsessed with tidiness who, in addition to just barely being out of elementary school, also just so happens to be Rentaro's cousins. This setup is so loaded that even Rentaro, in all his infinite love, has to repeatedly ask the narrator if he's being serious about this—and it's hard not to respect the refuge in audacity here by having the cousin angle being the one painted as forbidden fruit.

As is also true to this show's nature, what makes it all work despite every signal in your brain saying it shouldn't is thanks to Rentaro's ability to help people love to learn themselves. In this case, it's helping Chiyo to realize she's taking on way too much responsibility at home for a kid, and it's okay to let herself act her age—even if it means turning into a blubbery mess as she cries about how she loves Rentaro. That sense of sincerity is so strong, it's nearly easy to forget all the baggage surrounding it—and the revelation that Rentaro's uncle tried to set them up because Rentaro is so much of a good boy that he couldn't trust his daughter with anyone else is so absurd, you really can't help but laugh at it. That's the real magic of The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, REALLY Love You—and while it might be lacking in good taste, it can more than make up for it by its continued willingness to embrace its madness with as much love as its protagonist.

As this premiere was on, I had to explain to the love of my own life that The 100 Girlfriends is a farce. It's absurdist, it's doing a bit, it is the Airplane! of harem anime. It's as dedicated to screwing around with its own genre as it is screwing with the audience. Heading into the third season it's now notched on its belt, said audience screwing-with is precisely how it prioritizes things, and it got me good. Look, I watch a lot of anime, so sometimes details whizz by me or I miss things. Even though I reviewed every episode of the second season of 100 Girlfriends, this third-season opener still momentarily had me paranoid that I'd missed a bonus episode or an OVA or something. It's throwing out girlfriends I'd never seen before at me, going over them in the same way the others got in previous seasons.

Per the God of Love's own exasperated reaction, that is, in fact, the bit. It's genuinely a great way to spice up said expected girlfriend-recap, going through their characteristic tropey traits while mixing in new ones as some sort of soulmate sneak-preview. You know I'm thrilled to meet Nadeshiko, the "American" girlfriend—Crunchyroll's translation team for 100 Girlfriends has always gone above and beyond in the name of embodying the show's absurdity, and the instant they let Nadeshiko drop the phrase "it was like my personal 9/11," I knew we were completely back in business. Beyond all that, the tv-show-recording framing helps reinforce just how abnormal an amorous universe Rentaro actually inhabits. It's not like the world of 100 Girlfriends is itself an outlandish one of romantic mechanics—Rentaro's just such a spectacular sun of a boy that he sucks in all this craziness into orbit around him and leaves any unsuspected onlookers blinded.

With that in mind, getting three seasons deep into all this, the story of the new season proper gets under way by pushing the envelope hard with Iin Chiyo, Rentaro's latest addition to his harem. Yes, we are going there, yes Rentaro is going to date his own middle-school-aged cousin. He calls it out, sure, but this is a harem anime, and there's a reason they shattered taste expectations back in the first season when Rentaro got together with the mother of one of his other girlfriends. Then he hooked up with her maid. We are already through the looking glass here, this show will have even more sights to show us by the time it's eighteen seasons deep and has made it to all 100.

Chiyo's courtship makes apparent how Rentaro's basically figured out this girlfriend-getting thing by this point. He quickly cottons onto her issues arising from adopting excess responsibility at a young age, and provides her the relief and comfort he understands she wants by not needing to step up constantly. She momentarily wonders how he realizes so quickly, but Rentaro and those playing along at home know he's already done this eleven times.

What's more out-there about the arrangement is the fact that, for possibly the first time in 100 Girlfriends, this was actually arranged. The whole thing being a setup by Chiyo's father and Rentaro's uncle Hiro momentarily throws a wrench into the proceedings, but given Rentaro already got the signature heart-crack and Chiyo's tearfully confessed to him, it's not like it's that much of a hump to get over. Rather, it signals how many other ways soulmates can be swung into Rentaro's path—and that he can get over just about anything to be the best boyfriend possible to anyone. If the audience hasn't already been alienated on the way to that (again, this is a guy who effortlessly seduced his own mother-in-law) then of course there won't be too much protesting over Chiyo here. This is the ride everyone signed up for on 100 Girlfriends, and a third round on the rollercoaster of love is set to be just as fun (if a good bit more crowded) as the last two go-arounds.

The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You is a show so hilarious, earnest, and sweet that I thoroughly enjoyed this episode despite it ending with fifteen-year-old heartthrob and his twelve-year-old first cousin Chiyo declaring that they're going to date. Why does this development work for me when it would come off as deeply skeezy and inappropriate in just about any other series? Well, it helps that the first thing that happens when Rentaro meets Chiyo and realizes that they're soulmates is call out the production committee for making him fall in love with a girl who's just starting middle school, and that Chiyo has an entire identity rooted in more than just her age.

As her class' student council representative and a functional homemaker for her and her single-father after her mother's passing, Chiyo is the exact kind of competent and over-achieving kid I was at her age. This is probably way it hits me so hard and why I think Chiyo is an immediate contender for “best girl” in 100 GFs ever expanding cast when it's revealed that her over-achieving has become an expectation for her and she's slowly starting to crack under the pressure while also not knowing how to define herself as anything besides a pillar of support to others. With Rentaro consoling her during a meltdown after she loses her glasses, Chiyo begins to accept that she can rely on other people and that people will return the care and affection she gives them.

This is both really solid character writing and such a terrific display of how romantic relationships can bolster a person and help them grow. While the framing device of Chiyo and Rentaro's budding relationship is gross, Chiyo is a developed enough character and their relationship feels so genuine and wholesome that I'm able to overlook both her age and genetic overlap. While the cynic in me wants to say this is 100 GFs having its cake and eating it too, the show is such a celebration of relationships, dating, and love that I can't help but sing this show's praises.

Also, everything I just described is just the back half of this episode!!! The season three premiere of 100 GFs opens with a segment filled with some of the best gags and meta humor in the show thus far! Featuring the Rentaro family out on a group date, the entire cast (plus some of the girlfriends set to be introduced this season) are interviewed man-on-the-street style about their boyfriend, and they gradually start giving more and more ridiculous and reference filled examples of nice things Rentaro has done for them. Outside of the more immediate jokes, there are also a lot of great background, character motivated sight gags to fill in the set-up moments, like the (deservedly) vain Mimimi trying to force her way into frame for the broadcast and the tactile obsessed Momoji trying to squish the production team's boom mike.

All of this extended opening gag is grounded in the literal god of this show's universe yelling at the narrator about this sequencing being out of order with the manga, with Rentaro then referencing the break in the temporal narrative when he meets Chiyo for the “first time” later in the episode! This perfect blend of humor and insightful relationship writing is what has made The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You an absolute juggernaut of a romcom series, and this premiere matches if not exceeds the standard set by previous seasons.