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Sep 21, 2020 3:28 PM
#1

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Jul 2017
189
Seeing as we might not see what the characters were like in High School, do you think Chizuru was more reserved in High School? Maybe she did not stand out much and it might be part of the reason she chose to be a rental girlfriend. Pure speculation here. But I don't think we may get much more details about her life. I think her old self is more akin to Chizuru Ichinose versus Chizuru Mizuhara. As for her real self, I think we only see it when she's with Kazuya.
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Sep 29, 2020 9:47 AM
#2
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Aug 2020
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Lots of spoilers throughout this reply, potentially up to Chapter 157 (I'm writing this why waiting for 158)...


We get a lot of hints along the way that Chizuru is fairly messed up, particularly from what her grandmother says and the flashbacks but also in details about her life and when the Mizuhara and College Ichinose façades drop. A third façade is her professional "by the book" persona where she talks about terms and conditions and the business of rental girlfriends. A fourth is Actress Ichinose.

She's a good actress who is playing a role and putting on an act most of the time, not just as Mizuhara but as College Ichinose, Actress Ichinose, and legalistic professional that talks about business and terms and that's part of what's causing Kazuya so much trouble (he explains his perspective in detail to Yaemori in Chapter 123 when she "breaks" him) because he doesn't know what she's really thinking.

When Kazuya gets really drunk, he talks about Mizuhara and Ichinose as if they're two different people and I think it's telling that he rarely calls her "Chizuru" himself (I'm assuming the translations are reflecting the Japanese fairly accurately for that). She can turn on Mizuhara mode or Ichinose mode and keeps them so distinct people don't even realize she's the same person, but they're both roles. The manga has Kazuya comment about her quickly switching personalities quite a few times.

Also consider her background. Her father abandoned her. Her mother died on her as a child. She was bullied and picked on in school. She lost her grandfather in a way that messed with how she thinks about what he'd taught her and now lost her grandmother, too. She was hiding quite a bit of her life from her grandmother, says she hates "sad truths" as if she's being avoiding quite a few of them, and sees God as being cruel to her.

All of that suggests her life hasn't been very pleasant. At least twice she also sounds ready to give up, first when she loses the part after the play and later when she fais to get a movie role, and she's unduly hard on herself for both failures, talking as if she's simply not good enough to succeed.

When she talks to her grandparents about acting in the flashback, she focuses on the lying aspect and has a pretty messed-up perspective about it such that her grandmother pushes back against it and points out she's focusing on the wrong thing. The flashbacks also suggest she also used acting/lying as a kid to manipulate people and get what she wanted.

She has no close friends. Her college friends don't really know much about her and she's hiding a lot from them as College Ichinose. When she loses her keys, she has to turn to Kazuya because she has nobody else to go to for help. She hasn't had any boyfriends to the point that her grandmother says she wondered if she was a lesbian. Part of the reason her grandmother was pushing her and Kazuya together as hard as Kazuya's grandmother is that her grandmother sees her being just as lonely and never finding anyone.

She also has trouble being honest with herself. Various scenes suggest she likes Kazuya and even should know how much she likes Kazuya yet she gives Umi the wishy-washy answer about whether she likes him or not. She complains about Kazuya not facing his lies but she doesn't face hers, either, and she's the one ultimately arguing against telling her grandmother the "truth".

We do get to see some glimpses of the real Chizuru, when she's frightened, flustered, has no control, and often when she's alone in her apartment or elsewhere (when she overhears she lost the acting role and a few times on campus) and nobody else is watching. It's why she spent a lot of time not facing Kazuya when her grandmother died. That would have shown too much until she put on the Mizuhara façade, and she didn't linger suggesting she was struggling to do that and might not have been able to hold it for long. The real Chizuru also lies to herself between moments of honesty.

So to address your question, I think High School Chizuru took her perspective on acting being lies and put on a façade to avoid getting hurt or close to people and to get what she needed or wanted. I would make some sense if high school was where she first developed the College Ichinose "fly under the radar" personality but but that's not "really her", either, and she could have been playing a different role in high school.

College Ichinose just another role she's playing and can switch into and out of (just like Mizuhara mode) and controls. In particular, see the drinking game story, but also the beach, when she blows her college friends off for Christmas, and is in actress mode during filming with other college students. She's not College Ichinose by default nor is she Acting Ichinose or rental girlfriend professional.

If I had to characterize the "real Chizuru", I'd say she's someone who desperately wants to be in and maintain control (you can see that when Ruka first calls her out as a rental, for example, and in what she's willing to do to keep secrets) but feels that she might not be good enough or make it and that her wishes won't come true. You can also see that in the conversations she has with her grandfather's picture.

I think that the moment where she tells Kazuya, as he pushes Chizuru to tell her grandmother the "truth" before she dies,"You're not as smart as you think you are. You're making yourself look like a fool. Do you want to know something about me? I despise sad truths." we are pretty much seeing the real Chizuru and what we see there is not Mizuhara, College Ichinose, Actress Ichinose, or the rental girlfriend professional but something quite a bit more defensive, darker, and sadder than any of those façades.

Please don't take this to mean I don't like Chizuru. I do. A lot. I think she's the "best girl" in the story and a great multifaceted character. But she's a complicated and fairly dark character and we do see quite a bit of that throughout. I want people to look for the real person hiding under the façades because I think acting and lying are important themes to this manga and it has a lot of depth regarding those things.

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