Watashi ga Koibito ni Nareru Wake Nai jan, Muri Muri! (※Muri ja Nakatta!?)

Seeing everyone else enjoying their youth, socially anxious Renako Amaori is dead set on becoming an extroverted girl. Despite her reclusive past, she changes her appearance, practices conversation, and enrolls in a high school free of anyone that would know her. While she is quickly able to befriend the famous model Mai Ouzuka, after Renako joins her friend group, she realizes pretending to be a completely different person is no easy feat.

Soon, Renako and Mai have a heart-to-heart and share their troubles with each other. After the sincere discussion, Renako truly believes they could become best friends. The very next day, however, the unthinkable happens—Mai confesses her love to Renako! Although Renako is not interested in dating, Mai insists the two begin hanging out alternately as friends and a couple, while figuring out which type of relationship suits them better.

Determined to create a blissful friendship, Renako tries her best to convince the stubborn Mai. However, Renako herself might have a change of heart as Mai's advances continue to get bolder.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Sena, Ajisai Main

Anzai, Yukari Japanese

Amaori, Renako Main

Nakamura, Kanna Japanese

Koto, Satsuki Main

Ichinose, Kana Japanese

Ouzuka, Mai Main

Oonishi, Saori Japanese

Koyanagi, Kaho Main

Tanaka, Takako Japanese

Amaori, Haruna Supporting

Sagara, Mayu Japanese

Satsuki's Mother Supporting

Yukana Japanese

Renako's Mother Supporting

Nakahara, Mai Japanese

Hanatori, Hitoe Supporting

Saitou, Chiwa Japanese

Hirosaki, Michiru Supporting

Yamamoto, Nozomi Japanese

Konaka, Shouhei Producer

Ishiyama, Takahiro Producer

Kurohiji, Hayato Producer

Ishida, Manami Producer

Reviews

Sep 22, 2025

Marinate1016

Recommended

Finally, after all these years, the greatest yuri of all time has been adapted. I know that’s high praise, but I mean that from the depths of my heart. As a matter of fact, I’ll go even further, Watanare is one of the best romcoms ever. Full stop. This is the complete package from storytelling to characters, to thematics, it’s got it all. It somehow manages to balance serious themes like consent, sexual identity, relationship boundaries and parental abuse with comedy and over the top lesbian romance very well. It comes off very campy at start, but you slowly realize it’s actually respectfully handling delicate ... topics like Renako coming to terms with her sexuality, her desire to be accepted, conforming to societal norms and more. It’s hilarious and has great yuri ships, but most importantly Watanare is and damn good coming of age story. For being written by a man, I’m very happy with the lack of fetishisation of lesbians. Yea, there’s sprinkles of fanservice, but it’s more of the “girls like hot girls too” sort rather than being done for the male gaze like a lot of other yuri stories. It’s a must watch for any yuri fan, but also anyone who likes a romance where there’s no losers and a best girl for everyone.

Polyamorous harem stories getting anime adaptations are nearly unheard of, especially yuri ones. One of the coolest things about Watanare is that all the girls don’t just like Renako, but we get mini ships among her harem, often being just as good as the main ships, if not better. I think it’s so lame when stories just have a bunch of girls falling in love with a dude and just following him around. Give us the girls dating each other damn it! Watanare author got the assignment and while in this first season, we only see the groundwork being laid for that eventual story development, it’s cool seeing how all the girls interact with each other and how the relationships differ between cast members.

By far the best part of Watanare is our loveable, totally in denial about her sexuality MC, Renako. Whether intentionally or not, this girl is autistic coded and we love her for it. I don’t mean that as a joke either, she exhibits legitimate signs of being on spectrum, struggling to make eye contact, using scripts to communicate, having difficulty processing her emotions, etc. It’s actually a quite realistic depiction of a teenage autistic girl grappling with a rapidly changing environment and I found that so refreshing! Renako’s big internal struggle throughout the story is balancing her desire for friendship with the romance everyone tries to force on her. Our girl literally just wants a gaming buddy and she ends up getting multiple wives. The author actually does a really good job of showing how various actions can have different meanings to different people. For example, playing video games is something that friends do in Renako’s mind, while for some of the other characters, it’s a romantic action. They then try to turn playing video games with Renako into an opportunity to make a move on her, which makes her upset. It’s a reminder of the importance of communication as well as establishing boundaries.

Speaking of boundaries, I really like how the author doesn’t gloss over characters violating Renako’s boundaries. It comes to a heat in a couple of the episodes and for the most part, the offender actually learns why forcing yourself physically and emotionally onto others is wrong and grows from it. I’m all for situations like this because too often in anime we see characters casually sexually harassing others and it’s played off as a gimmick. While this is partially a comedy series, it knows when to take things seriously and get an important message across. Also a huge fan of how the series covers things like emotionally abusive parents. While we don’t usually think of being forced to babysit as being abuse, it goes into that realm once you start making a child sacrifice their own hobbies and dreams to be your babysitter. This is something very personal to me because I’ve known several people, very close to me, irl who has severe mental issues as a result of being burdened with essentially raising their little siblings. I’m consistently impressed by the ability of this author to incorporate relevant issues teenagers actually go through into the story! Renako grappling with her sexual identity, being in denial, hiding things from her family, people pressuring you into situations in which you’re not comfortable and being gaslit into believing putting yourself first is wrong. These were very well done and relatable with a comedic twist.

Production on this is incredible. The art style is gorgeous and does the LN art justice, which is actually very funny because the LN illustrator is the Sasakoi mangaka and we know how much of a disappointment that yuri series was.. no such production shortcomings with Watanare. The animation is awesome and the show really has no business looking as good as it does at times(underwater kiss). Special s/o to my girl Nakamura Kanna for doing an amazing job voicing Renako and being a big reason why this show is so good. Her reactions to situations made so many scenes even better!

I can’t believe there was a point in my life where I didn’t like to watch or read yuri because I couldn’t self insert. I was so closed minded and over the last couple of years, I have really changed. Now not only am I a massive yuri fan, but I usually prefer those stories because it feels like the romance is developed better than het romances. Watanare only makes me feel better about that claim. This was near perfect for me, the 2nd best show this season, one of most enjoyable live watch experiences ever thanks to it airing on YouTube. I wouldn’t change a thing about this, other than giving Renako’s little sister more screentime!

Watanare gets 10 out of 10

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Sep 22, 2025

Supersonic_Pain

Mixed Feelings

When I first started this show, I was actually really into it. I thought Mai was a really engaging love interest and it was going to have a lot to say about boundaries and two dummies who've never really been in love figuring out how to be in a relationship together.

...And then the Satsuki arc happened.

I don't think I've ever been this disappointed that a show was a harem (or poly or whatever, quite frankly, the distinction doesn't really matter to me in this case).

The inherent problem with a harem is that you then have to write that many more engaging love interests. A mono ... show? You have to write one good love interest. Harem? If they aren't all interesting, you either have an undercooked character you just kinda slide under the carpet or a dud swallowing up airtime that could've been used on one of the more interesting partners.

Watanare has both.

To be fair to Watanare, it's actually getting a sort of sequel/second cour/whatever that features the last girl (at least for now because who fucking knows now that they've broken the door open) but Kaho does not do jack, diddly, or shit this season.

How are the other love interests?

I think the problem is that they set up the one character I actually like as a joke or antagonist.

>"Oh, I'm the great Mai Ouzuka, nothing will go wrong-"
>*Renako starts grinding on the nearest girl in sight*

Satsuki actively uses Renako as a baseball bat to emotionally traumatize Mai in a way that makes me just want her gone. I actively dislike Satsuki for how she treats Mai in this show. She's supposed to be the "cool beauty" of the show but the problem is that's Mai. Ajisai and even Kaho have their own niches but Satsuki never really stuck out to me except in the worst possible ways.

Ajisai is... better, I guess, but she's kinda bland. She's just your industrial-grade cinnamon roll where even her crashouts are cute and sweet and pure. I guess she wasn't bad but she didn't inspire me to want any more screen time with her either.

Renako, the MC, feels like if you took the introversion/social awkwardness of Bocchi, the inexplicable charisma of a harem MC, and apparently the sluttiness of Makoto Itou and put them in a blender.

This show has one good love interest and chooses to clickbait you into thinking you're getting a show about her and the MC before tossing her out for the most part while they build the other characters and it just didn't work for me.

For my more enthusiastic himefriends out there, maybe seeing a poly yuri is more impressive to you, maybe if you knew that's what you were going into, you'd have a better time, but not only did that actively kind of spoil the show for me, the post-Mai love interests aren't even all that interesting.

Even after getting 2 arcs to explore 2 of the others, I still only want to see Mai x Renako. When the show is that? Great show, I'm here for it. When it's any other pairing, could not care less.

I've definitely seen worse but proceed with caution.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Jan 2, 2026

carlosrene66

Not Recommended

Do not fall into the Yuri trap like I did.

Overall this anime was an incredible let-down, it fails at being both a Romance and a Comedy, which is unfortunate because I actually thought I was gonna enjoy it, the plot and themes may very enticing for anyone who is like me, but I hope to let others know through this review to not commit the same mistake of watching Watanare.

I'll separate my thoughts about it on multiple categories so that I can at least give it some sort of compliment

Writing (2/10)
My main gripe with this show. The episodes feel like they alternated from endless ... chatter that tries to have a deep narrative behind it and episodes where stuff happens for no reason. Jokes always fell flat, even if the visuals had potential no visual gag was accompanied by a well written joke, it isn't absurd enough to be funny or smart enough for good punch-lines. Even putting the comedy aspect aside, emotional moments were too unrealistic to be taken seriously and none of the characters acted like real people, which wouldn't be a problem if the show doubled down on the absurdity of the scenarios, but it doesn't, instead trying to get taken seriously when nothing in this show is even taken seriously by the characters in it, let alone the viewer.

Characters (2/10) (SPOILERS)
The cast of characters looks fun and colorful, but they all act like total idiots without a care for each others feelings, and never stand up for themselves. It took the protagonist (Renako) her sister catching her getting harassed by Mai to finally snap and complain, but there were no real consequences or character growth after that, Mai kept pushing herself onto Renako throughout the entirety of the anime without any consequence, and Renako never did anything substantial about it. Sure, this could work as a plot point if used correctly, but none of the rest of characters do anything about it, Koto even makes use of the situation to get revenge on Mai, something which, in a realistically written show, would sever the relationship between EVERY character introduced so far, but we somehow end up with an episode about them playing cheap CGI battle royale to decide the course of their relationships. Sena was the only character that I liked, and was expecting to finally get to see Mai get back for all the bs she's been pulling with her over-inflated ego, but ended up with an underwhelming and unsatisfying ending where we barely got to see any reaction, or anything to bridge over to next season (which I will most definitely NOT be watching).

Visuals (8/10)
Visuals are very colorful and character designs are fun and bright, maybe too bright sometimes but I don't mind that. This might be the strongest suit of this show, I probably wouldn't have even considered watching it if it didn't have the art-style it has. Animation-wise, it's good, it doesn't look cheap or rushed and is perfectly serviceable. A personal pet peeve of mine is the abundance of """fan service""" (detailed naked bodies) but animators don't get the final saying if that goes into the show or not, although it did feel like they put in way too much effort into drawing those frames sometimes.

Music (8/10)
The opening and ending songs are really good, I specifically like the ending because it has a very distinct style and incredible music to accompany it (also because it means there were less episodes to finally finish this show lmao). Background music was forgettable but not distracting, I guess that's what background music is meant to be???

Overall (3/10)
I could never recommend this show to anyone, it does not deserve the rating it has. Characters do terrible things and always manage to get away with it because the protagonist is terribly incapable of just saying "no", so the entire show ends up being infuriating to watch. Mai is hilariously similar to modern-day rich people who have gotten into legal problems recently, so I couldn't stop making comparisons in my head.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Watashi ga Koibito ni Nareru Wake Nai jan, Muri Muri! (※Muri ja Nakatta!?) Episode 10 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Sep 8, 2025	80 replies	by KhoaVN »» Yesterday, 1:05 AM
	Poll: Watashi ga Koibito ni Nareru Wake Nai jan, Muri Muri! (※Muri ja Nakatta!?) Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 ) Stark700 - Jul 7, 2025	155 replies	by reyflower »» Jan 12, 7:15 AM
	Poll: Watashi ga Koibito ni Nareru Wake Nai jan, Muri Muri! (※Muri ja Nakatta!?) Episode 2 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) Stark700 - Jul 14, 2025	123 replies	by colodesu »» Jan 11, 1:36 PM
	Poll: Who is the best gerl for Renako kesiesie - Jan 7	18 replies	by silvrrwolff »» Jan 11, 6:54 AM
	Poll: Watashi ga Koibito ni Nareru Wake Nai jan, Muri Muri! (※Muri ja Nakatta!?) Episode 9 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Stark700 - Sep 1, 2025	65 replies	by KhoaVN »» Jan 5, 4:12 AM