Is Girlfriend, Girlfriend Worth Reading? Review & Where to Read

Quick facts
Format	Manga (shōnen), 144 chapters, 16 volumes
Run	2020–2023 · completed
Community score	AniList 6.8
Content	Sexual humor, fanservice
Where to read	Kodansha — official

Overview

Naoya finally gets a girlfriend in Saki, and the two are volatile but genuinely into each other — until a second girl, Nagisa, confesses to him out of nowhere. Rather than picking one or turning Nagisa down, Naoya does the thing that kicks off the entire series: he asks Saki for permission to date them both. Written and illustrated by Hiroyuki, Girlfriend, Girlfriend ran in Weekly Shōnen Magazine from 2020 to 2023, wrapping at 16 volumes, with an anime adaptation covering part of the story.

What it does well

The manga's biggest strength is that it doesn't try to sand the premise's edges off. A lot of harem-adjacent rom-coms would soften this setup into something more palatable, but Girlfriend, Girlfriend keeps leaning into how chaotic and ethically messy Naoya's arrangement actually is, and the comedy comes from watching the cast actually negotiate the terms rather than just vibing through a normal love triangle.

Saki does a lot of the comedic heavy lifting. Her mix of competitiveness, jealousy, and genuine affection for Naoya makes her reactions the funniest and most consistently entertaining part of the cast, and the series is smart to keep building situations around her specifically. The chapter-to-chapter pacing also helps — jokes resolve quickly instead of getting stretched thin, so even weaker gags don't overstay their welcome.

What keeps it from feeling hollow is that the manga is honest about the arrangement being a mess rather than dressing it up as some enlightened, drama-free ideal. That honesty is what makes the comedy work instead of feeling like the story is asking you to admire Naoya.

Where it falls short

The premise is a genuinely hard sell on its own terms — asking your girlfriend's permission to date someone else reads as more selfish than romantic, and the manga doesn't always give Naoya enough redeeming material to offset that. Readers who need to actually root for the central relationship rather than just watch it as farce may bounce off early.

The joke structure also repeats more than sixteen volumes can really sustain: jealousy flares, someone schemes, chaos breaks out, things reset to status quo. It's reliable but doesn't build much momentum. And the fanservice, while frequent, sometimes stands in for character beats rather than supporting them.

Verdict

This is a rom-com that works best when you read it as a farce about a terrible idea rather than a love story to root for sincerely — on those terms, Saki's chaos and the premise's sheer audacity carry it a long way. It runs long enough that the formula shows its seams, but it rarely stops being funny about just how bad Naoya's idea was.