For the people in this new world, he’s an incredibly strong fighter who all the girls want to date to Haru, he’s the acne-riddled loser who is taking advantage of the people around him, has delusions of grandeur, and wants maximum rewards for minimal efforts. He acts as the counterpoint to Haru throughout the piece and is the actual target of most her more meta criticism of the male wish-fulfillment in isekai. She’s fine having him as a regular customer (even if his performance leaves much to be desired ), but the relationship ends there. He has a warped perception of his importance in Haru’s life, and has promised to make her his personal “maid”-a slave by any other name-for her own well-being. Her companion in reincarnation on the other hand, Chiba, is exactly the type of guy you expect to find in an isekai: an unpopular otaku who has now been granted a over-powered skill (16x levelling) by the powers that be, and is aiming to become the hero of this world-fighting and killing the Demon Lord threatening humanity. She’s far from perfect, but she feels more real than a majority of her male contemporaries in the genre. Beneath the veneer of “popular girl” is a hardworking, kind and genuine young woman, doing her best and being her best in a situation stacked against her. She’s snarky and often blunt about her thoughts, but we come to understand who she is as a person. In middle school she had been acting as a “high school girlfriend” for men willing to pay for her time-and it’s this prior experience that she relies on for her current job.
Before the truck accident, Haru was self-described as average: she hung out with friends, had a string of hot boyfriends and maintained moderate popularity. She’s so far from the typical isekai protagonist it’s comical the antithesis of otaku culture so deeply seeped into light novels, manga and anime of current day. She is, by most anyone’s judgement, the type of popular girl that’s villainised in high school dramas-at first glance, vapid, self-obsessed and judgemental.
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