"I Wouldn't Lie in the First Place" — Voice Actor Shun Horie Reflects on His Journey with Rent-A-Girlfriend Protagonist Kazuya

—I'd like to ask you about Kazuya again. In the beginning, you had quite a lot of internal conflict playing him, right?

Horie: At first, my reaction was honestly almost the exact same as the general public's (lol). Whenever I play a character, I always try to genuinely like them. Even if I can't find any common ground with myself, I've always managed to love them in the end. But Kazuya was the only one... I just didn't know how to love him (wry smile).

—You can't force yourself to like someone by lying to your own feelings, after all.

Horie: I appreciated from the start that he is incredibly blessed with human relationships, and that he can actually notice that and feel grateful for it. If it weren't for that, he would have been truly hopeless, and I might have played him during the first season without being able to love him at all. I just played him as someone completely distant from myself, without thinking too much about whether I liked or disliked him.

Around that time, I happened to have a recording session with Ten-chan (Sora Amamiya) just the two of us for another project. I actually consulted her about what to do when you're assigned a character where you try your best but just can't find anything to love. Even Ten-chan went, "Well, yeah, that's Kazuya for you" (lol).

—That was back when his reputation was still low, after all.

Horie: He is the exact opposite of me, but I didn't find him difficult to play. It was honestly just a constant battle with the feeling of not being able to like him, wondering if it was really okay for me to not love him this much (wry smile).

There was that kind of conflict in that sense, but he's refreshingly foolish, refreshingly a piece of trash, and such a straightforward, pure character that he doesn't even think. Because of that, playing him allowed me to just let loose and have fun, but I simply couldn't understand his feelings.

—In the third season, where he makes a movie starring Chizuru, Kazuya's actions and mindset began to change. Did that become a turning point for you in playing him?

Horie: The third season was when I felt I could finally love him. What I need to keep in mind when acting hasn't changed much, but for me, it was a big deal that Kazuya wasn't just blindly rushing in because he likes her, but was actually thinking and acting, asking himself, "I like her, so what should I do?" or "What do I need to do for this?"

Before that, he had done things like dive into the ocean to save Chizuru, but having that process of pausing to think added a certain depth, or rather, a three-dimensional human quality to him, I thought.

Because of those parts, I'm sure viewers were also able to find moments where they thought, "Hey, he actually has some good qualities," or "I can love him."