Hit the “Random” button and see what comes up! In this feature, we take a look at whatever manga the Random Number God decides to throw at us and find out if it’s worth your time.

This time: Pajama na Kanojo, by Kosuke Hamada

Keisuke is a regular high school student with no dreams or aspirations, and he lives with his childhood friend Makura because her parents died and… no, I can’t do this. I start every Random Manga Theatre about dumb romance/harem manga this way. But what else am I supposed to do when I’m reading something this depressingly generic? Uuurgghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Alright, let’s start again. The core of this story is a love triangle. Keisuke is one of those indecisive guys who can’t decide whether he likes Makura, the lively tomboy he’s known all his life (and like all anime the Westermarck Effect does not exist at all); or Yuki, the beautiful senpai who is also a TV model and just wants to escape her life of glamour. But then after Makura sees him talking to Yuki, and the next day her body is in a coma and she is a floating ghost perpetually wearing a pajama shirt over panties, who can’t wear anything else. Because of course she is.

Everything in this manga progresses in the most annoying and tiresome way possible. Keisuke just waffles between the girls and can’t decide, which comes off more as him leading them on and enjoying the attention rather than being actually ambivalent. Every chapter includes some ridiculous fanservice opportunity, often involving Keisuke grabbing someone’s boobs; one in particular devoted an entire page to Keisuke’s internal monologue mid-fall as he decided who to land on and where to grab accidentally.

Like many other manga I’ve covered here, Pajama Girlfriend feels like it was cut short, and I can’t bring myself to be angry with that at all. New haremettes are introduced only a couple chapters from the end and seem only like padding to prolong resolution of the main conflict. Speaking of, the whole ghost/coma thing gets solved two-thirds of the way through, making the next ten chapters pretty much pointless. It’s not like he was going to get with the new characters, so why waste the time characterizing them as attracted to him in the first place?

Verdict: Dirty Pajamas
You know, there are just some times where you don’t know what to say, and I don’t mean that in a good way. I imagine anyone entirely unfamiliar with the harem genre or anime-style romantic comedies might maybe find this cute and amusing, but I really just found it tiresome and trite for all twenty-six chapters. The story choices are baffling and moronic, made worse because the artwork is higher quality than most in the genre (even despite the skeevy fanservice all over the place). If this mangaka could get a good writer to weave a decent story, he might be worth reading. Until then, don’t bother with Pajama Girlfriend.