Two Heroines Built in Opposite Directions
Japanese anime news site Animate Times has published a joint interview with Hana Tamegai and Aoi Koga, the third installment in its Season 3 cast series. A quick premise refresher: after 100 straight middle-school rejections, Rentaro Aijo learns from the God of Love that 100 destined soulmates await him in high school. Any soulmate he fails to love and make happy will die, which is why the series wears its "DEAD OR LOVE" tagline literally.
Season 3 has been airing since July 5, 2026 on Tokyo MX and other Japanese stations, with Bibury Animation Studio, director Hikaru Sato, and series composition writer Takashi Aoshima all back from the first two seasons. Tamegai plays Yamame Yasashiki (優敷山女), a tall gardening club member who adores plants and animals and keeps live butterflies and a squirrel about her person. Koga plays Momiji Momi (茂見紅葉), a tiny massage specialist who can knead the stiffness out of anyone. The interview is largely about how differently those two performances came together.
Hana Tamegai Played Yamame From the Feet Up
Tamegai first auditioned for the series back in Season 1, and re-reading the manga for her new role left her marveling at how crowded Rentaro's family had become in the meantime. Her original plan for Yamame was delicate. Sato had told her she didn't need to force a low voice, so she prepared a soft, whispery, high-pitched read. That version never made it to air. As recording went on, the team decided Yamame's height should register in the voice itself, so Tamegai planted her feet shoulder-width apart, braced her core, and dropped her weight until she found the character's center of gravity.
Yamame also comes with verbal quirks, the rustic first-person "ode" and the sentence-ending "dado," which Koga calls flat-out adorable. Yamame's focus episode, episode 29's "Yasashiki-san's Gardening Club Tour," was actually Tamegai's first recording session, ahead of the character's on-screen debut in episode 25, "The Cousin Girlfriend." Her take changed so much mid-session that she re-recorded the episode's first half once the new, grounded approach clicked in the second.
Aoi Koga Had to Dial Momiji Down
Koga (Kaguya Shinomiya in Kaguya-sama: Love Is War) describes Momiji as Yamame's opposite: small, half-lidded, and seemingly spaced out, but never emotionless and quicker to match the group's tempo than she looks. Her first test read came out too energetic, and the direction she kept receiving boiled down to one question: how much feeling fits inside a low-key mumble.
She worked all of that out in episode 30, "Momiji-chan's Momi-Momi Festival," whose first half is nearly a two-hander between Momiji and Rentaro (Wataru Kato). Koga admits she was so nervous about joining a show she loves that she went completely stiff, loosened up once the full girlfriend ensemble arrived in the second half, and then went back to redo the first half. Not ideal, she jokes, for the one character who is never supposed to be tense.
That episode also hides a surprising gag. It stages the "first-ever public reveal" of manga co-creator Yukiko Nozawa's face, and the staff confirmed during the interview that the voice in that moment belongs to Masako Nozawa, the voice of Son Goku in Dragon Ball.
The Nail Polish Welcome Ritual
Both actresses credit lead actor Wataru Kato for setting the booth's tone. Kato paints his nails in each new girlfriend's image color whenever she debuts, and he showed up wearing purple for Momiji. Tamegai asked him about it and learned he doesn't pull from some existing collection; he goes out and finds the exact shade for every new heroine. The gesture clearly landed, because both actresses arrived at the interview wearing their own characters' colors, Tamegai in a green blend and Koga in a pale purple with an iridescent finish that nods to Momiji's hair.
A cast this size makes the recording floor competitive in its own right. Mic work is a scramble, single lines get squeezed for everything they're worth, and actors ad-lib background business even where the script gives them nothing. Tamegai says Kaede Hondo (Hakari Hanazono) and Miyu Tomita (Karane Inda), whom she already knew from other projects, took the lead in welcoming her.
Looking Ahead
Season 3 is streaming now on Crunchyroll, which carries the series across North America, Latin America, Europe, and most other regions outside Asia, with an English dub running since July 19, 2026. In Japan, the season's opening theme "Daisuki Zutto Eien ni" and its ending theme, both performed by the in-universe cast unit Rentaro Family, arrive as a CD single on September 9, 2026 for ¥2,750.
The source manga by Rikito Nakamura and Yukiko Nozawa runs in Shueisha's Weekly Young Jump, and Seven Seas Entertainment publishes it in English. Animate Times' Season 3 interview series is ongoing, with more cast conversations on the way.