Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Tensai-tachi no Renai Zunousen
Kaguya-sama: Love Is War

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Kaguya-sama: Love is War is the king of romance manga without question. There is simply no other manga of the same genre from which I remember the names of almost every character; from which I’ve both laughed and cried audibly while reading; from which I’ve derived so much happiness from every serialized chapter. What started off as a cute and funny manga with a great premise evolved into a character driven drama with many monumentally emotional character arcs, each of which continue to resonate with me beyond belief.

Though I’ll admit to some personal bias, I would like to point out how deeply invested Aka ... (the mangaka) has made me as a viewer/reader to his characters. There wasn’t a moment in the manga where a character’s pain didn’t translate to my own sadness. There wasn’t a moment when a character’s development after a truly emotional scene didn’t move me to tears (being the crybaby that I am). There was always a laugh to be had with the witty psychological battles and silly bouts between characters. A win for the main cast felt like a win to me. Over these last 250 chapters and 2+ years that I’ve been reading, I feel as though I’ve been through a journey.

Quickly before the nitty-gritty plot things begin, I would like to mention that the visuals for the manga are wonderful, and the sharp style is basically perfect for what the manga is. The character designs and background art are also both awesome. The excellent art has actually even led me to buy some volumes on a whim!

The semantics of plot development can be expressed by dividing the progression into two categories. The first one is the comedy / “Love is War” parts, where our protagonists (and often others as well) engage in a psychological duel to gain an advantage over the other in the confession rat race. This occurs more often towards the beginning of the manga and (in addition to the pure entertainment factor) gives insight to general characterization of the cast and introduces us to big ideas that become important later on. The other is more difficult to define. This category refers to the story arcs where there are larger stakes at play, and a character’s entire basis is on the verge of change. The emotional arcs, the thrilling arcs, and the downright badass arcs all come together under this umbrella to serve some sort of greater purpose in helping characters grow. I honestly think that this is one of the best things about Kaguya-sama.

Character growth is limited not to a single event or person, but extends as far as the story continues. Each and every main character (well…) has some kind of internal conflict underlying their goofy dynamics with the others, and must deal with their values being confronted. In this process, we emotionally invest ourselves in that progression, laughing, anguishing, and loving with them. Though this is not necessarily unique to Kaguya-sama, I believe that as far as I’ve read, Kaguya-sama does it the best.

Now, with all of this praise, one would believe that my assertions warrant a 10/10 score. This is not the case only because of the inevitability of the last arc being too quick. In comparison to the previous character arcs, each warranting hefty praise for what they accomplish as standalone arcs, the final arc of the manga lacks the same structure bent on emotional development, and we feel a sort of “urge to end the story” permeating the chapters. Though, this is understandable, given Aka’s situation with Oshi no Ko. Regardless, the journey from start to finish of Kaguya-sama has gotten me so invested as a reader that its post-finale chapters have left me debilitated to an extent.

With the conclusion of Kaguya-sama’s serialization comes one of the largest punches to the gut that I have ever felt from an anime/manga coming to an end. The final chapters were one of the hardest things for me to read due to my massive attachment to the story. I can’t even express how upset I am, even writing this review. All I can say is that regardless of your stance on romantic comedies, Kaguya-sama: Love is War is a must watch/read. The massive void that I felt at the end of this manga attests to just how much of an impact it has had on me as a reader.

Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai—or just "Love is War"—has grown into such a big name that it's virtually impossible to be interested in either anime or manga without knowing what it is. There's no doubt in my mind that Love is War is going to go down in history along with the shounen giants that we just can't seem to forget. But despite all the praise it gets, I can't help but feel like my experience with the series has been more like that of speeding through the main story of a game just to get to the side quests.

Love is War is fundamentally a character-based story, ... so it's a shame that the characters happen to be its weakest aspect. Don't misunderstand, though; the majority of the cast is actually pretty solid, both main and supporting. There's not all that much depth to them, but most of the characters fit their roles perfectly. Heck, some of the interpersonal relationships are even fairly interesting. That sounds good, though, right? So what's the deal? It all comes down to the two protagonists, sadly.

Social awkwardness and emotional constipation both come as a matter of course with a premise like this, as you were presumably fully aware of long before ever laying eyes on this review. The problem is how far it ends up taking it. Every single interaction between the leads is painfully frustrating from the start, which just might be your cup of tea if you're even thinking of reading this manga. That's okay. But see, it keeps getting worse for every chapter until it starts becoming nigh unbearable. And no, it's not in the intentionally frustrating slow burn "why won't they just talk?!" kind of way. It reaches a point where the mental gymnastics just become annoying. A point where you find yourself staring at the page with a blank expression on your face, muttering "Really...?" under your breath for the umpteenth time in the same volume. The fact that these people are supposed to be 17 at the start of the series is beyond baffling when they're acting like particularly awkward 12-year-olds every opportunity they get. The manga tries to excuse it by continuously pointing out how Kaguya is sheltered and lacks experience talking to people, but that doesn't do much to make every conversation she has with the love interest any less aggravating.

In contrast, the rest of the cast is rather good. Everyone here probably already knows Chika from the memes, and that's basically what she's there for in the first place. Rarely doing anything to directly further the plot, she's mostly there to make the dumb jokes possible. Ishigami starts off rather bland, but ends up turning into the most interesting character by far as the story progresses. Iino doesn't do much of anything as she enters the stage, but she eventually manages to take an important role in the better part of the series. Hayasaka is one of the best characters from the very start, and stays that way through the entirety of the manga. Even some of the less important characters are genuinely interesting in some way. It's just a shame that the protagonists end up outweighing everyone else.

You may have noticed that this review hasn't mentioned anything about the plot yet, but that's fine. The manga takes its damn time getting around to it. In fact, in a lot of ways, it probably shouldn't have ever gone past its basic premise. Without saying too much, the whole style of the series changes in the blink of an eye and never really fully returns to what it used to be, and I get the impression that people are somewhat split on whether this is good or bad for the story in general. To be perfectly clear, I personally didn't like any part of it before this point in the story. After this point, however, I started liking SOME parts. That's pretty huge in itself. On the other hand, I've seen a good number of people say that they liked it before, but not after. To be frank, although the storytelling improves drastically in the short time dedicated to this shift, it costs the story its entire identity. And the best part? The protagonists are still annoying. The greatest improvement is genuinely that more time is now getting dedicated to the rest of the cast—particularly Ishigami. And this brings us to my final real point.

Ishigami's part of the story was the only thing keeping me somewhat interested in this series. Had it stood isolated, I could easily have recommended it to anyone interested in drama or romance. It's not watered down like the rest of the series, it feels genuine and raw, and every character seems drastically much better compared to how they are outside of it. But alas. In the end, it's just not worth walking through all the other shit just to get to the chapters that are truly good.

Comedy is purely subjective, so there probably isn't much of a point in me saying what I think on that. I will however say that there's so much repetition that it wouldn't be weird to get tired of the gag after a few chapters. It gets a bit better after the shift, but don't think for a moment that it's going to fully stop. I personally found the visual comedy to be best, which is in part carried by how good the art is. It looks somewhat awkward at times, particularly at the start, but the art's odd points become less and less frequent for every volume.

Love is War was a tiring read in general. It definitely has some good moments, a few truly fantastic ones, and a whole lot of bad ones. I can't see anyone enjoying the whole thing unless they love the comedy from the start and still appreciate the huge change in the writing. It seriously would have been so much better with Ishigami as the protagonist.

Story: 5/10
Art: 8/10
Characters: 4/10
Enjoyment: 3/10
Overall: 5/10

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS

When I read the first arc of this manga, I am already imagined that the ending would be 2 possible scenarios: There will be a confession in the last chapter or, by default, they never confess their love to each other. At the end, I was partially right, because the last scenario happened in the first part of the manga. So, what's more have this to offer us? Let's find out. I'm gonna divide this review for each part of the manga:

1. First part: Each arc of this one can be summarized as follows: Our protagonists try to force the other ... side to confess their love, Chika and/or a similar plot device creates a random romantic misunderstanding, both sides try to take advantage of this to win this conflict and in the end none of them do. In order to show you what's wrong with this, I'm gonna take a classic cartoon (Roadrunner vs Coyote), that it has a similar format and episodic mechanic to make the comparison:

a) Objective: In the case of Roadrunner vs Coyote the goal is Coyote catching and eating the Roadrunner in order to survive. Simple premise and makes sense. On the other hand, the goal of this manga is that one of the two protagonists make a love confession. Using common sense, aren't there better ways to make a confession of love? I don't know. Why is always a third person involved in order to advance the plot in each arc? Wouldn't it be better and more interesting to see how the two sides use their wits on their own? No fucking idea.

b) Pretentiousness level: In this manga, they try to present our protagonists as a smart and calculator people because of their strategies. For what reason do they do it? Mystery. Normally, a person is considered smart according to his/her capacity to solve their problems, and, in this case, the main problem is not solved (at least in this first part). It is not like in each arc one of the two sides gets closer to the goal. So they don't have anything smart if you ask me.

c) Bait: In the case of Roadrunner vs Coyote, subtly, the cartoon shows that as long Coyote keep using the ACME brand artifacts, he wouldn't be able to catch the roadrunner. In this manga, the author leaves you hoping that, at some point, one of the two will ending making the confession, being more dishonest in comparisson if you ask me. Despite that the one of the them ended making the confession, this didn't happened in this part, where it was supposed to happen, at least, in the final episode of this format.

As we can see, the mechanics are similar, however, the execution is what makes the difference between them.

2. Second part: The formula, now, in each arc is as follows: Partially remove what supposedly is the original aspect of the manga (comedy), in a attempt to take itself more seriously, take one of the characters of the cast and put the rest out of the scene, make a random and generic story and that's it. Is that really necessary to put out the other characters of the cast in each arc? No fucking idea. There's no need for them to be some kind of middle man in the arcs with romance involved, but they could at least show us some progress in their character development. It is an unnecessary disconnection in the narrative flow and in the character's arc if you ask me. As I mentioned before, the confession between the main characters, indeed, happened, but it was in a storyline that you can find in any other average rom-com. It wouldn't have been better that this confession happened during the most comedic part of the manga? No fucking idea. The reason of why I don't mention the stories of the other characters is because they are irrelevant to the main plot raised here. In other words, they felt like a filler. It was really necessary to make that stories? It wouldn't have better focused more in finish the main story and, after that, go for the other ones? Mystery.

That's it for now. Despite having a good and original idea, the manga ended being a mess up because of a poor execution of the same.