Review of Kaguya-sama: Love is War -Ultra Romantic-

What’s that meme about insanity? Like how the definition of “insanity” is doing the exact same thing over and over again expecting a different result? I’m not particularly up to date on internet humor, so I may very well be misremembering it, but either way, I’m definitely going insane. The universe keeps trying to tell me no one wants to hear me rag on this show, and I keep refusing to listen. The show is far too beloved at this point, and the only people still watching it are fans who have been watching since season one and now have a vested interest in beingbiased in its favor. Considering how repetitive this show is and how little anything in it has changed, any criticism anyone was ever going to make about it has already been made, and everyone has already decided where they stand. However, for some fucking reason, I just keep trying. I refuse to accept the suggestion that my complaints are as trivial as everyone says they are. For what it’s worth, I promise I’ll be nicer this time. I rewatched the entire series to review this season, and I’ve truly softened up to it over time, if only enough to give it a four.

My previous gripes had always been with how disingenuous the premise was—with how what the series presents is not a recipe for a healthy relationship—but looking back on it, I’ve realized how foolish it must’ve seemed to take the show THAT seriously. I mean, I still stand by everything I’ve said in the past, but it’s not like anyone is legitimately looking toward Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai for tangible relationship advice, so it was stupid of me to tackle it from that perspective in the first place. All people really get out of this show is cute moments and funny jokes, and they’re right to do so, but even then, I think the series still fails to achieve anything even close to the greatness which its mountains of praise would lead one to believe. Anything I could say on this point would be subject to intense subjectivity, as comedy always is, but suffice it to say I find this series to be completely and utterly unfunny, because what are we supposed to be laughing at here? The same jokes we’ve been laughing at—or at least the same jokes that some of us have been laughing at—for three seasons straight?

This show has begun suffering from an issue many long-running manga adaptations suffer from, but an issue which, lately, I think has been best exemplified by Re:Zero. I call it the Otto Effect. The Otto Effect is what happens when a popular show exhausts its original premise and has to expand the scope of its scenarios and characters to unnaturally manufacture something “new” to watch. If you want to see a downright surgical example of this, watch Eromanga Sensei. It begins as a show about two people standing in a room talking, but you can’t really get much milage out of that, can you? So after the first few episodes, the author realizes he can’t keep going with such an uninteresting premise and such shallow main characters, so he confronts the main conflict (the incestuous love story between the step-brother and sister), uses a retarded misunderstanding to put a pin in their relationship so the series has an excuse to not just end there, and then he opens the flood gates, inundating us with new characters and new drama, random arcs with sudden and empty goals, and endless meandering.

Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai is that: endless meandering. If you like the side characters, then sidelining the main cast and keeping their relationship on hold should be fine, but I kindly ask that you please appreciate that in the eyes of some, this formula just sucks. It still feels like it's dying to be a SHAFT show, but it hasn’t the writing talent nor directorial talent to even warrant the comparison. If I’m going to make one anyway, though, it would be that it feels like one of the later seasons of Monogatari, after Shinbou, Oishi, and even Itamura had all functionally left the project, and it was clear all the books they were adapting at that point were being treated as jokes by NISIOISIN himself. The name “Zoku Owarimonogatari” comes to mind, literally meaning “The End Continued” [insert Attack on Titan: The Final Final Final Season memes here]. It also still seems to think all you need to do to be funny is have one of your characters scream like an autistic light novel protagonist, have your narrator explain what’s happening in an exaggerated voice, or add speed lines and “bazinga!” text on screen.

Speaking of speed lines, by far my biggest issue with the show is how janky and cheap it looks. The first few cuts of the new season are reused animation from season two’s two-year-old finale which itself included reused cuts from season one’s then-one-year-old, now-three-year-old OP. They’ll put in occasional effort for some visual gags, but most of the time, the show just looks shoddy. This is of course everyone’s main gripe with A1 shows. Since they hire on such random people for such sporadic freelance work, they can have an entire episode that looks like shit, but there will be one moment that’s suddenly well-animated. Someone will simply walk across a room or do something with their hands and look really good for a second, and you feel like you’re having a stroke or something. The one thing they actually put serious effort into is those special EDs they do, but even they just make you say, “Oh. That’s cool. Next time, please put that effort into the actual show.” Plus, the cynical bitch in me can’t help but feel like they’re only included for the sake of going viral again à la Chika Dance.

To try to close this review off with some positives and maybe establish a bit of crossover, I’m happy to say that after rewatching the entire series, I’ve managed to come away from the experience with favorite characters, a small handful of memorable jokes, and things I liked. After rewatching season two, for example, I appreciate why so much of the young, male audience identifies with Ishigami so much, and I found myself personally enjoying Iino as an addition to the cast in seasons two and three, because her chemistry with Kaguya seems much more real than Chika’s one-note airhead personality bouncing off Kaguya’s one-note tsundere personality. Generally, I think the issues the show suffers from on paper are more a problem with its sense of humor and its repetitive archetypes than with its actual ideas or dialogue. After all, I do have to admit, after overcoming the old issues I had with the depiction of their relationship, even I can’t deny that, after a few drinks, this shitty looking, unfunny, repetitive slog can actually, sometimes, be kind of endearing. However, to reach back to the Monogatari comparison from earlier, it must be said that when a show takes three seasons to reach the point that another far better written, far better directed, and far better animated show reached in five tightly-paced episodes, one has to wonder—even if they liked the show and were satisfied by the eventual progress—just how much of their time had been wasted.

Thank you for reading.