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

tl;dr: A solid continuation that evolves spectacularly in the second half. Ultra Romantic is the third season of Kaguya-sama: Love is War which continues the tale of Shirogane and Shinomiya trying to get each other to confess. This season picks up exactly where the previous season left off, and for the first half or so it’s pretty much just a continuation of the previous season that doesn’t really evolve in anyway. That’s certainly not a bad thing, as the previous season was great and the set up still had quite a bit of room for more content without needing to evolve. The comedy is as greatas ever and thus the first half of the anime is just as enjoyable as previous seasons have been.

However, the second half is where things really get interesting. This half is entirely focused around the school festival arc. Seeing as this anime has never had anywhere near as long of an arc before, that should be enough to indicate that things are definitely taking a step up. But if that wasn’t enough, very early on in the arc the writing commits pretty hard to actually making serious progress in regards to the relationship between Shirogane and Shinomiya. Now, such commitments are pretty common in rom-coms, and just shrugging them off as a joke later is also just as common, especially when the rom-com has gone through long periods without any major relationship progress as was the case here.

However, this arc with the ways things flow and the atmosphere. It just feels like it’s taking this seriously and wants the viewer to take things seriously as well, and thus very early on it’s enough to pull you in and get fully invested in where things will finally go this arc. And it’s a very slow and steady climb to eventually getting there, but through that build up it really managed to show off the personalities and evolutions of Shirogane and Shinomiya really well, ultimately leading up to a climax that is incredibly satisfying.

However, while the relationship arc of the main couple was undoubtedly the primary focus, it did quite a bit with other characters too. The most prominent would be Ishigami of course, who’s continuing his character arc from the previous season by getting a love story of his own. This love story veers much closer to the generic tropes that are overtly common in rom-coms than the main couple’s story does so it definitely feels like it’s pretty predictable where it’s going to go eventually, but so far it’s written pretty well and thus I’m very interested in seeing how it’ll get there and how the characters involved will grow as a result.

This season does some fun things with various other characters as well, such as Maki, Kei, and Hayasaka. And of course, while it certainly is moving faster in regards to plot, that doesn’t mean that the comedy takes a backseat. In this arc there’s just as much comedy and it’s just as good as previous seasons. Or rather, that it manages to intermix the comedy with the suspense and major emotional beats just makes all of it work much better than any one aspect could on it’s own. It’s peak rom-com.

The art and animation I think actually improved over previous seasons, or maybe it’s just that the story simply allowed for things to look more impressive. Nothing particularly new design wise, but the old designs still hold up well. The OP was really impressive visually and had a pretty solid song too, in the vein of the previous OP songs. The main ED song was pretty solid in terms of audio and visuals, though I would have to say I prefer both of the previous season’s over it. The rap ED was also pretty interesting in terms of the song and visuals but beyond that I didn’t like it much. The soundtrack worked pretty well but wasn’t all that memorable in and of its own.