Review of Kaguya-sama: Love is War -Ultra Romantic-
Kaguya-sama has always had a difficult balancing act to manage, but I think it’s done much better here than it’s ever been. You see, Kaguya-sama builds itself upon what would normally be considered bottle episodes in live action shows, where a large majority of the series occurs in one room with a limited topic. The magic of the show, however, is how much they stretch this. From the first episode of the first season, we have mundane topics like movie tickets being pushed to the absolute maximum through dialogue and animation. This show works best when it is high energy and is able to keep youguessing on how ridiculous it is willing to be.
In previous seasons, the show has struggled with character and plot development. When your regular episodes are this fast and energetic, how much of a sacrifice are you willing to make to slow down the pace to get things going? I personally hated the Ishigami sports carnival plot (controversial opinion, I know), mostly for how much it slowed the show to a crawl (compared to the show’s average), and I just kept feeling like I wasn’t watching Kaguya-sama anymore.
This is handled much better this season with the show being much stricter in keeping episodes divided into 3 sub-chapters, and I say this especially with reference to how the final school festival arc is being presented. The pacing never feels like it’s being cut and we still preserve the trademark craziness that makes this show what it is, a banger. I like when a show understands what is great about it, and plays through their strengths.
That being said, I have a small nitpick to end off with that I haven’t really seen anyone else mention. With this being just about the finale to the whole making the other person confess phase, I still have yet to see a good reason why the two main leads should end up together. I haven’t read the manga but I do know where things are headed, and I have no idea why the main leads are in love. We haven’t seen much chemistry between the two, occasionally Kaguya’s schemes just straight up come across as vile in nature, and as a viewer, it’s a head scratcher. I think the show partially shot itself in the foot saying by asking what about Hayasaka x Shirogane on a couple of occasions, because that honestly has a stronger reason to exist than what we’ll be getting.
The premise of the show is the flawed idea that the person who confesses first loses, an idea that Hayasaka herself has pointed out to be stupid. While it has served us well up to now, the unfortunate reality is that the focus on the confession rather than the romance thus far is becoming more and more visible, and grappling with that is going to be difficult moving forward.