Kaguya-sama: Love Is War - Reviews

Kaguya: Love is War is the product of training a GPT-3† model on the corpus of anime and manga, then asking it to generate two of the most basic tsundere (Kaguya and Miyuki) characters available and a deredere (Chika) character. These characters can never act like real people or else the only thread holding the plot together, that both Miyuki and Kaguya are too prideful to admit they like the other, would immediately collapse. Chika, effectively an agent of chaos, is Schrödinger's idiot: she is simultaneously an expert and utterly incompetent at reading emotions and superficially dumb while being an expert in many things.

Both Kaguya and Miyuki construct scenarios where they can trap the other into confessing their love for them, so the two can date since they are too proud to admit it themselves. Both are clever, scheming, and intelligent, well, supposedly. They concoct situations where every they have conceived every possible outcome, ensuring the other has no room to maneuver. Well, sort of. It's an excellent premise if the characters weren't so generic and the execution hollow.

In an early episode, both Kaguya and Miyuki pretend not to have an umbrella so they can share the other's, a staple of anime romcoms. Since both planned ahead, both pretend not to have an umbrella and now have to trick the other into admitting they have one. Kaguya walks through how Miyuki knew it would rain so he took the train rather than rode his bike, which she knows because she did not see his bike at school. Which, if Miyuki had a modicum of intelligence, would let him know Kaguya looked through the bike rack to trap him, so she too had planned ahead. But rather than have any real battle of wits, so the characters act how we're told they should be, Chika suddenly appears to offer Kaguya her umbrella. We're given a cheap way out of a poorly contrived scenario.

These characters can't act like real people or there wouldn't be a plot. It's at best boring, and for a show revolving around the antics of the two leads, the characters are shallow and generic. It's astounding just how popular this show is for how dull it is.

† GPT-3 is a a machine-learning model that produces realistic output, and can be applied to many things, such as writing code snippets or news articles.

Not bad but this anime is defienatly overhyped. I feel like the last two episdoes were the only ones worth watching. It had moments that made me laugh but the rest was quite boring because all the episodes were in the exact same room. There were no backstories that made me feel connected to them so i didnt feel attached to the chracters like other animes. It's a good anime to kill time if your that bored. The animation itself was beautiful though so i appriciate that. 

The show has some well developed and bright characters who also share some great chemistry but I do feel the skits are a bit of a hit and miss however. Some skits will be excellent and memorable but there are also plenty of skits that are forgettable or will leave you scratching your head.

But let’s be real, you only watch this show for the characters and the characters are all in contention for best character of the season. 

I personally appreciate the animations a lot, a show that has mastered the horror/thriller elements in comedic situations.

Kaguya-sama: Love is War

This series has been on my waiting list for a long time, and now I finally got to enjoy a very balanced comedy that was pleasing to my palate.

Love is War is a romantic comedy that intentionally mocks the familiar school romance concept and tries to create as many absurdly bizarre situations as possible. It does this brilliantly well, especially thanks to the characters and how the jokes are tied among them.
In the main role are the 2 protagonists, who are practically indomitable geniuses in their own respective domains. However, as soon as it comes to love, their IQ collapses and they behave like little children hearing about love for the first time.

The premise of this series is that the 2 protagonists push each other to have the other confess love to them. With this idiotic attitude, they keep running into the wall, just to avoid making the first embarrassing move. Even though this joke becomes relatively monotonous in the long run, the author has done his best to make the scenarios as individual as possible.

The humor of the show makes use of exaggeration and parody of many well-known RomCom events and problems from everyday life. Although the concept is simple and the templates are already there. Nevertheless, in the area of humor, almost the best possible was taken out of the various scenes.
Unfortunately, most of the jokes in the series are much more amusing than the actual running gag of the show.

[Story 1]

There is none, of course. Their everyday life consists only of trapping each other and throwing romantic glances at each other now and then. And, of course, taking over their duties in the student council and escaping Chika's madness.

[Characters 4]

We have the self-sacrificing heroic role model protagonist Shirogane, who does everything to help others and breaks his own limit to keep up with the smartest geniuses in society.
Kaguya is your typical cliché Tsundere (yes, she has the Japanese voice actor of Paimon from Genshin).
Ishigami is the typical outsider who doesn't fit into society.
And Chika, the hyperactive stupid, and naive nut.

The typical RomCom team that everyone wants! - Of course not.

But the author has given all of them several characteristics and combined them perfectly with the humorous basics of this show. If it weren't for the characters, the jokes would be much less effective. Through their exaggerated traits, they have become very high-quality humorous characters.

Unexpectedly, Ishigami and Chika became my favorites, although I would have definitely bet on the other 2.

[Animation 8 / Sound 9 ]

The pacing is fast and the scene changes are very professionally done. The animations vary greatly between immensely high quality and above average depending on the situation. The background details are also variable. The scene changes and the different perspectives left a particularly positive impression.

The outro takes some time to get used to and isn't particularly impressive, but it's still enough.
The intro, on the other hand, is one of the musically best intros I've ever heard and an absolute earworm.
The Osts make the whole thing even a cream crown. Not only their perfect placement of comedy timing but also the refreshing variety.

[Conclusion 7]

Love is War is a very remarkable comedy and convinced us a lot with the first season. While there was a lack of individuality in this one, the show feels slightly limited, as you know what events it's already going to come down to. However, it doesn't mean you're immune to the brain-burningly amusing humor of this Anime.
Definitely recommended for any comedy fan, even if the hype had clearly promised too much.

[Enjoyment 9]

STORY:

The main premise of the series is that whoever confesses their love first, loses, because they give power over the relationship to the confessed person. So we follow the tale of two young highschoolers who are in love with each other and constantly try to get the other to confess first. That's it. That's all there is plot-wise. The opening and the posters can be misleading, because they make it seem like our protagonists are actually actively trying to kill each other, when nothing could be further from the truth.

The anime composes of a series of short stories, showing the everyday life of our two bordeline psychopaths that will sometimes go to ridiculous lengths to achieve their goal. The quality varies. Some parts are funny, some are not, some are predictable, some you can't see coming ... And a lot of the time they try to play off the usual anime love clichés, so it helps if you are familiar with them.

ANIMATION:

Decent. Nothing mind blowing, but perfectly enough for this kind of show. I couldn't understand why Kaguya has red eyes at first, but as the president has blue eyes, it soon became apparent it's for the usual red vs. blue battle.

SOUND:

The dubbing is great, as always, and the "calm on the outside, screaming on inside" adds a lot. The opening song may be okay, but it's very unfitting to the colourful and bubbly animation, with how slow and "dull" it is. The endings were fine. I don't remember any songs from the soundtrack, since it didn't really stand out all that much.

CHARACTERS:

Both Shinomiya and Shirogane are absolute dorks who don't know how to human properly, but I have to say I liked the president way better, because in time it became apparent that he's the more normal of the two, while I started getting fed up with Kaguya who is presented as this "tragic" character, until you realise most of her problems concerning her friends and love life are her own fault.

The supporting cast is fine. Fujiwara is the perfect third wheel and ensues most of the hilarity. Ishigami is ... there. And I really ended up liking Hayasaka.

OVERALL:

It's a fun, simple show. I'd recommend watching one episode at a time rather than binging it, because of its episodic nature.

Watched for the AP Secret Santa 2019