13 Episodes later, I'm back with another review of this beloved series. Does it live up to the high expectations that others have hyped up?
This anime starts right off at the end of Season 2 up to the much hyped Cultural Festival Arc. It's basically split to 3 parts, the other stuff (Ep. 1-5), preparation of the Cultural Festival Arc (6-7) and the proper cultural festival arc (8-13). The first part is the part that is the most similar to the first season. It ends (and peaks) at Episode 5 with the rapping episode. The 2nd part is in my opinion the weakest as it is obviously a buildup to future episodes though these shouldn't be skipped E V E R. The 3rd one is the most hyped up part of the anime and it delivers the goods. I will say, they f**king did it. It gets a bit dramatic there and kind of goes on for some time but I'd say it's worth the hype. A little nitpick is that I wish
On the characters, there's a bit of an emphasis on minor characters. Maki is discount Kaguya pretty much. She's pretty important in 2 segments then, took a back seat. I hope we get more in the future. We get the Real main characters if this was a typical rom com, Nagisa and Tsubasa. You may have known them in the first season. They're kinda back. I think the minor character that had the most screen time is Tsubame. The B plot with Ishigami seems to be unfinished so I think future seasons may return to them in some episode. In the main characters, we swing back to focus more on Miyuki and Kaguya. I just like how they developed over the 37 episodes we've seen them.
Visually, it seems to be a much more higher budget version of the previous seasons. Unfortunately no rotoscoped parts here. At the very least their utilization of CG is high quality and subtle except for episode 13 where I think all of the budget went to. Even with that, this will not be remembered as a visual treat as in my opinion, there are other anime that pushes the visuals further than this.
In the music, if you like the previous seasons' music, you may like this too. One thing I failed to mention is that some of the music are references to other music. Blame my ineptitude in this area.
This season in my opinion is peak Kaguya and for some, rom coms in general for the decade. Everything that the premise promised us from the very beginning comes to fruition here.
Will this get a 4th season? Well, there is an announcement of another Kaguya anime someday. Whether it's TV or movie format will not be known until several months later. So, this anime ain't dead yet. Huzzah! According to the manga, the anime does not cover half of the manga so there is still content to adapt. I'd say around 3-4 seasons worth of content. If they're going to adapt from start to finish, Kaguya-sama will have 7-9 seasons by the end if it's exclusively on television which I find highly unlikely. I think 6-7 seasons and 2-4 movies is much more likely but that's just my prediction. It would be interesting to see how they adapt future chapters from this point on.
Story: 10/10
Characters: 9/10
Visuals: 8/10
Music: 10/10
Edit: The old summary was "The culmination of everything that was built up from previous seasons". That's a lie. If you want that, watch the movie after this. Hopefully this is the last time I edit this.
Edit 2: Add a strikethrough to the English dub disclaimer. All should be fixed now.
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