Kaguya finally kisses Miyuki at the end of season 3 but she made a fatal mistake of doing a French kiss, thinking that would be the normal thing to do, an extremely interesting premise to continue to the story but somehow I think it was a mistake. Rating something "not as good as 10/10" is not saying much but having the decline, even a small one at the very end of an otherwise perfect series will always leave a bad taste.

This is a spoilers review because it's the ending movie of a series, and not a new one at that, plus I don't think this will affect your viewing experience. The show starts to show cracks almost immediately after the French kiss incident, because what happens next is Kaguya changing into the personalities that show up in her internal conflict court scenes. Yes these personalities are sort of "established" but you wouldn't think they're supposed to mean Kaguya literally has split personality disorder. Another interpretation is she's simply revert to herself back before she met Miyuki but that doesn't make sense either because her new personality is still super in love with Miyuki. This drastic change ultimately feels contrived to artificially lead into the desired topic of this arc.

Miyuki somehow also feels like a different character but this time it's not really canon as characters in the story don't mention it. Miyuki's usual sharp intelligence disappears and we get a bunch of bog standard "guy can't take a hint" stories which make no sense because up until now both Kaguya and Miyuki have always been able to predict each other a few steps ahead. You could say it's because of Kaguya's personality change but Miyuki have met OG Kaguya before, he should know what she was like yet he just gets completely lost and out of ideas to create drama.

It is then revealed that Miyuki is not actually this confident student president guy we've seen in the 3 seasons, he's actually more like Ishigami, and he's only putting on this act so he can win over Kaguya's heart. I mean this is quite romantic but I just don't buy it, it's not supported by the TV shows up till now. Sure there was one scene of Miyuki before he was president, but that was already at the end of Season 3, it was never set up earlier. It also just doesn't make sense if you think about it because the premise of the entire show is the 2 MC have too much pride to confess first, but now we're saying Miyuki's pride is just an act he puts on? If this is has secretly been the case all along then his internal dialogs should've been different, he should've been totally honest about having feelings for Kaguya except he cannot confess first to preserve his brand image. Instead I think his internal dialogs have always suggested his student president personality is genuine and not an act.

To mirror this we get the reveal that ice queen Kaguya is also an act she puts on, this has always been more of a funny gag than serious discussion of trauma and alternate personalities so honestly the reveal just felt weird. I'm also not sure if this makes much sense because an "act" is not the same as an aspect of your personality, I feel like an act should have no corresponding personality because it isn't really you. Kaguya's internal court of debate should represent aspects of her personality, each of which are actually part of her, not an act. It also makes no sense when considering the final message of the movie, which is about feeling secure to show your true self for your partner. Ok so which of these personalities' of Kaguya is supposed to be her true self? The ice queen? So the "normal" Kaguya we've seen the most is not her "true self" and it's somehow stressful for her to maintain that personality? That wouldn't make any sense would it? Kaguya insists that since she's shown her true self to Miyuki, that he should return the favor and do the same. What is she talking about? Ice queen Kaguya? She's shown that her entire life so that can't be it right? But surely that is exactly the personality she does not want to show Miyuki. I just think somewhere in this mess of a narrative there's a major contradiction.

This drastic change in tone to a serious exploration of difficulties overcome by the 2 MC in the past would be extremely interesting on paper, but they're just not sufficiently set up in the series up till now so things feel contrived and even out of character. Going back to Miyuki's case, it's one thing to have a comedy where the president is always #1, but now it's a serious realistic story about some average guy one day deciding he's going to be #1 so he can impress the girl he likes. Then he just snaps his fingers and bam he's #1 at this elite school, we've simultaneously raised the bar for believability because of the tone shift, and the impressiveness of the deed such that it's no longer believable.

Kaguya being a rich princess is funny, her having a maid is funny, her family doctor is funny, there was no need to turn all of this into a psychological trauma.