Kaguya-Sama is an amazing read. The premise of two characters each being too prideful to confess to one another and opting into social hijinks to goad to other into doing so is very simple and very effective. Many of the manga's best moments occur while adhering to this premise, producing an easily digestible, episodic feeling. This format is one of Kaguya-Sama's greatest strengths, so one has to wonder how the manga fares when bucking this format. Does it sink or swim? The quality of the narrative may sink at times when getting away from this format, but more often than not doing so opens the story up for some of its more dramatic and emotionally satisfying moments.
Kaguya-Sama is an amazing comedy and romance, and I would expressly recommend it to any fan of either genre. However, if you feel the overarching narrative is operating at the cost of a comfortable, episodic, structure, then feel free to speed read to the better parts.
Kaguya-Sama is host to a very well rounded cast of characters. Each character introduced after the main three has a brief uneasy period where a reader may be worried they won't comfortably fit into the existing dynamics. This is fortunately not an issue, however, as all characters within the main cast end up in a very comfortable spot, allowing for varied premises and plots for gags across chapters. Chapters primarily focused on the interactions between members of the student council are some of the best Kaguya-Sama you'll read.
The comedy of Kaguya-Sama is wonderfully refreshing, creative, and modern. Kaguya-Sama ran from 2015 to 2022, so it is an extremely recent manga. The contemporary lens of Kaguya-Sama benefits not only its comedy, but its romance elements as well. A chapter about the awkward transition from older messaging platforms to discord is funny, while a chapter about having your phone break and losing countless photos of loved ones is emotional. Kaguya-Sama gladly discusses the culture of its time, and only benefits from it. Oddly enough, I don't feel that this aspect of Kaguya-Sama ends up dating the work, and part of that is due to the story beginning with characters using older phones and learning to text at all. Anytime you read or re-read Kaguya-Sama you'll be put in the position of the characters again, relearning new technology, new apps, new games, it's a very fortunate time frame the story captures.
The rest of this review will address specific characters, the portrayal of romance, and developments near the end of the narrative, and given Kaguya-Sama's nature as a recent work, I will be hiding these elements beneath a spoiler tag. If you don't want to read further and still aren't convinced, then this is me telling you to absolutely read Kaguya-Sama, whether it be for the comedy or the romance, it's wonderful.
The romance of Kaguya-Sama made me feel the pleasant, bashful, feelings of reading romance that I haven't in a while. I took a long while to just look at the page where Kaguya and Miyuki finally kissed, it felt amazing, completely earned. The chapter where they ended up having sex was also a bit evocative in a romance sense, however it was largely played for comedy, and didn't really have the same power as the kiss. Of course, I don't think it meant to or had to, so I don't mind this detail at all. The romance narrative wisely pivots away from Kaguya and Miyuki once they get together, allowing those elements to still be trickled out while our main couple explores new dynamics.
Showing Ishigami's perspective of romance is perhaps the perfect route the narrative could have taken, allowing the story to have its cake and eat it to, showing readers the other emotionally gripping side of romance, the rejection aspect. Anytime Ishigami got rejected, had to hold back tears, didn't have sex if it didn't feel real, and especially when he tried throwing himself down the stairs, it was all just so cathartic to read. As a romance reader I want these depressing scenes of rejection while still having my warm scenes of mutual love, so this is a nice compromise. Of course, things end well for Ishigami, so it's not like this is all at the expense of his character.
I'll try to end this review with my quick thoughts on the "Shinomiya Family War Arc" I guess you could call it. There are a few parts of the story that really make you feel a pit in your stomach, like when Kaguya tells Miyuki she rescinded her application to Stanford. It instills the characters and the reader with the feeling that this young love can't last forever. The Shinomiya Family drama near the end of the manga seems as if it's trying to farm this feeling, and just fails in my opinion. Kaguya telling Miyuki, "let's break up" should be a horribly emotional scene in a vacuum. But in context, it's a cliff hanger within a storm of dramatic cliff hangers. The reader understands it's being played for drama, that it's not real whatsoever. It's a shame, because I think if a focus was put on Miyuki's emotional crashout following a "break up" it could have felt a lot more impactful and real. As is, they break up, and within the next few chapters you forget it ever happened, and then within a few more they're back together. All of the Shinomiya Family drama suffers from this. Constant cliff hanger drama that largely leads to nothing. What's worse is when a chapter attempts to function as levity during this part of the story, any comedic chapters at this point felt horribly out of place, and just made the characters out as totally tone deaf. If anything good came from this part of the story, it was how it portrayed Miyuki, resolved, totally undeterred, and admirably stubborn, such a great character.
I'm sure upon posting this review I'll think, "right, that's what I forgot to mention..." but I simply have too many thoughts on Kaguya-Sama, and that's for the better. It's absolutely a manga I'd want to come back to.
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