!Everyone poses for graduation. Congratulations!

Dear Aka Akasaka, you really know how to tug at my heartstrings, don’t you? If your end goal with this manga was to have me blushing and kicking my feet on my bed like a 14 year old girl who just got a text back from her crush, then you didn’t just race across that finish line, you blew it up in a slew of heart-shaped balloons and dreamy love letters with your cotton candy cannon of teenage romance. No amount of insulin could possibly calm the saccharine, fluffy feelings Kaguya and Miyuki managed to stir in my blood, and to be honest, Akasaka, you might have reached the pinnacle of rom-com with this one.

In terms of rom-com, Kaguya-Sama is one filled to the brim with every romantic trope and cliché that you could imagine, but in Akasaka’s own special way of viewing things. Thirteen-year-old me was a sucker for sappy rom-coms (still am!), and romance happened to be the only genre I was interested in reading for the bulk of my middle-school life. As a result, I ended up developing this delusional head-in-the-clouds sort of image of teenage romance: that it would be an electrifying game of emotional tug of war where every subtle glance, every slight brushing of hands, every library meeting filled with almost-sentences after school a tug in the right direction towards love. I would dream about finally living out my own romance manga in high school—

Obviously that didn’t happen. My high school days were quite devoid of the rose-tinted romances I would be scheming up about in bed at night. I was disillusioned by the high school experience, so when I found out that Akasaka said the setting of Kaguya-Sama was his “dream, [his] fantasy”, I was instilled with a feeling of awe. Akasaka was a dreamer just like I was, chasing that phantom of a teenage love story. The fact that he had been writing from a place of longing and not experience made Kaguya-Sama really click for me — in a way that I hadn’t felt for a while. I don’t think it was simply nostalgia, or simply novelty. It was more like… Akasaka showed me that romance was more than the perfect relationship with a perfect person. It was about the emotional force behind yearning for love. Nobody could read Kaguya-Sama and seriously think that Kaguya and Miyuki’s harebrained schemes to charm each other are the blueprint to teenage romance. What Akasaka managed to capture in his work was what we imagine a magical romance feels like. Somehow, a story born from one man’s fantasy felt so vivid and real to me. Much more so than the stories of love I had endlessly consumed in the past.

Following the cancellation of his debut work, ib -instant bullet-, Akasaka was looking to escape unemployment and start up a new series. His editor shut down his initial fantasy "death game" concept for not being "mainstream" enough, so he pivoted to rom-com instead. But the death game DNA remained: Kaguya-Sama is chock-full of the genre's hallmarks—the thrill of fighting for your life, machiavellian tactics and mind games, throwing caution to the wind and putting it all on the line for victory. So what happens if you take two genius, headstrong, lovestruck students and throw them into the most dangerous death game of all: the battlefield of love? A Death Note style battle of wits. All in the pursuit of love!

Kaguya is introduced to us as a cold and calculating sort of girl, doing whatever it takes to best Miyuki, whether it be academically or romantically. In the romantic aspect, she is of course, hopelessly in love with Miyuki — although she’ll never admit it out loud. She has oceans of pressure on her to be the best, due to her upbringing as the daughter of the Shinomiya corporation (one of the largest in Japan). They say pressure makes diamonds, and for Kaguya, she is as bright and untouchable as one — albeit soft and fluffy on the inside.

And this brings us to Miyuki. He’s out of place at the prestigious Shuchiin academy. A scholarship student from an ordinary family — not remotely of the same status as the other Shuchiin elite. Like a typical shonen protagonist, he makes up for this with his Sisyphean work ethic. His position at the top is all he has, if he’s not number one, who would he be? Kaguya is a great motivator for him as well. He needs to grind himself down to the point of exhaustion every single day in order to be someone deserving of her, all while maintaining his nonchalant personality.

Both Kaguya and Miyuki are the same — their personalities hardly contrast, and that’s by design. Both are endlessly accomplished, whether through pedigree or effort, and both are terribly dishonest with each other. Like the poles of a magnet, they repel each other (at least ostensibly), and as time passes on, their paths start to diverge. And you know what happens when opposite ends come close. Neither characters entertain the thought of losing. Their respective upbringings refuse to allow them to falter — let alone fail in any aspect of their lives. It’s this ruthless line of thought that sets the stage for their “war”. Whoever confesses first is the loser. And neither can allow themselves to lose.

How could I write about Kaguya-Sama without mentioning the cast of the student council? They perfectly complement the antics of the budding couple in the president and vice-president position. Fujiwara, Ishigami, and Iino are all special characters who explore love in their own ways.

Chika Fujiwara, the woman that you are. There’s just something I love so much about this girl who wears her heart on her sleeve, freewheeling through life with a cheerful and silly disposition. She serves as a foil to the overthinking duo, typically throwing their plans in a loop just by being her happy, cheerful self. Where Miyuki and Kaguya have myriads of ulterior motives to their actions, every move calculated, Fujiwara disrupts the carefully crafted status quo they set by waltzing in and being her usual goofy self. Fujiwara is just… Fujiwara. She doesn’t harbor any hidden darkness or malicious feelings, doesn't hide away any part of herself.

And then we have the pair of second-year students in the treasurer and auditor positions. Like Fujiwara, Miko Iino and Yu Ishigami support the flow of the story and serve additional comic relief. But apart from their narrative role in assisting with the main couple’s development, these two also have a cute little dynamic that progresses slowly across the length of the story. Their personal struggles with relationships and love are not only a reprise from Kaguya and Miyuki, but also really sweet and enjoyable to read. Akasaka really likes his slow-burn.

Of course, Kaguya-Sama wouldn't be what it is without its humor. It’s effortlessly funny — kind of in a Grand Blue type of way but more adorable. The comedy in the series hinges on a constant subversion of expectations, something Akasaka is really good at doing. He opens up with a trope we’ve probably all seen before, and our rom-com-addled brains are pretty much conditioned to thinking we know what happens next. Boom. Akasaka throws a galaxy-sized wrench into the story and now there’s a massive gap between what happens and what we thought would happen. And that gap is where the comedy lives.

But the comedy isn’t just for laughs. Akasaka uses it to examine how absurd it is to love someone. Elaborate schemes, overthinking, mental gymnastics to avoid saying three simple words: it's ridiculous, and Akasaka knows it. The humor exposes how we frame love as warfare because the alternative—being honest and vulnerable—is too terrifying.

Anyway. Kaguya-Sama is a story with a proper plot, and Akasaka is a writer who is good at spinning up these narratives, so the whimsical everyday lives of Kaguya and Miyuki can’t continue on forever. The pair have built up quite a bit of romantic tension, and it seems to be waiting to explode at any moment. So after some back and forth, poking, prodding, testing the waters, and all the other little joys of chasing love, we finally make it to the Devoted Hearts culture festival. Shuchiin’s annual celebration of love becomes the theatre for what may be the most important battle these anxious youth may fight. Couples who exchange heart-shaped objects from their beloved are destined to be together for eternity. How exciting! How spontaneous!

The Dual Confessions arc is the climactic point of the series (even though it's only halfway through the manga!), where all of the dilly-dallying and fence-sitting and wavering that Kaguya and Miyuki do for 122 chapters straight finally rolls to a boil, after simmering for so long. Amidst the giddy atmosphere of the culture festival, Kaguya and Miyuki have finally decided that they can wait no longer. They’ve shed their egos, let their guards down and resigned their prides. “Even if they don’t confess their love, I will.” they both think.

However, for these two, who have been going back and forth for so long, it’s not easy to just, y’know, say it (telling someone you love them is hard, okay?) Usually their progress gets interrupted—by the council, by fate, by whatever — putting them back at square one. But not this time. Akasaka subverts our expectations again. It seems that nothing can get in the way of our young lovers today. Miyuki has taken things into his own hands, sending Fujiwara on a wild goose chase, assigning Ishigami and Iino to the festival committee, so finally, his confession will go off without a hitch. In typical Miyuki fashion, he devises a series of riddles that only Kaguya, the girl who loves him, who understands him the most, can decipher. And Kaguya, who has seen through Miyuki's ploy, goes to face him — to let go of the words she has held on to for all this time.

The final showdown on the rooftop of the clock tower. Kaguya has found the thief (surprise! It’s Miyuki!), and the mood is right. Just tell him, Kaguya! All that’s left to do is spit it out, but you're afraid that the day will end before you can put your feelings into words. Why is it so hard to tell somebody how you really feel? How are you supposed to bare your soul to someone, when all you want to do is hide away all your insecurities because you're so deathly afraid you'll turn them away? Being in love is so, so, so scary.

Miyuki faces Kaguya, months worth of planning all leading up to this moment. When you’re not a genius, you have to work your ass off to feel like you’re worthy. You can’t say that you love them because it feels like you’re begging to be accepted. Begging to be loved. If they don’t say it first, you can never be their equal. How can you become someone who is allowed to love them?

And here's what I think Akasaka really wanted to say: love isn't about the perfect confession on a clock tower or the romantic clichés we see in an average b-list chick flick. It's about the force itself — that overwhelming, terrifying power that pushes you past your insecurities, past every mental block you've built to protect yourself. It's what allows Kaguya, who has been trained her whole life to never show weakness, to finally let her guard down. It's what drives Miyuki to exhaust himself daily just to feel worthy. Love is the force that makes you do absurd, irrational, beautiful things.

Akasaka spends 281 chapters showing us two people at war with themselves, not each other. Every scheme, every calculated move, every "battle" was just them fighting their own fear of vulnerability. And when there are no more tricks left in the bag, no more excuses and deflections, when all the dust is settled — we see that what breaks the stalemate isn't strategy or pride, no, it's that they want each other badly enough to be brave. That's the immovable force Akasaka captures. Not love as it exists in reality, but love as we feel it: overwhelming, irrational, strong enough to make you surrender yourself and think “maybe I do deserve to be loved.”

So, after a lot of unnecessary scheming and a little bit of kissing and making up, they finally get together, and the story doesn’t end yet because there are a few people who haven’t gotten their time to shine. But for Kaguya and Miyuki, their war is over. And for us, it’s time to say goodbye to Shuchiin and goodbye to everyone whose stories will continue on tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

If you take anything from Kaguya-sama, hopefully it's that love is worth the risk. That being vulnerable with someone doesn't make you weak—it makes you brave. And if that sounds too sappy, well, at least you got to watch two idiots spend 281 chapters doing mental gymnastics to avoid saying “I like you.” That's pretty entertaining on its own.

Regardless, Kaguya-Sama is an elegy to Akasaka’s (perhaps) unfulfilled high school days. It is, in his own words, a reclamation of his youth in a sense. I like to think that after 7 and a half years of serialization, Akasaka has managed to express what he wanted to express, write what he wanted to write, and properly “graduate”, alongside the members of the student council at Shuchiin.