A random day back in December 2015 had me giving a chance to at that point very recent manga called Kaguya-sama after the cover grabbed my attention, not too many chapters after I already fell in love with it and it eventually became my favorite work ever and the one that I was waiting like crazy for an adaptation to happen, and when that time came… oh god, they couldn't have delivered harder!
The main duo of this story are Kaguya and Miyuki, the two students at the top of a highly renowned academy and the two most lovable tsunderes out there, consistently trying to outplay the other into confessing their love to hilarious results. These two characters come from very different perspectives (she is from a very rich and influential family with questionable raising standards and has been sheltered from the outside in the process, while he has to work part-time together with all the stuff he does to help his family, this man needs to sleep) and this is so, so nicely used for both comedic elements and also for the more dramatic parts that this work has, that give fantastic character development and make us understand and love them even more than before.
Together with those two, the student council also has two more (and equally awesome) members that bring extra dynamics to the interactions and comedy. Chika is a completely chaotic element to the tactics of the main duo, with her personality completely clashing with all the strategies they might have prepared. Lastly, we have ourguy Ishigami, the man, the legend, this man is so lovable and the perfect mix of “dude, wtf” and “stop being relatable”, protect at all costs.
A-1 Pictures is a studio that gets a lot of hate that I can't agree with at all, the way they work with different staffs leads to very different results, but any studio is pretty hit or miss anyways, and when this one goes all in very few deliver as hard, so I was very optimistic towards them getting this anime, and yet they surpassed my expectations, hard. The directing of the series is just fantastic, with so many great shots, camera movements, perfectly executed timing on the character reactions to add to the comedy, lots of extra details… just wow.
Another thing I want to praise is the voice actors, who did such an outstanding work in the way that makes you think “man, they sure had fun recording this!” I have nothing but good things to say about them, and I especially want to mention Yutaka Aoyama, the narrator of the series (such a key element of Kaguya and he did it flawlessly, so many laughs!) and Aoi Koga, who I already had the fortune to hear about thanks to her secondary role in the also fantastic Aikatsu Stars, which made me see before this anime started that she was the perfect fit for Kaguya's character, who gives a hard work with her switches between absurdly adorable and quite terrifying due to her way to be and that she did so well.
I'm so happy that this anime got the popularity it deserved (thanks Chika dance for helping with that) and I hope that this is just the first from a lot of seasons that this work needs so badly, I 100% recommend you to give this anime a chance if you haven't yet, you won't regret it!
