Kaguya-sama: Love is War?

[Minor "spoilers" might be included here: they're not too important and merely references, just a warning for people who don't want to know absolutely anything]

Kaguya-sama: Love is War is an anime that came out during Winter 2019 and since then, it has become quite a very popular and well-received series. I'm not going to lie, I liked the first season a lot when it first came out, but my tastes towards anime and things as a whole has changed a lot since that period, in fact I don't like the first season that much anymore, so my negative perspective towards this new one would probably apply to the first season too if I re-watched it. Or perhaps, Kaguya-sama just outstayed its welcome.

As I said before, I'm not sure I'd like the first season if I re-watched it, but I'm dead sure that it would be more enjoyable than watching this one. Kaguya seemed a lot fresher back in 2019 because it brought a kind of unique way to portray a comical romcom anime, using a "psychological" approach through the two protagonists trying to be confessed to each other without doing it directly. Well, the main problem is that this season brings little to no difference whatsoever, using the same over the top and exaggerated formula, which results in this season being a chore to watch. In fact, I NEVER laughed during this whole season. Not at all. Zero. I chuckled so few times that I can count them on the fingers of one hand. In fact, this repetition might have exposed what was unnoticed to my eyes because of the novelty that I thought was there. The "Huh we're in love but we cannot say it so we're going to do everything stupid" gimmick still remains and it's basically unchanged with the apparent progress in the relationship being just a comical factor. I'm sick of it, because it gets annoying after a while.

My problem with Kaguya-sama is the fact that it tries SO HARD to be funny in every way possible through supposedly "strange and original" gimmicks. This is the problem: it's overthought to the point of not being funny anymore. An example is its use of a narrator that says "a character is walking" while the anime shows that a characters is, indeed, walking. What's the point when the anime doesn't need any? That's overdoing it and makes it more unfunny than it already is. Additional unfunny and stretched things are the overuse of the so-called "psychological" stuff: over the top mental trips that have no meaning, its use repetition that in some anime is funny but in this case it simply isn't. How many times did Iino Miko walk inside the room and find Kaguya & Shirogane doing misunderstandable things? This reaches to the point where I can predict what's going to happen in a lot of moments and that's a terrible thing for a comic anime that relies on taking the viewer by surprise.

Another thing I hated in this season is the fact that some moments looked like they were never supposed to be funny. An example is the election moment. What am I supposed to get out of it when it's an anime that's supposed to be comical? The atmosphere was tense for absolutely no reason and made me question: "What the hell is this supposed to be?" - The same goes for some other moments that I'm not going to write about. Anyways: I'm not going to feel like I have to take seriously this one, when it had one moment where Kaguya fainted, they brought her to the hospital, to be visited by a DOCTOR and... HUH it's a "sickness" that makes your heart beat when Shirogane is around. Yeah. When they were talking about it, while I thought "well, this will probably turn out to be some stupid joke too", on the other hand it might've been some serious stuff. Turns out it wasn't, so every time this will happen in the next events, I'm not going to take it seriously, regardless of it being a joke or not and this damages any good intentions that the series might've had to tackle greater themes. Speaking of which, in episode 11 they decided to talk about ISHIGAMI'S DIFFICULT PAST out of the blue, but I'll focus on it in the next section...

Story and characters? Well... there's not much to talk about. The story is still the same: Kaguya and Shirogane are in love but because the writer said so they're never going to confess until this series stops being profitable and its fans get sick of it (never). As I said before, there's basically no progress in their relationship and everything that happens between them is taken as a joke so... nothing there. I wouldn't mind a dumb nonexistent story if the anime was actually funny, but since it's NOT, well, I'm looking for anything to grab hold of. Characters? Oh well - they haven't changed at all since the last season, they remain the exact same cliches and they're just bounded to their own gags, perhaps they're even more ridiculed: Kaguya doesn't want to confess, Shirogane doesn't want to confess, Chika is Chika, Ishigami is still an incel nerd and isn't the character the makes me laugh out loud anymore, Hayasaka Ai says "haha me secretly crazy am I cool yet am I cool yet", the new "character" Iino Miko is as deep as a glass of water and all we know about her is that she walks inside the room and find Kaguya & Shirogane doing misunderstandable things. As I mentioned before, they decided to talk about ISHIGAMI'S DIFFICULT PAST in episode 11, but what's the point of it being there? The two leads are parodies of themselves, the apparent progress is not taken seriously, so why would an episode about his past make someone a real character? The series is joke-oriented and comical, so it's not like, say, this character is very sad all the time in this drama series and now that we know more about him we can empathize and feel his sadness. No, since the rest of the series is just jokes, the characters are just going to be ridiculous for the rest of the series, so it's completely pointless. The real purpose is just trying to make the series SEEM actually deep behind its comical mask with layers of depressing background. Yeah, seem, because it's just empty, after all.

The art is cool, nothing that blows my mind but it's definitely not bad too look at. Other than that, of course Kaguya-sama stretches and tries to put random writings, colours and styles of drawing, just to be exaggerated and try to be ridiculous in every aspect possible (Teen Titans GO-core).
About sound, there is not much to say about it: it's background music to add up to the "atmosphere" and nothing to listen outside of it. OP is sung by the same dude who sung the first one, so it's something I'd never listen to seriously, the ED is nothing out of the ordinary too.
Well, I don't mind these two aspects that much.

All in all, this season was repetitive, it outstayed its welcome and it was an unfunny journey all along. Don't think of me as a pretentious guy who wants DEEP PHILOSOPHY in every bit of anime, in fact I really enjoyed other comical anime; what I mean is: when I watch simple non-comical anime with a bit of slice of life, there are plenty of times in which I smile or chuckle, because I don't pretend THAT much, I prefer simple things than "overdone and overthought to the point of unfunny" gags that try too hard.
Well, it looks like I'm the minority here, since this season has a busted 8.93 mean score.