Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

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Here’s the first line in this week’s episode of Kaguya-sama: Love is War -Ultra Romanic-.

Pretty bad, right? Of course, because this is this show, it quickly becomes obvious that Nagisa Kashiwagi (Momo Asakura), the short-haired girl there, is overreacting, and that her boyfriend, fellow C-String character Tsubasa Tanuma (Taku Yashiro) is not actually cheating on her. But he has been spending time with another female student, one Maki Shijo (Kana Ichinose), Kaguya’s distant relative and perpetual loser of the love games that the entire rest of Shuchiin Academy seems to be caught up in. And that’s suspicious enough for both Nagisa herself and for Kaguya. This leaves Miko to play the role of the straight man. Pity her.

As always, -Ultra Romantic- spices up what was a fairly straightforward scene in the manga with all kinds of weird audiovisual tricks. When Kaguya and Nagisa both immediately conclude Tsubasa is cheating, their halves of the table are “squished together,” and their voices are run through what sounds like a flutter filter. A pretty effective way to convey that Miko, the only reasonable voice at the table, feels like she’s losing her mind.

When the topic turns to the fact that the accused were recently at a karaoke booth together, Kaguya of course immediately changes her tune, only for Miko to agree that that is solid evidence of cheating, since “people often do indecent things at karaoke.”

The whole thing turns out to be a misunderstanding, of course. Maki and Tsubana had spent the day together because the latter wanted help picking out a six-month anniversary gift; an extremely cheap-looking heart necklace. All girls present—including Chika, who happens to arrive just as this is all happening—think it’s hopelessly tacky. But Nagisa loves it, so this particular sketch ends on a happy note. At least, for her. Not necessarily for everybody.

If you’re next thought, for some reason, is “but what about Maki?” Do not fret, Love is War has you covered. As mentioned, Maki is the loser of Kaguya-sama‘s cast. She, as we learn here, has been crushing on Tsubasa for months, maybe years, and is all burnt up about Nagisa hooking up with him, so seeks out the Student Council’s advice on the matter. Specifically, that of Shirogane and Ishigami. (Irony of ironies, you may remember Nagisa and Tsubasa only got together in the first place because of Shirogane’s advice, way back in season one. If you don’t, the show explicitly calls attention to it, so no worries.)

Maki is a somewhat pitiable character. She’s basically Kaguya herself minus the charisma and most of the status—she takes a lot of pride in being a member of a minor branch family of house Shinomiya—down to the fact that they have similar mannerisms. This segment of the episode is less heavy on the wonky visuals, although there are still certainly some. Especially when the series needs to draw comparisons between Maki and Kaguya.

Ishigami has an interesting role here. He completely cuts through all of Maki’s anime trope defenses, eventually getting her to drop the tsundere act, but also making her pretty sad in the process when he outlines how being someone’s second girlfriend is different than being their first.

But eventually, the two do convince Maki to at least make an earnest attempt at telling her crush how she feels. She also does explicitly say that even just talking to someone about this makes her feel a bit better. I’ve never been entirely able to love the Maki mini-arc, maybe because she reminds me too much of a few people I’ve met over the course of my life whereas most of the other romantic misunderstandings in Kaguya are firmly in goofier territory. Nonetheless, she does get a last laugh here, as she’s about to leave (and as Kaguya enters), this happens.

^{Of course, to keep the show’s main plot going, Shirogane can’t exactly just say that it’s because Maki reminds him of Kaguya.}

The third and final segment of the episode is a classic “Chika sets up a game” sketch.

The series has done these since near the start of season one, and they’re always fun, so I’m happy to see them make a return. Chika’s grand plan for this particular round is to play a common group date game. (Called the “Ten Yen Coin Game.” It’s basically group truth or dare without the “dare” part and restricted to Yes/No questions.)

Chika has never struck me as all that interested in romance, quite unlike the entire rest of the cast. Indeed, a throwaway line in the manga seems to imply she’s aromantic, whether or not she was deliberately written as such. But she does love games, especially if she can use them to fuck around with people, and that is precisely what she does here. She even brought a lie detector along, just to make sure no one tells any fibs.

The questions quickly take a turn for the heavy as soon as it’s Ishigami’s turn to ask. This is, of course, played for comedy. But damn dude, asking people if they secretly hate you is not generally a great strategy toward making sure they don’t. (One person answers yes anyway, probably Miko. Ishigami promptly breaks down in happy tears that it’s only one person.)

Miko isn’t much better, asking if they really need her around. And when no one answers no, she’s also absolutely ecstatic.

^{Ishigami tells her that she shouldn’t go on group dates because she’s so easily swayed by flattery that she’d be an easy mark. It’s a little rude maybe, but honestly, it’s solid advice.}

As for Kaguya and Shirogane, you can probably guess that they use the game to convolutedly try to scheme into getting the other to confess their feelings. It does not work out, although both leave the game on a positive note. As they clean up, Shirogane feels the need to make it clear to Kaguya that nothing, you know, happened during that whole karaoke incident. Kaguya believes him, though she doesn’t make that totally clear.

The episode ends on a sweet note, then. But I can imagine that some of you might be hungry for this plot to move along a little faster. I can’t say when, but I do have a hunch that more substantial developments are on the horizon. There’s only one real way to find out if that’s true though, so to that end, I’ll see you next Friday, Kaguya fans.

Bonus Hayasaka Screencap: This one was hard. Hayasaka isn’t actually in this episode at all other than a brief flashback scene (and I feel like that doesn’t really count.) So instead, have a shot of her appearance in this season’s ED, a wonderful fantasia where Shirogane and Kaguya are star-crossed lovers on opposite sides of a war in a faraway steampunk kingdom. The whole thing is just Shirogane’s dream, of course, but he does have quite the imagination, doesn’t he? Anyway, Hayasaka sells the soldier look quite well.

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