Tag: Kaguya

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR -ULTRA ROMANTIC- Episode 12

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

Heart to Heart! — Let your burning love reach everyone!

– Hoshin Culture Festival Motto

How do you open the two-part finale to your long-running love story? How about your heroine turning to stone and shattering? That’s the visual that Kaguya-sama: Love is War! opens on as its third season draws to a close; girl to granite to rubble. Why? Because Miyuki Shirogane is going to Stanford, and Kaguya Shinomiya knows she can’t stop him. And moreover, knows she shouldn’t.

It’s a visual metaphor, obviously; Kaguya-sama has loved those since it started and it certainly isn’t going to stop using them now. But, the literalization of the sentence “she was shattered by the revelation” gives you a pretty good notion of what we’re all in for here. If Love is War, this is the conflict’s turning point, where the generals and foot soldiers alike earn their medals.

Spare a thought for Hayasaka, who has been mostly-unwillingly playing both roles for ages now, and is who Kaguya goes to for comfort and advice as her carefully-laid plans for a full year of dating fall to pieces. Shirogane isn’t just going to Stanford, he’s graduating a year early to account for cross-Pacific grade differences. For us, it’s an elaboration as to why he’s been acting like time is running out, if it weren’t already obvious. For Kaguya, it’s a sledgehammer to the face. Love is a battlefield, and she’s been ambushed.

Hayasaka, again in her role as a beleaguered advisor, needles her mistress. If the day has to be today, then the confession of feelings—that old Japanese pop media trope so ingrained into the anime landscape that it’s practically part of the scenery—has to be perfect. Kaguya tries different phrasings, Hayasaka shoots almost all of them down. It’s amusing, yes. Kaguya-sama fully empties its bag of visual tricks here; starting with cheerleader-based how-to-confess diagrams and references to the ancient “yukkuri shitte ne” meme.

But the real emotional heft obviously comes when Kaguya-sama reigns it back in. As Hayasaka and Kaguya talk, the room is bathed in a scarlet sunset, and the core point the maid makes is simple; there aren’t any easy outs. Kaguya just has to tell the president how she feels about him somehow. There can be nothing else.

There is just one problem; in order to confess to the president, Kaguya has to find him, first.

In the meantime, theirs is not the only story freefalling through youthful confusion. As she searches high and low for Shirogane, Kaguya catches sight of Ishigami and Tsubame, which serves as a crossfade over to their side of the cultural festival.

Ishigami remains as oblivious-self-conscious as ever, paranoid about coming across as a “creep” for having a command of flower symbology while at the same time being still wholly unaware that what he intended as a simple kind gesture has been taken by Tsubame—and indeed the whole student body—as a declaration of romantic love. Here, Tsubame begs his patience, but because he doesn’t really know what she’s talking about, things get muddled; intentions swept off the ground in the December breeze, and the half-punchline that is Ishigami’s continued unawareness can only do so much to pop the winter evening ambiance. Unintentionally, Ishigami gives Tsubame until March, when the cherry tree they’re standing under blooms, to truly answer his feelings. The gymnast is surprised by his mental fortitude, and the whole sequence is funny, but also very sweet in its own way.

It’s only after the two part that Ishigami gets some sense of what he may have actually done. A festival play recounts the legend that gives the culture festival its heart motif, and our boy comes within striking distance of figuring out that giving hearts out is an implied romantic gesture. Still, the second Tsubame herself takes stage in the play, all rational thought goes out the window for Ishigami, and he promptly stops thinking about it.

But, even if things between them don’t work out, one gets the sense they’ll both be fine in their own way.

Back at our main story, though, Kaguya is lost in her own little world as she prepares to light the culture festival bonfire via flaming arrow. She manages an impressively skippy internal monologue the entire time, as We Want to Talk About Kaguya! leads Karen and Erika cameo off to the side of the scene.

I wonder if Aoi Koga gets paid by the word.

Karen will write a doujin about this later.

But the bonfire-lighting itself is swept aside as the mysterious “phantom thief Arsene” makes his presence known; the papier-mâché dragon jewel is gone, and the thief’s calling cards float in the air en-masse as a shadowy silhouette cuts a looming figure against the night sky.

Of course, no one but us knows that Shirogane is behind all this just yet. Notably, Fujiwara tasks herself with solving the mystery, only for her grandiloquent proclamations of her own genius to dissolve into a puddle as it becomes obvious that most of the ‘clues’ she’s found are either her own inventions or deliberately planted to throw her off. This is Kaguya’s puzzle to solve, and there’s only one actual hint.

Karen, in what is to my recollection her single most substantial contribution to Kaguya-sama‘s story, points out that the small calling cards are made of flame-resistant paper. This sets Kaguya’s own mental wheels a-turning, because that kind of care and preparedness reminds her of a certain someone, and it does not take long for the rest of the game to click into place.

And to give us all just the slightest airbrake of comedy before rocketing into its last half hour, Kaguya-sama then pulls out the one-two punch of “Kaguya dropped the plastic heart she was going to give Shirogane” and “Kaguya does not know how coffee machines work.”

Very good, Miss Shinomiya.

Shirogane, meanwhile, is starting to get flustered. The usual pattern of his where he does something extremely teenager only to cringe himself half to death the following day beginning to kick in as the second day of the culture festival ends. The narrator puts it best; the final battle of this war of love is to be a fistfight.

Kaguya-sama: Love is War!‘s season finale is a fucking hurricane of romantic imagery.

Shirogane’s plan is grandiose, ridiculous, ostentatious, and the sort of thing that only a heartsick teenage boy could dream up. It leans hard on narrative convenience—the strings he’d have to pull make no real sense, and the post-hoc explanations given here don’t really either—and hard on pre-built character sympathy. If someone did this kind of thing in real life and you read about it in the news, they’d be a horrible creep and you’d hate them. This is a “proposing on the Jumbotron” gesture blown up to ridiculous fantasy proportions.

But that of course is part of the beauty of fiction. Kaguya and Shirogane love each other very much; we know this, and have known this. It’s been obvious to everyone, including much of the show’s own cast, for, at this point, real-world years. Anything that moves the needle at all is good. But this? This is insanity. Beautiful, wonderful, romantic insanity. If love is a sickness, Shirogane’s case is terminal.

He uses some mechanical doohickey to pop a massive balloon, sending scores of heart balloons out into the air above the festival, held aloft by the heat from the bonfire, the December night breeze, and the fact that anime is the highest form of art. Shirogane’s winding internal monologue about how he really wants Kaguya to confess first because he needs to feel equal to her only half makes sense, but that doesn’t really matter. None of the obvious little holes in Shirogane’s plan really matter. Do you see how hard Kaguya’s blushing? I got contact flutters from watching this. Frankly, I’m a little envious.

It would be one thing if it stopped there, but it does not.

This isn’t usually what one means when they say “popping the question,” but it certainly feels comparable.

Really stop for a second and think about what he’s asking there. Think about these two characters and their respective situations, think about the enormity of what he’s asking her to do. Even on its own, studying abroad is a huge undertaking. Studying abroad at Stanford University is quite another level beyond that. Doing so in Kaguya’s specific situation is yet another step beyond that. This is an absurd ask. Kaguya says as much.

She says yes anyway. An implicit fuck-it-all to her own upbringing and, really, her entire life up to this point. She doesn’t even really hesitate. She’s giddy, if anything.

They kiss. Obviously, they kiss. On top of a clocktower, hearts surrounding them in the air.

Elsewhere on the festival grounds, Hayasaka blushes like crazy once she realizes what’s going on, and Miko Iino, alone on patrol, is the only one not present at the bonfire. Ishigami brings her a recording—and a plastic heart trinket, for the lost and found—a much more subtly sweet moment that contrasts nicely with the star-scraping, wild gesture that Shirogane’s just pulled off. Could there be something between those two someday? I don’t think it’s impossible. (It will certainly be funny if Ishigami, the character that Kaguya-sama‘s least pleasant fans attach themselves to out of a misunderstanding of his character, ends up having to choose between two women who are into him, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)

And just like that, the festival switches off like a lightswitch, and we cut to the morning after. There is a postscript of sorts here; it’s very funny, and sweet in its own way, featuring a rare appearance from Kaguya’s childish “Kaguya-chan” personality. But with all I’ve said here, recapping that bit as well would feel a little pointless. It made me cackle out loud at one point, so you can consider that an endorsement.

It’s a valid question to ask; where, if anywhere, does Kaguya-sama: Love is War! go from here?

Well, not long after the episode aired in Japan, we got an answer of sorts. Whether that’s another season being announced, an OVA, a film, no one really knows yet. But Kaguya and Shirogane’s story doesn’t end here, and that’s the important part. I will spoil nothing, but there is much of the manga left to cover, so I am very curious as to what’s being planned. Kaguya-sama will appear here on Magic Planet Anime again, that much is almost a certainty.

But for now, the romantic rollercoaster ride has come to an end. Until next time, Kaguya fans.

Results for Today’s Battle: Mutual Victory

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR -ULTRA ROMANTIC- Episode 11

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

We knew this day would come. There’s been a fire burning in Miyuki Shirogane’s heart since we first learned that he’d be transferring abroad for college, probably since before then. Hourglasses wait for no one, and Miyuki and Kaguya’s dynamic has shifted fairly drastically since the first season, or really even, the earlier parts of this season.

Episode 11 is, top to bottom, filled with the actions of a man who knows he’s running out of time, and running out of time fast. We learn at the very end of this episode that the transfer to Stanford is not some far-off thing, he’s been accepted. And will be skipping his last year of high school. Shooting for the moon is no longer an option; it’s a necessity.

But as much as this episode does to pour the powder in and light the fuse, the long-awaited confessionary gun does not fire just yet. That’s for next week’s episode, a double-length finale. This week, there’s a lot of tension, a lot of buildup, and, thankfully, still quite a lot of jokes. A ton of great visual tricks here, too, most of which I don’t have the space to discuss individually.

We begin with what I’m fairly sure is a deliberate throwback to the back-and-forth antics of season one. Kaguya visits a balloon tying table, which ‘just so happens’ to be staffed by Shirogane. Obviously, she wants him to make her a balloon heart, but in her own mind she still can’t just say that, leading to her giving out an increasingly ridiculous list of things that the balloon can’t be, culminating with her arguing that flowers are animals. (It’s complicated.)

Notably, in this and a few other nods to the first season’s structure, Kaguya and Shirogane’s roles are reversed. It is now Kaguya who is at a distinct “disadvantage” when it comes to playing these little games. Notice, for instance, how things turn when she finally gets her heart balloon, and finds out that you don’t pay for them with money like you do any of the other designs.

Whoops!

Flustered, she slaps far too much money down and flees. It’s funny, but it does also show that Kaguya and Shirogane are really no longer even doing the same thing. When they both thought they had all the time in the world to work this out, the stakes were relatively low. Now that Shirogane, at least, knows that that’s not the case, he has much less to lose. (Arguably, he never had anything to lose in the first place other than perhaps a misplaced sense of pride, but you know how teenagers are.)

Eventually, Kaguya encounters Tsubame, who is having a tough time figuring out how to respond to Ishigami’s unintentional confession. Specifically, figuring out how to turn him down. She’s used to turning down playboy types who think they’re entitled to her, but Ishigami’s confession was (from her point of view, see last episode’s recap for how this whole mixup happened), sincere and straightforward, and that’s not something she knows how to deal with.

It’s not even, really, that she doesn’t like Ishigami. She just doesn’t know him very well, and is concerned that being in a serious relationship would damage other areas of her life.

Kaguya, always with a minor in villainy, initially assumes that the person she’s talking about must be someone else—and thus one of Ishigami’s rivals—and in the process she very nearly convinces Tsubame to shut him down in perhaps the worst way possible.

Thankfully things eventually clear themselves up. Kaguya and Tsubame eventually find themselves spying on Chika, who deals with the out-of-the-blue confession that she gets by challenging her would-be beaux to a quiz and then spouting koans at him.

There’s also a short scene where Iino very nearly gets sweet-talked by a pair of random incidental characters. Girl really needs to be more careful (thankfully Ishigami is there to bonk her on the head).

The remainder of the episode sees Kaguya run into Shirogane again. He promptly invites her to walk around the festival, and once again, Kaguya does not entirely know how to deal with Shirogane’s suddenly much more blunt personality. When she asks him if people won’t get the idea that they’re on a date, to which he promptly responds….

….again, he knows he’s running short on time. All of this is fairly interesting in that outside of the context of Kaguya-sama as a series itself, it wouldn’t be that notable. But within that context, knowing what we do about both of these people, Shirogane’s sudden comparative boldness is pretty striking.

This includes, for example, taking her to a fortune telling booth manned by a girl known for asking questions that border on the lascivious. Meet Yume Atenbo (Ai Kakuma). She’s what some sorts of people, a long time ago, would’ve called a one-scene wonder. She gets in, does her thing, and gets out. She’s kind of amazing, an opinion I definitely don’t hold in part because she’s dressed up as a witch and my Twitter account is called “Jane the Anime Witch.”

She needles the two to the point of, frankly, harassment. (As always, romcoms are not a good place to get your notions of proper romance or just behavior in general from, kids.) But she does also drop this particularly interesting bombshell in between all the quips about how Kaguya will make a great wife.

Is she just messing with them? Is she playing cupid? Does she have actual supernatural insight somehow? Who knows, but no matter the method, she is actually right, as we’ll come to see. She also compares Kaguya to pure water; someone whose very nature changes depending on who she surrounds herself with. (I would argue this is true of all people to some extent, but that it’s truer of Kaguya than most would not necessarily be wrong.)

The both of them flustered (but definitely happy), Kaguya and Shirogane spend much of the remaining day together, after a hilarious sequence where the two narrowly avoid having their date ruined by random interference from their friends. (My favorite of these involves Iino, who is hungry, and gets abruptly drafted into a soba-eating contest out of nowhere before she can even talk to the two of them.)

Near the end of the episode, Kaguya has this absolutely adorable thought.

The only thing putting a damper on this happy ending is what I mentioned back up there in the very first paragraph. Shirogane needs to talk about something serious, and it’s not what Kaguya would’ve wanted to hear.

Can they make it work out somehow? Will Shirogane actually find the nerve to confess his love? Will the mysterious phantom thief stealing up all the heart balloons ever be caught? (Yeah, that whole plot runs throughout the background of this episode, too. It’s why Chika’s in her Love Detective uniform up in the banner.) All of these questions and more will be answered next week in the finale. See you then, Love is War fans!

Bonus Hayasaka Screencap, which I have been shamefully forgetting to do: Here’s Hayasaka giving a full-on idol performance during the school festival.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR -ULTRA ROMANTIC- Episode 9

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

The culture festival is underway, and with it, Kaguya-sama: Love is War! drops the most lavishly-directed episode of its third season so far, with a dizzying array of style cuts and other interesting visual tricks. Despite that, we’re mostly going to be talking about the actual plot of the episode; three separate plotlines progress here, and I suspect that it wouldn’t be wrong to consider this the first part of a four-part finale. There’s a lot of ground to cover here (and for me personally, it’s already rather late in the day, whoops!), so let’s get started.

We actually begin with a flashback. An interesting choice, and one that establishes that the next few episodes are going to cut this plotline—set a year prior to where the series is at now—with the show’s present day. Here, we meet a far more bitter and burned-out Shirogane than the one we’re used to. One who hasn’t yet met the girl he’ll eventually devote so much of his time to, and one who is understandably fed up with Shuchiin Academy’s student body of rich kids, future heirs and heiresses, and so on. He isn’t wrong to feel this way, something I don’t think the show quite gives enough attention. But it is clearly hurting him emotionally, and he needs something to bring him out of that slump.

It’s here that we’re introduced to Shuchiin Academy’s previous Student Council President, an androgynous fellow that the anime gives a stylish purple undershade to his otherwise plain black cropped hair.

The former Council President is a mysterious guy, and we don’t really get the full picture behind him here. What’s important though is that he wants to recruit Shirogane to the Student Council. Why? Well, he describes Shuchiin Academy as a walled garden (true) and thinks that having someone who can look at the wider world with a “level gaze” would be an advantage. He probably isn’t wrong, there must be a reason, after all, that Shirogane eventually succeeds him. (In spite of the prejudice against “outsiders”, ie. people who didn’t come to Shuchiin directly from its associated elementary school, that we’re informed of here.) Shirogane is understandably skeptical, a skepticism expressed by an interesting visual detail; Shirogane idly picks at the decoration on the expensive ceramic the President serves him tea in when the two have their little meeting.

Before Shirogane’s even agrees to being recruited, the President has him help clean out a mucky pond on school grounds, and Shirogane understandably wonders if he isn’t just being taken advantage of. He doesn’t have time to wonder for long, though, as a genuine near-tragedy strikes as one of the girls cleaning out the pond falls in. Apparently the water is deep enough that drowning is a real risk, and everyone present wrings hands over what to do as the girl thrashes in the water. Everybody except, of course, a passing-by Kaguya, who leaps into the water without a moment’s hesitation and rescues the girl handily.

And so, Shirogane falls for Kaguya.

Kaguya-sama leans on the shadowless technique for emotional moments so often that it’s practically an internal cliche for the series. And yet, I love it every time.

Not because of her status or looks, but because of her decisive and bold nature. That may seem strange to us, the audience, given that we know Kaguya as much for her flustered pull faces, her hilarious but self-defeating exercises in denying that she has a crush on the Shirogane, etc. But the fact remains that this is the Kaguya that Shirogane first fell for; the sort of person who’d leap to rescue someone else without a second thought. And it makes sense, in a way. To step into the show’s narrator’s shoes for a moment; people are often attracted to those who possess characteristics they themselves lack. Shirogane seeing Kaguya as someone more driven and strong-minded than himself and eventually striving to meet her on that level makes perfect internal sense.

There is some interesting immediate aftermath here. Shirogane chastises himself for being indecisive and makes a mental comment to himself that it “doesn’t matter” if one was born rich or gifted, what matters is the ability to take action when it’s necessary. I’d argue this little aside is the one thing in the scene that doesn’t really work. One of Aka Akasaka‘s few notable weaknesses as a writer is an implicit conservative streak1 in some of the basic assumptions his work is built on. Here, he seems to have neglected that those born into comfort or otherwise advantaged have much more ability to learn the skills to become “decisive” in the first place. Shirogane, as a working-class student from a poor family who has nonetheless accomplished quite a lot from sheer drive, would be well aware of this.

Nearby, Kaguya tries to brush her own heroism off. Hayasaka praises her, but Kaguya claims it was just the obvious thing to do; the girl she saved is the daughter of a newspaper mogul, and being able to call in that favor someday might be important. It’s not impossible that Kaguya is telling the truth here and she really was acting out of, essentially, selfishness, but to me it seems more like the sort of mental gymnastics we’d eventually come to know her for. We could, if we wanted to be uncharitable, read her last comment here—to the effect of, “no one really does anything for anyone else without wanting something in return”—as the writer’s own beliefs. But to me, it seems more plausible that she’s again just denying her own feelings. Akasaka does seem to keenly understand how growing up in the sort of environment Kaguya did can mess with you.

All that in a flashback, which contrasts heavily with the Kaguya we see when the show returns to present.

A Kaguya who is wearing a Taisho-period traditional Japanese woman’s costume as part of her class’s cosplay cafe, yes.

Shout out to Mocksune Miku in the back, there.

This segment, which primarily focuses on Kaguya’s misadventures in said cosplay cafe, is probably the least “important” of the three here. But it does feature the return of the Ramen Guys, an advantage that cannot be so easily discounted. It also features Hayasaka “cosplaying” as a maid; ie., her normal, actual self.

And they interact, too, of course. The Ramen Guys insult Kaguya’s coffee pouring technique while complimenting Hayasaka’s (in one of the show’s oddest visual gags to date, they’re drawn as though badly greenscreened onto a backdrop depicting a galaxy. I think this may be a spoof of old educational programming, but I don’t know enough on the subject to comment.)

Ratio.

Kaguya counters that she can pour an expert cup of tea, at least, and is promptly taken up on her offer. All this causes Kaguya to miss interacting with Shirogane, which was her entire hope in working for the cafe in the first place.

But, one of the Ramen Guys (yes, I will keep capitalizing that) notes that Kaguya’s tea is so good that clearly she’s been perfecting it for a single specific person. He notes this very loudly, while Shirogane is relatively nearby, to Kaguya’s immense embarrassment.

As they depart, the taller of the two Ramen Guys wishes Kaguya well in her love story. He even briefly meets Shirogane, noting that he is “the one.” (Of course, Shirogane has no idea what he’s talking about.)

Kaguya, meanwhile, notes that she’d really like to get a bit of lead up if she’s going to confess her feelings to Shirogane at any point during the festival. Similar thoughts, meanwhile, are had by someone else.

Shirogane’s segment is the briefest of the three here, but it’s also the punchiest, and the only one in which a substantial development occurs. Before that, though, he gets to pal around with Maki, who spends these couple minutes just being a complete bummer in a very funny way.

But she also offers some genuine advice; suggesting that Ishigami ask Tsubame, who’s apparently into scary stuff, to the rather intense Haunted House one of the classes is putting on. (There’s an amusing, but also kind of sad, “I lead others to a treasure I cannot possess” sort of dynamic going on with Maki the Matchmaker here.)

There are some more shenanigans crammed in here, including a deeply awkward scene in which Maki’s former crush and his girlfriend show up. (Ishigami mentions that the latter gives him “sinister” vibes. I’m not sure if this is a callback to that whole business from early in the season where she thought her boyfriend was cheating on her, or some sort of foreshadowing. Given the bizarre visual style shift that accompanies the immediately preceding scene—that’s it in the header image—I think it might be the latter? But it’s hard to say.)

But in the end, Ishigami actually does ask Tsubame to the haunted house. Not without effort and not without some awkwardness, but hey! He did it! And she even agrees to go with him! (Whether she’s aware of his intentions or not is an entirely different subject, of course.)

Look at him, he’s like a happy puppy.

We don’t see that haunted house date here. (Although what little we do see of the haunted house looks pretty cool, and is shot like a found-footage horror film.) The episode ends on what’s essentially a cliffhanger.

So, until next week, Kaguya fans.

1: I here mean the term only in a general sense. I do not know the details of eg. Akasaka’s voting record, etc. Nor, frankly, do I wish to.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.