MyAnimeList.net

Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Tensai-tachi no Renai Zunousen
Kaguya-sama: Love Is War
Edit

What would you like to edit?

Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Tensai-tachi no Renai Zunousen

Add to My List

Add to Favorites

Alternative Titles

Synonyms: Kaguya Wants to be Confessed To: The Geniuses' War of Love and Brains

Japanese: かぐや様は告らせたい～天才たちの恋愛頭脳戦～

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 28

Chapters: 281

Status: Finished

Published: May 19, 2015 to Nov 2, 2022

Genres: Award Winning, Comedy

Themes: Romantic Subtext, School

Demographic: Seinen

Serialization: Young Jump

Authors: Akasaka, Aka (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 8.91¹ (scored by 131,819 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #21²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #23

Members: 270,615

Favorites: 28,838

Available At

Resources

Write a Review
Reviews

Filtered Results: 98 / 112

Sort

Suggested
Most voted
Newest
Oldest

Filter Preliminary Spoiler

Jun 13, 2016

MetaThPr4h

Recommended

Preliminary (34/281 chp)

What is your favourite battle of wits story? The classic Light vs L? Maybe the JoJo fights? For me the winner is clearly Miyuki vs Kaguya!

Kaguya Wants to be Confessed To completely caught me by surprise with a hilarious and adorable romantic comedy based on mindgames between the two main characters with the objective of making the other confess his/her feelings, and why? Because they believe that the one that confesses will become the submissive part in the relationship, and their pride makes them refuse to be that one.

The chapters are episodic and feature a different battle in their war for love, everything that happens ...

Nov 1, 2022

Uji_Gintoki_Bowl

Recommended

Kaguya-sama: Love is War is the king of romance manga without question. There is simply no other manga of the same genre from which I remember the names of almost every character; from which I’ve both laughed and cried audibly while reading; from which I’ve derived so much happiness from every serialized chapter. What started off as a cute and funny manga with a great premise evolved into a character driven drama with many monumentally emotional character arcs, each of which continue to resonate with me beyond belief.

Though I’ll admit to some personal bias, I would like to point out how deeply invested Aka ... (the mangaka) has made me as a viewer/reader to his characters. There wasn’t a moment in the manga where a character’s pain didn’t translate to my own sadness. There wasn’t a moment when a character’s development after a truly emotional scene didn’t move me to tears (being the crybaby that I am). There was always a laugh to be had with the witty psychological battles and silly bouts between characters. A win for the main cast felt like a win to me. Over these last 250 chapters and 2+ years that I’ve been reading, I feel as though I’ve been through a journey.

Quickly before the nitty-gritty plot things begin, I would like to mention that the visuals for the manga are wonderful, and the sharp style is basically perfect for what the manga is. The character designs and background art are also both awesome. The excellent art has actually even led me to buy some volumes on a whim!

The semantics of plot development can be expressed by dividing the progression into two categories. The first one is the comedy / “Love is War” parts, where our protagonists (and often others as well) engage in a psychological duel to gain an advantage over the other in the confession rat race. This occurs more often towards the beginning of the manga and (in addition to the pure entertainment factor) gives insight to general characterization of the cast and introduces us to big ideas that become important later on. The other is more difficult to define. This category refers to the story arcs where there are larger stakes at play, and a character’s entire basis is on the verge of change. The emotional arcs, the thrilling arcs, and the downright badass arcs all come together under this umbrella to serve some sort of greater purpose in helping characters grow. I honestly think that this is one of the best things about Kaguya-sama.

Character growth is limited not to a single event or person, but extends as far as the story continues. Each and every main character (well…) has some kind of internal conflict underlying their goofy dynamics with the others, and must deal with their values being confronted. In this process, we emotionally invest ourselves in that progression, laughing, anguishing, and loving with them. Though this is not necessarily unique to Kaguya-sama, I believe that as far as I’ve read, Kaguya-sama does it the best.

Now, with all of this praise, one would believe that my assertions warrant a 10/10 score. This is not the case only because of the inevitability of the last arc being too quick. In comparison to the previous character arcs, each warranting hefty praise for what they accomplish as standalone arcs, the final arc of the manga lacks the same structure bent on emotional development, and we feel a sort of “urge to end the story” permeating the chapters. Though, this is understandable, given Aka’s situation with Oshi no Ko. Regardless, the journey from start to finish of Kaguya-sama has gotten me so invested as a reader that its post-finale chapters have left me debilitated to an extent.

With the conclusion of Kaguya-sama’s serialization comes one of the largest punches to the gut that I have ever felt from an anime/manga coming to an end. The final chapters were one of the hardest things for me to read due to my massive attachment to the story. I can’t even express how upset I am, even writing this review. All I can say is that regardless of your stance on romantic comedies, Kaguya-sama: Love is War is a must watch/read. The massive void that I felt at the end of this manga attests to just how much of an impact it has had on me as a reader.

May 15, 2016

BlatantC

Recommended

Preliminary (Unknown/281 chp)

I like to call this the Death Note of school romantic comedies. If Death Note ever made you laugh out loud (on purpose).

This manga is a breath of fresh air, as usually romcom manga start out with them meeting and being put into an awkward more than friends but less than lovers scenario, or some misunderstanding happens and all the characters are pissed at each other. Not with Kaguya Wants to be Confessed To, in this manga both main characters are too proud and scared to confess, so they try and bait each other into revealing their feelings.

There are a lot of ...

Nov 1, 2022

Corrout

Recommended

What is a romcom? Sounds like a simple question, but it’s a question Love is War has challenged this question for me, especially in the current climate of romantic comedy manga.

As one can briefly infer from my profile, Love is War is my favourite anime / manga series of all time, and I could rant for hours and hours about every intricate detail of this series and how this series has left a life changing impact on me, but for your sake (the reader), I’ll disregard it.

Love is War presents itself almost as a mockery of the climate of romcoms, having the whole ... point of the series resolve around what many other series use as ways to extend serialisation of volumes as the focal point on how it’s run. Within minutes of reading the first chapter, the synergy between the primary duo is self-obvious, which allows the manga to get away with placing them in the most absurd situations (as long as it fits the high school theme of the manga) without making it feel cringey or bland. Sure, there are the “cliché” chapters such as the umbrella chapter, the summer festival chapter, and many others, but what makes this series unique is how Akasaka shows all the cliches in a complete separate light from other series, which gives the series a fresh feel compared to other series alike itself.

Adding onto the sentence of the absurdity, another strength of the series is how it makes the super exaggerated characters have a feeling of relatability and down-to-earthiness about them. I, myself can personally relate to Kaguya, Shirogane, Yuu and Iino, even though their base characters are far from normalised, because Akasaka, while for sometimes comedic affect, allows the characters to show personal struggle and overcoming that struggle, which for a romantic comedy of this nature is a rarity.

On the topic of comedy, I don’t think I’ve ever read a series that has made me burst out laughter as much as this series has. The characters being as exaggerated as they are with the addition of the create facial expressions shown in Akasaka’s art style, as well as the absurd situation, makes this manga very hard to put down. Even the most mundane high school ideas such as school tests or parent teacher interviews change from their mundaneness to a complete gag fest. This series also utilises a wide variety of other series to provoke laughter, which it seamlessly achieves.

To help compliment the absurd comedy, the story within the series is phenomenal for a romance, and at points makes me stunned in the effortless contracts throughout itself. While starting out as an episodic series, eventually a more arc styled part fleshes through, which helps give the non-main couple cast a time to advance as characters, while keeping the “who will confess first” narrative in every arc. And during the episodic chapters, it’s not like the story feels flat with the constant high-stacks narrative each chapter attends to.

And for personal enjoyment well, I’ve read the series 18 times, and as a broke high school student I still have managed to save up enough money to spend 240 dollars on the series. I don’t think I need to go into anything else to show my undying affection for this work by Akasaka.

So, to sum it up, an incredible manga by a very talented Mangaka which breaks the common cliches of a traditional romcom and has placed a very special place in many hearts.

Sep 27, 2016

ProtoDrive

Recommended

Preliminary (139/281 chp)

Kaguya Wants To Be Confessed To is basically just the battles from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, except the goal is not "I have to defeat the enemy and his/her Stand!", it's "I have to make him/her confess to me!".

Kaguya Wants To Be Confessed to is a comedy/romance manga, that bases most of its humor off the over-the-top styles of action in shounen manga. Saying something really minor dramatically! Reciting an entire paragraph in one's mind in just a milisecond!

I actually didn't go into this series expecting to really like it - I'm not really a romance person, y'know? But I must say after giving ...

Apr 8, 2016

kronopy

Recommended

Preliminary (Unknown/281 chp)

For some reason (most probably to fill the void created by my own loneliness TT TT), I end up reading a lot of shoujo manga. Shoujo romance manga, in particular, is a guilty pleasure and a great mystery for me. It's a mystery because I don't think any other genre, form of art, or literature is as forgettable as most of the shoujo romance manga on the market. I dislike reading ongoing shoujo manga, especially if it's released monthly, because I tend to forget most of the plot by the time the next chapter comes out. In fact, if I haven't thought about it for ...

May 23, 2021

K_I_N_O

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (226/281 chp)

This manga was always at its best when it knew what it was, a comedy. The whole premise was to put a bunch of horny autists in a classroom and have them go to town. The strengths of this manga were in its hilarious and unique premise, but it excelled as a comedy that satirized romance tropes, not as an actual romance.

Unfortunately, after the culture festival, it all goes downhill, and its pretty funny as the manga itself even acknowledges this. The manga goes from being a unique school comedy to an unfocused mess of a generic school romance anime as the author starts splitting ...

Aug 9, 2019

fourkoma_fanatic

Recommended

Preliminary (158/281 chp)

Starts out as a funny but a bit repetitive story that focuses too much on the main characters, in a Kare Kano style plot.

Gets much better once other characters start getting more development and the main characters' relationship starts derailing a bit from the initial pattern. The jokes get better and the development is fun despite being somewhat slow.

The punchlines and the fast paced style also have a certain 4-koma feel to it, despite not being a true 4-koma. This is very important.

The art is pretty good, the characters are cute and expressive, scenarios are also good.

Dec 8, 2019

Ae_Evolution

Recommended

Preliminary (171/281 chp)

Started the manga, right after the anime. Here i am after 171 chapters.

To be honest, i didn't expected much.

I'm not a fan of the anime, yet, i've rated 7/10, just because "it bring what we expect to get" when you go for that type of anime.
Basically, when i'm choosing to watch something, i start with a 8/10 at the end if i'm satisfied with it, then depending of what i see and get, i rate it higher, or lower.

"Kaguya" in the anime and from the 12 episodes bothered me a little bit. The setup, the classic "comic", the ...

Dec 21, 2020

serial_weeb

Recommended

Preliminary (211/281 chp)

When I first started reading this I thought this is gonna be your typical romcom but when I read further into the manga I literally fell in love with the story line and their determination to win each others hearts [ specially Miyuki's determination to win over Kaguya].
apart from those two characters[ Miyuki and Kaguya] the other characters such as Ishigami, Miko, chika, etc... had their own unique qualities which I fell in love with.
As a 17 year old, there are characters I could both relate to and admire. so I think this is the perfect school life romcom out there. [my opinion]

May 16, 2016

Bacchai

Recommended

Preliminary (18/281 chp)

Comedies usually aren't that much my thing, though I enjoy reading some from time to time, but the psychological tag made my decision.

My first impressions were mixed. On the one hand, the first page got me in, since I do believe that there is a relationship of power in a couple. I took that from a Kundera novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, I found it to be quite true throughout the years. That's only the characters' motives though : take the advantage in the future relationship by making the other confess. So I'm on board with the premise.

Kaguya's first description, on the other ... hand, pissed me off a little. I tend to dislike the very wealthy family background, since it easily breaks the suspension of disbelief for me. And the fact that both Shirogane and her are depicted as geniuses added to my bad first impression. I'll admit though that from time to time, the wealthy background is required, especially in mangas talking about social differences, such as Velvet Kiss (in that manga though, the author builds up the characters nicely). I read the chapters available, the first 18, in a row, so my fears weren't met.

In Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai, since it's a comedy, the hyperbole is fine. Some developments on the characters are interesting, yet still very cliché (Shirogane has somewhat of an inferiority complex because of his more modest background, Kaguya has troubles dealing with everyday life because of her privileged background). Overall though, their background is pretty slim and revolve on these very archetype. To be fair, Fujiwara, their common friend, brings a breath of fresh air, by bringing to the conversations a bit of spontaneousness, hence often breaking the plans of the main protagonists. She's quite shallow in terms of background, but she is the spice and the charm of this manga.

These first chapters are stand-alone chapters, and revolve around psychological duels between the two main characters trying to make the other confess. Some are interesting with nice twists, some are really funny and made me laugh, some are even touching as behind the calculations the characters let genuine emotions through, some are pointless since you see the outcome from a mile away, and some are outright confusing and miss the spot. The structure doesn't bother me in itself. Stand-alone chapters can work really well on me. For example I hold Mysterious Girlfriend X as one of my favorites, because the atmosphere is incredible and the characters really interesting, at least to me.

The problem here is that with the lack of an overall story and the very simplistic background for the characters, the quality of this manga entirely depends on the quality of each chapter's plot. And I wasn't amazed overall. If the psychological part interests you, there are plenty of better mangas out there (if I had to cite only one : Liar Game). Yet, the combination of the psychological games and the light romcom has its value, and for that Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai is a refreshing read.

Oct 31, 2022

Baby_Penewine

Recommended

Well-written

Preliminary (281/281 chp)

No. Fucking Way.

Kaguya-sama ENDED?!

Good riddance! Why would you want to read a manga about a battle-of-wits comedy romance between characters with chemistry, development, and personalities???

Just kidding. Love is War is one of the GREATEST pieces of fiction to hit the media, and I'm not even exaggerating. What? Fullmetal Alchemist? Bleach? Never heard of that, I'm too busy indulging myself in the presence of Kaguya-sama. If the one who confesses first loses, I guess I lose because I am confessing my love for this manga.

Hello, I'm Baby_Penewine. You have most likely never heard of me or come across any of my reviews, but I'm one of ...

Oct 29, 2022

Kosteh

Recommended

Preliminary (281/281 chp)

Well Its finally finished.
This manga has been a wild ride to read and I couldn't be happier that i made the decision to read this amazing manga. All the characters serve a purpose and their interactions are all played so well. The flow of the manga simply feels natural. Each characters feels real and you come to understand them and their actions. A perfect character is ishigami. You come to love his character development, as he becomes a lot more social, more open and more mindfull of the people around him. Its amazing to see each character and how the progress and develop in this ...

Feb 3, 2019

AmissArcher

Recommended

Preliminary (136/281 chp)

First of all, I know that it's super tacky to just file in 10s for every slot, but... to not give this manga a 10 would be a crime to my heart.

I have loved pretty much everything about this manga so far... its just so wholesome and beautiful. The humor in here is hilarious. I can't even count the number of times that I literally bursted out laughing from this.... its just so fucking wonderful.

Without hinting at spoilers, the plot is perfect. You can actually see progress within the characters and really feel like you're in their heads (except for Fujiwara of course)

I binged ...

Nov 1, 2022

iShipMyFriends

Mixed Feelings

Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai—or just "Love is War"—has grown into such a big name that it's virtually impossible to be interested in either anime or manga without knowing what it is. There's no doubt in my mind that Love is War is going to go down in history along with the shounen giants that we just can't seem to forget. But despite all the praise it gets, I can't help but feel like my experience with the series has been more like that of speeding through the main story of a game just to get to the side quests.

Love is War is fundamentally a character-based story, ... so it's a shame that the characters happen to be its weakest aspect. Don't misunderstand, though; the majority of the cast is actually pretty solid, both main and supporting. There's not all that much depth to them, but most of the characters fit their roles perfectly. Heck, some of the interpersonal relationships are even fairly interesting. That sounds good, though, right? So what's the deal? It all comes down to the two protagonists, sadly.

Social awkwardness and emotional constipation both come as a matter of course with a premise like this, as you were presumably fully aware of long before ever laying eyes on this review. The problem is how far it ends up taking it. Every single interaction between the leads is painfully frustrating from the start, which just might be your cup of tea if you're even thinking of reading this manga. That's okay. But see, it keeps getting worse for every chapter until it starts becoming nigh unbearable. And no, it's not in the intentionally frustrating slow burn "why won't they just talk?!" kind of way. It reaches a point where the mental gymnastics just become annoying. A point where you find yourself staring at the page with a blank expression on your face, muttering "Really...?" under your breath for the umpteenth time in the same volume. The fact that these people are supposed to be 17 at the start of the series is beyond baffling when they're acting like particularly awkward 12-year-olds every opportunity they get. The manga tries to excuse it by continuously pointing out how Kaguya is sheltered and lacks experience talking to people, but that doesn't do much to make every conversation she has with the love interest any less aggravating.

In contrast, the rest of the cast is rather good. Everyone here probably already knows Chika from the memes, and that's basically what she's there for in the first place. Rarely doing anything to directly further the plot, she's mostly there to make the dumb jokes possible. Ishigami starts off rather bland, but ends up turning into the most interesting character by far as the story progresses. Iino doesn't do much of anything as she enters the stage, but she eventually manages to take an important role in the better part of the series. Hayasaka is one of the best characters from the very start, and stays that way through the entirety of the manga. Even some of the less important characters are genuinely interesting in some way. It's just a shame that the protagonists end up outweighing everyone else.

You may have noticed that this review hasn't mentioned anything about the plot yet, but that's fine. The manga takes its damn time getting around to it. In fact, in a lot of ways, it probably shouldn't have ever gone past its basic premise. Without saying too much, the whole style of the series changes in the blink of an eye and never really fully returns to what it used to be, and I get the impression that people are somewhat split on whether this is good or bad for the story in general. To be perfectly clear, I personally didn't like any part of it before this point in the story. After this point, however, I started liking SOME parts. That's pretty huge in itself. On the other hand, I've seen a good number of people say that they liked it before, but not after. To be frank, although the storytelling improves drastically in the short time dedicated to this shift, it costs the story its entire identity. And the best part? The protagonists are still annoying. The greatest improvement is genuinely that more time is now getting dedicated to the rest of the cast—particularly Ishigami. And this brings us to my final real point.

Ishigami's part of the story was the only thing keeping me somewhat interested in this series. Had it stood isolated, I could easily have recommended it to anyone interested in drama or romance. It's not watered down like the rest of the series, it feels genuine and raw, and every character seems drastically much better compared to how they are outside of it. But alas. In the end, it's just not worth walking through all the other shit just to get to the chapters that are truly good.

Comedy is purely subjective, so there probably isn't much of a point in me saying what I think on that. I will however say that there's so much repetition that it wouldn't be weird to get tired of the gag after a few chapters. It gets a bit better after the shift, but don't think for a moment that it's going to fully stop. I personally found the visual comedy to be best, which is in part carried by how good the art is. It looks somewhat awkward at times, particularly at the start, but the art's odd points become less and less frequent for every volume.

Love is War was a tiring read in general. It definitely has some good moments, a few truly fantastic ones, and a whole lot of bad ones. I can't see anyone enjoying the whole thing unless they love the comedy from the start and still appreciate the huge change in the writing. It seriously would have been so much better with Ishigami as the protagonist.

Story: 5/10
Art: 8/10
Characters: 4/10
Enjoyment: 3/10
Overall: 5/10

Sep 15, 2021

Moonlight60

Not Recommended

Preliminary (230/281 chp)

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAIN SPOILERS

When I read the first arc of this manga, I am already imagined that the ending would be 2 possible scenarios: There will be a confession in the last chapter or, by default, they never confess their love to each other. At the end, I was partially right, because the last scenario happened in the first part of the manga. So, what's more have this to offer us? Let's find out. I'm gonna divide this review for each part of the manga:

1. First part: Each arc of this one can be summarized as follows: Our protagonists try to force the other ... side to confess their love, Chika and/or a similar plot device creates a random romantic misunderstanding, both sides try to take advantage of this to win this conflict and in the end none of them do. In order to show you what's wrong with this, I'm gonna take a classic cartoon (Roadrunner vs Coyote), that it has a similar format and episodic mechanic to make the comparison:

a) Objective: In the case of Roadrunner vs Coyote the goal is Coyote catching and eating the Roadrunner in order to survive. Simple premise and makes sense. On the other hand, the goal of this manga is that one of the two protagonists make a love confession. Using common sense, aren't there better ways to make a confession of love? I don't know. Why is always a third person involved in order to advance the plot in each arc? Wouldn't it be better and more interesting to see how the two sides use their wits on their own? No fucking idea.

b) Pretentiousness level: In this manga, they try to present our protagonists as a smart and calculator people because of their strategies. For what reason do they do it? Mystery. Normally, a person is considered smart according to his/her capacity to solve their problems, and, in this case, the main problem is not solved (at least in this first part). It is not like in each arc one of the two sides gets closer to the goal. So they don't have anything smart if you ask me.

c) Bait: In the case of Roadrunner vs Coyote, subtly, the cartoon shows that as long Coyote keep using the ACME brand artifacts, he wouldn't be able to catch the roadrunner. In this manga, the author leaves you hoping that, at some point, one of the two will ending making the confession, being more dishonest in comparisson if you ask me. Despite that the one of the them ended making the confession, this didn't happened in this part, where it was supposed to happen, at least, in the final episode of this format.

As we can see, the mechanics are similar, however, the execution is what makes the difference between them.

2. Second part: The formula, now, in each arc is as follows: Partially remove what supposedly is the original aspect of the manga (comedy), in a attempt to take itself more seriously, take one of the characters of the cast and put the rest out of the scene, make a random and generic story and that's it. Is that really necessary to put out the other characters of the cast in each arc? No fucking idea. There's no need for them to be some kind of middle man in the arcs with romance involved, but they could at least show us some progress in their character development. It is an unnecessary disconnection in the narrative flow and in the character's arc if you ask me. As I mentioned before, the confession between the main characters, indeed, happened, but it was in a storyline that you can find in any other average rom-com. It wouldn't have been better that this confession happened during the most comedic part of the manga? No fucking idea. The reason of why I don't mention the stories of the other characters is because they are irrelevant to the main plot raised here. In other words, they felt like a filler. It was really necessary to make that stories? It wouldn't have better focused more in finish the main story and, after that, go for the other ones? Mystery.

That's it for now. Despite having a good and original idea, the manga ended being a mess up because of a poor execution of the same.

Nov 1, 2022

SpRayquaza11

Recommended

First Manga Review so go easy on me
Ill spare you the History nitty gritties and the easter eggs , those are for the more hardcore fans. But As a anime fan that had to read this as his first manga eve , this is probably the most etched in my mind, And so even if I may be biased or inexperienced due to the lack of a huge library but still ,
for me ,kaguya-sama is the best MANGA that I have read so far
The charm of kaguya-sama is that , it is an amazing take at the romance genre , it does just enough to ...

Aug 9, 2020

ElicePhilips

Recommended

Preliminary (213/281 chp)

Please read Kaguya-sama, even if you aren't into comedy or romance, just try to give it a go. Since Kaguya-sama is genuinely one of the most earnestly subversive and impressive stories, one that I absolutely didn't expect. And its evolution has surpassed any series that I know. But if you do happen to find yourself uninterested in the sketch-based storytelling at the start, just know it will be a different story by when you catch up. Well, that's basically what I want to say before delving into the spoilers, though, don't read them if you haven't read the story and are already confident about starting ...

Oct 29, 2022

Kr1m1naL

Recommended

Informative

Preliminary (281/281 chp)

(Repost because MAL marked my first post as preliminary)

Kaguya-sama: Love is War is a Romance and Comedy Masterpiece.

Love is War starts off with a unique premise but not a lot to expect. An emo, a loli, a cutesy and big breasted girl and a nerd compose the student council of the most prestigious school in Japan. With not much context at the start, the president(nerd) and vice-president(loli) try to get each other to confess through a game of psychology and tactics because both of them are too shy to do it themselves. Along with the other members of the student council and some side characters, ... it creates a funny and creative atmosphere and vibe that makes watching/reading Love is War very entertaining. But at the end of the day, its just a RomCom, or so what I thought.

Comedy is subjective and not everyone will find what some think is funny but jokes get overused quite quickly. Most comedies, whether it is western or an anime suffer this problem. Love is War is built different. Love is War continuously thinks of new jokes or new ways of how to be funny. The comedy is never cringey. It has the perfect amount of stupid yet is also witty. It even reuses old jokes in way that it is still funny. And it maintains this all throughout the publication of the manga. I have never watched/read any comedy that was this consistent in terms of its comedy.

Another great thing about Love is War is that the story and characters are actually very good, especially for a RomCom. All the characters that get introduced have depth and develop. A prime example would be Ishigami(the emo). I intend to make this spoiler free so just find out yourself. The characters unfold themselves and reveal that they aren't joke dispensers but are human and imperfect. Expectations, inequality, friendship, perseverance; These are only some of the themes tied with the characters. They learn and experience the high school life and the lessons that come with it. They are relatable and realistic. These factors make Love is War unexpectedly dramatic and emotional.

Probably the biggest surprise about Love is War is how good the art is sometimes. As the series progresses, you can see how the art improves. The art sings along with the characters and amplifies what is felt by the character and by the reader. Whether those feelings may only be funny and whimsical or sad and regretful. But for whatever situation it may be, the art is always appropriate. The art most of the time is relatively normal with wacky bits here and there. But when the time comes, a one page artistic masterpiece greets you. Absolutely worth it for you to screenshot these panels.

Lastly, Love is War has good love. A problem with RomCom anime/manga is that it has ridiculous romance, especially the harem ones. Love is War on the other hand, has especially good romance without even considering the ridiculous premise in the introduction. From a stupid game of trying to make the other confess, it came to a point of understanding and accepting one another. The romance is real. Along with the characters, the reading experience feels real. It doesn't feel ridiculous or unrealistic to happen in a real relationship, even if one is not particularly an expert in such. Makes one really want a partner.

With everything said, Love is War without a doubt in my mind, is a Masterpiece. A classic of romance and comedy to be remembered for years to come. A must read for anyone, even if they aren't a fan of the genre. I am glad to have witnessed this masterpiece while it was still publishing. I have learned a lot and felt many emotions too from this manga. I am sad to see this manga end. Reading this was a journey in out of itself. Truly an incredible experience.

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened" - Dr. Seuss

Oct 29, 2022

bench0

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (281/281 chp)

Before chapter 160 or so, it's a 10/10. Kaguya and Miyuki figure out that they like each other in trying to make the other confess. It's funny, cute and doesn't ever stray too far from the romantic development.

However, the romcom after 160 is so heavy on character development that it loses a lot of the "rom" and "com" aspect found in the earlier chapters (and the anime from season 3 and before). The story that Akasaka writes is good, but because it spreads itself so thin documenting so many different characters, it feels rudderless at times because he forgets whom everyone is supposed to be ...