I.e. How cute.
I don't really like A-1, but this time they are doing pretty darn impressive job. Even the character design which A-1 fucks up approximately 100% of the time is quality here. Unbelievable. Sure the stares and GAZES could deliver more, and the how cute moments can only be so cute, but otherwise this is a ridiculously high quality adaptation which success was unpredictable.
The first and last thing that stands out here is the directing. Those who have seen basically any anime at all will immediately recognize that this style is close to SHAFT's Shinbou Akiyuki, who is known as the nro. 1 anime director in the world pretty much. The director of Kaguya seems to be his old underling/coworker and, needless to say, he has learnt a great deal from the master himself. However -- unlike Tomohiro, who is the underling of the other big anime director (2nd biggest if you will), Ikuhara Kunihiko -- Kaguya's directing is much closer to its director's very own innovation, and to say that this is just a copy-paste would be a blind insult. This man has vision and style and doesn't seem to be afraid of anything. This is creativity and detail at its finest. It's rare to see modern anime even try and even more so: to success at anything new, but what our director, Shinichi Omata is doing here is nothing less than impressive. It's damn fresh to be accurate. Fully approved.
Now that this nerd stuff out of the way, the content:
'Love is War' is a rom-com series aimed for mature audience. It centers around 2 main leads and few other leads who are kinda as important as the other two but also practically in the side roles. Our main 'couple' are Shirogane and Kaguya who have made the concept of 'love' their battlefield. In this battle they are quite literally trying to outwit each others with the power of psychology, logic and pure rhetoric. Why do this, then? Because they both share this fundamental idea that love is weakness of the mind and confessing it an act so against ones pride that doing so makes them.. losers. So, what they are doing instead is try and make the other one confess first. Hence the battlefield.
The series heavily relies on both: interactions between characters and silent monologue that plays inside the heads of our different POV's. The catch being how different the characters are inside their own head and how they appear to others in real life. They have lots of personality and can show different sides of it. Perhaps my favorite part of all of it are the "war planning" and also how overly dramatic Kaguya often is. To say few words about the other cast members, Fujiwara is criminally cute and the rest are pretty much weirdos.
There is one entity in the series that is highly important to the overall execution and that's the narrator. He appears to add lots of missing links and initial reasoning for the characters' thoughts, actions, and real purpose among other things. It balances out the comedy and "plot side" of the series as well as simply makes the overall narrative work/more solid.
As of currently, I'm extremely happy with this show. There are no major issues, only few small things that are questionable but also necessary to make the series' core idea hold water. As far as rom-coms go, this is already among the better things anime has to offer. Also +1 for Fujwara's dance scene which animation budget is higher than the entire season of Date A Live III's cashmoney.
