So I did.
You may have already known from my Score that I am not impressed and that's true but for very valid reasons. I am not the one who tries to bash popular stuff to get some elitist ecstasy. So hear me out guys okay.
So, the first thing is story. I wanted to leave the section blank cause there isn't any story. But then the reader would assume I am just a hater. No I am not. The problem with episodic anime is that you don't feel a sense of progression if there isn't a frame story to go with episodic core story in each episode. Frame stories are the larger background plots that keep on moving forward as each episodic story ends. For example....Evangelion was episodic but with each passing episode Shinji came closer to defeat the angel armada. I know the genres of Kaguya sama and Evangelion are poles apart but i only mentioned it to explain what frame story means. In kaguya sama... There is no frame story. Each episode has no correlation with the previous one so you won't even know if you skipped an episode or two while watching. It feels very disjointed. Kinda reminded me of Tom and Jerry days when one got hurt... They were back to normal in the very next scene. So the characters interactions that happens between the council members are nothing more than anecdotes with some jokes in it. The characters never refer to older events in the show hence the narrative kinda just resets itself every 8 minutes. No matter what happens.... The council members come back to square one every time. In fact. If you separated the individual stories and asked a viewer to sort them in the order they happened..... He would fail.... Because there is no linearity in the plot with each episode ending with zero consequences and no permanent effects. And I won't take the excuse that "comedy anime don't need a story". Prison school had a story which was continuous and well paced with a great payoff at the end.
Coming to the structure and script of the show, it's as dull as a weeb's dating history. There are several problems so I would go one by one addressing them. First of all.... The narrator. Who in the seven hells thought that a third person narrator would do any good to the story. Nothing ruins a joke more than explaining it. That dude not only explains the joke but what the speaker meant, what the listener interpret it as and what was actually supposed to be the funny part of it. It feels really insulting to me as a viewer that the writer thinks that I am too dumb to get the joke myself. The "tell" in show or tell methods of narration is for the less intelligent people. And the narrators existence clearly shows the show uses a "tell" approach. Another thing that irked me was the narrator's routine of keeping scores of the "mind battles" between Kaguya and Shirogane. Not only is this irritating because of absence of well defined parameters to award or deduct points but also feels like a waste of time because the scores are neither cumulative nor they have any consequences whatsoever. So it feels nothing more than a pretentious mess.
Another problem that the show suffers from is in its setting. Shuichin Academy is the school for the most elite students in the country. But judging from the glimpses given in the show of the school students' life.... It hardly feels that they are anything more than retards or bimbos. All of them keep loitering in the school corridors and do nothing more than discuss "who is dating whom". Every once in a while.... Some guy or girl come to the student council room to ask for dating advice from the main characters as if that's all they care about. There are no instances of any classes going on in the school and there is not a single adult present. It is the same problem which one of my least favourite anime "kakegurui" suffers from. In such cases. The high school setting feels nothing more than an unnecessary add-on detail to appeal to the given demographic of viewers.
If Shuichin Academy is the best school in the country.... It should have one of the most active, engaging and busy Student Councils ever. No but it's not the case in this anime. The student council here is one of the laziest and most irresponsible I have ever had the misfortune to know about. All four of the main characters do nothing but waste their Time discussing silly scenarios and playing useless mind games which are the farthest thing from any productivity which should be the council's utmost priority. Let me tell something.... the author made them a part of the Student Council only so that he could separate them from the rest of the students in a single room so that they can play those crappy mind games in peace. I would not make fun of someone if he/she forgot who was the vice president or the Secretary or the financial manager cause those details are rendered irrelevant due to the Student Council doing basically nothing other than the stupid thing that is their episodic misadventures. Chika has all the time in the world to give lectures on society, dance in the council room and trying out dresses of the drama club.... but she doesn't spend even a fraction of it studying even her academic prowess is far less than that of the main leads. Kaguya could have easily topped her class if she gave as much time to studies as she gives in crafting situations to make Shirogane confess.
The comedy of the show is really the worst part of it. The jokes are really cringey and unfunny. Sometimes the quality drops so hard that even EDM beats can be put to shame. They based an entire episode on the same "Weiner" joke by making Chika repeat it throughout. Kaguya found it really funny for very strange reasons and the viewer was expected to laugh. The "mind games" of the show are just pretentious made up scenarios glorified as a battle of wits. Each of the two leads constantly keeps making overboard assumptions and responds with more outrageous strategies than the last one. It really makes me pity both of them. If only they had talked to each other instead of playing the games..... They could have understood each other much better.
The characters of the show are a bigger joke than any of those in the script. First we have Kaguya.... A rich spoiled Tsundere whose father has a net worth of 200 trillion yen. Yes you heard it right... That's like 2 trillion dollars or almost 40% of Japan's annual value of the goods and services or in simple terms GDP. This world make him more than 16 times richer than the current richest person in the world. I know the author wanted to portray her father as a rich man but he should have alteast came up with a realistic number. This is just me nitpicking as it is not that big a problem. The bigger ones are coming up.
Kaguya is shown to be successful in almost all fields possible. In academics, arts and sports. But these traits are never demonstrated. People come to her for dating advice but no one came to her for advice on these 3 fields which she apparently excels in. If the students themselves don't care about her supposed accomplishments then why should I. She or Miyuki both have the problem of putting their egos before their feelings. That's why the show even exists. They clearly love themselves and their reputation more than the other person. So they... As a couple can't even hold a candle in
front of some "actually good" anime couples. They live in a stupid dilemma that making the first move is a weakness and is totally not worth the companionship of the significant other. That's why I really despise them. Right from episode 1... Kaguya entered my hit list because of the way she body shamed Chika for having big breasts which I don't have the slightest idea why the author thought it was even remotely funny. In an episode, Kaguya hides Miyuki's phone battery so that he cannot go home without asking for help from her. And even if he did ask... She wouldn't help him cause it would make it seem like she confessed. That's some peak level stupidity. Not only did she intentionally put him in a state of misery but also chose not to put him out ot it. That's just straight up bullying. My mind exploded with frustration in episode 11 after the bedroom incident. Kaguya was angry at Shirogane because he was on his bed even though she was the one who asked him to do so. She thought that Miyuki was gonna make a move on her and hence she bashed him for something he didn't do. At the same time... She was angry at him because he DIDN'T make a move on her signifying that he doesn't find her that seductive. The hypocrisy shown by Kaguya in this incident was more than what Suzaku showed in both seasons of Code Geass combined. And that is hard to beat.
Kaguya's maid Hayasaka is just a typical kuudere whose only significance is being a secondary waifu. But i really love her. She is best girl of the show for me and therefore an object of my dominatrix fantasies
Chika is cute. I get it. She gave us lots of memes and all but that's it. As I already said... She abuses her position in the council by doing stupid stuff instead of something productive. Her affection for her firends is superficial at best. She asks them not to go to see fireworks together as she won't be present even though she herself is taking a trip to Spain and stranding her friends. This "concern" of hers is thrown out of the window in cases where she is the only one who gains anything out of it. I don't have anything else to point out cause there is nothing more to her than being the cute stupid bimbo of the show.
Ishigami was another attempt by the author to make a relatable character for the antisocial demographic of the show... Which itself isn't bad but it feels like unpolished work if the character has no personality and just one joke "I am going home". He is a complete failure in studies but somehow magically is very good at handling accounts which is kinda correlative with the commercial maths which is usually taught at school. Kakashi from Naruto gave more expressions with one eye than Ishigami gave with his entire face throughout the show.
I kept Miyuki for last cause he is the character I dislike the least . The problems which he faces are actually shown to us on screen such as his weak financial condition and the strained relationship with his father. He never initiated the stupid mind games and he might have even confessed to kaguya and put us out of the misery that is the show but he needlessly participates in them cause he too has an ego as big as Kaguya's. He is the only Council member who was actually shown studying which was kinda necessary considering that he is the best student of the best school in the country. But even his character is handled poorly by the author by needlessly attaching a pseudo incest plot line with his sister. Although there is no concrete proof but I am not the first person to suspect that. He is frequently a victim of Kaguya's mischief but he chose not to retaliate because our man has some sense of chivalry which is........ Great.
The music in the show is a work of art. The opening theme wakes up the dancer inside me like no other. I never knew I had a thing for classic jazz music until the show's music crawled into my ears. The ending theme is a great piece too and the visuals of it were really creative. Especially the plane scene. The chika dance song is the bearer of one of the most chad beats I ever heard. Coming to voice acting, I am in love with Aoi Koga as Kaguya. She really sounds like a lovestruck teenager with zero experience in romantic endeavours. Konomi Kohara as Chika is just a tsunami of cuteness whose reaction noises gave birth to more memes than Elon Musk. Makoto Furukawa is already the voice actor of my favourite character of all time (Saitama in One Punch Man) so I can listen to any character voiced by this gentleman.
The art of the show unlike it's story and characters is really great. The character designs are great and the girls look insanely cute. Although I do feel that setting the entire story in a single room made me suspect that the animators wanted to cut corners in the background designs. I think that's kind ot a nitpick so I can let it pass.
Overall... People love this show. I don't. I wouldn't have even bothered watching it if it wasn't that much of a hype generator. I just felt that there are several problems with it which the "fans" obviously missed or chose to ignore.. But I just can't. It came out as a really trashy show for me and that's the reason why I am not expecting any upvotes in my review.
That's it from me..... Adieu
