So I had no reason to suspect anything would be wrong or that this season wouldn't be as enjoyable as I expect from this series.
Unfortunately, Kaguya-sama Season 3 drops the ball hard in terms of what gave the series it's charm.
To get the good out of the way, the animation is still good. They really went the extra mile in certain episodes, and the rest is what you'd expect from the series. Music is still on par, although the opening is probably the weakest of the 3 both in terms of music and visuals but it isn't bad by any means.
Now for the bad...
Kaguya-sama has always nailed it with its comedy. Every single episode in S1 and S2 has me bursting out laughing from how creative and unexpected each joke was. So it brings me no pleasure to say that I barely chuckled throughout Season 3. None of the humor lands, and any attempt at a joke is so sparse now since this season is more focused on the "Storyline" and introducing a bunch of new characters that we've never seen before. It might get a snicker from me every once in a while, but after 24 episodes most of their jokes are either repeats from what they've done before or "Character reacts in a overdramatic way". It just isn't funny and it seems like they've run out of tricks to pull so they resort to trying to tell a dragged out story instead of setting up comedic scenarios to build up actual jokes.
(Vague Spoilers Below)
I'm not going to go through any specific plot point, but like I said before this season is more focused on establishing background characters and less so the main 5 we all know and love. It just feels like a waste because they don't actually develop these characters in any meaningful way. The show states who they are and then constantly repeat whatever cliche they are given before making the audience care about them. I don't even remember any of their names to be quite honest because they were all forgettable. There are exceptions to this, but as a whole focusing on new characters instead of the ones we actually care about was a mistake.
And even our main characters have suddenly turned into the most brainrot versions of themselves. Kaguya will go through a 10 minute monologue about how she will finally put her foot down and do what needs to be done, and then the next episode revert back to that "Boo hoo I want him to confess to me!!!!!!!!!" stick. It was cute when we first saw her, now it's it's unbearable because we already gone through her "Okay, I will finally confess" character development multiple times already. Iino barely does anything in this season, Ishigami goes from being an absolute chad to just a romance foil for Kaguya, Fujiwara barely shows up period and doesn't have her happy-go-lucky personality anymore instead just being straight up stupid at times. Shirogane is the only one that acts like he's supposed to, but he alone can't carry the entire show.
But my biggest complaint is how dragged out this show has become. In the previous seasons, you didn't really care if Shirogane and Kaguya confessed or not. The fun was seeing how the two tried to weasel a confession out of the other, and how their situations often blew up in their face. I personally wasn't ever frustrated when they got close to confessing and then something magical happens to interfere, as long as it was funny and entertaining then it didn't matter. But now that I've said that the show isn't funny anymore, all that we are left with is a painfully long slog till the end to get anything meaningful from this already drawn out game of cat and mouse.
Very often is there zero payoff and without the comedy to make the bait enjoyable, it just becomes around mediocre rom-com where the main characters don't do anything until the very end.
As someone who loved S1 and 2 of this series, Kaguya-Sama Season 3 is a massive disappointment. The comedy is gone. the fun of the "will they/won't they?" is gone. The main characters are gone. And most importantly, the charm is gone.
I hope Season 4 can somehow regain what it lost with this season, but I have zero hopes that the rest of the series will be good again.
3/10
