(Spoilers-free until said otherwise)
That's a pretty strong statement to begin this review but honestly it deserves it, we usually joke around about most romcoms or any romance anime about how the main couple doesn’t confess to each other after 69 seasons and well… Love is war technically falls into that category, but it has a major difference, that we don’t feel like it’s stretching out just to make 12 more seasons of a relationship that should have already ended with marriage and 4 kids.
And the question arises… why?
I think I have the answer to that question and it’s actually pretty simple, it’s the fact that love is war (see what I did there). What I mean by that is that the relationship doesn’t revolve about the fact that both love pretendants are oblivious to the OBVIOUS love of the other one, because if it does, the story just feels frustrating instead of funny, and when the 156th cringy blushy tsundery interaction between the couple and then both characters just completely obliterate the moment from their already BLIND FUCKING BRAIN, I personally just can’t get attached to the couple anymore it feels like the confession can be at any moment but just isn’t.
Some romcoms solve the problem by just confessing to the 6th episode like Horimiya did (which is great by the way go watch that show) and others like Love is war, just by making the characters not fucking blind (never thought that could work).
So lets talk about the 3 mains things that makes this anime the best romcom ever made
- Characters
- Writing
- Production
First Let’s talk about characters. I’m going to start by the 2 main protagonists.
Kaguya is a very distinguished girl from a very powerful family and a genius according to many people in the school, she was cut out of the outside world and often sees herself as superior to all of the other students, then she meets the student council president Miyuki and fell in love with him, she doesn’t understand what the feeling is about but after 6 months she realizes her feelings but can a girl of her status really confess her feelings.. no way that would be too shameful, so she uses her manipulative and calculative mind to make Miyuki confess instead of her and over time as her love for Miyuki grows stronger and stronger, we can see kaguya failing at pulling those tricks because of love. And that’s what makes Kaguya a compelling character, because when her love finally overtakes her pride, it’s too late she can’t do it anymore because of shyness and uses more and more her money and her assistants to get out of tricky situations.
Miyuki is on the completely opposite side of the spectrum, he is poor, not as talented and his current position at president of the student council is only due to his hard work. And then he fell in love with kaguya but can a boy who spent his life trying to reach the top confess to a girl who is at the top… no way that would be humiliating, so he uses his smart mind to make her confess to prove that talent and status isn’t gonna stop him from achieving his goals.
The narrator is one of the best characters of this show, he puts all of his energy towards his dream, being a event commentator and for his first job he is in charge of being the narrator of a stupid romcom anime, but he decided to give his all and he enjoyed it so much so that he did the role for the other 2 seasons, the spectator were also impressed by his performance. In all seriousness though the narrator fits so well into the scenes and makes them even funnier, I heavily recommend you to just watch the VA of the narrator in the dub he is literally insane it’s amazing.
The show wouldn’t be what it is without the side characters, all of them are great, Ishigami acts as an emotional support for shirogane and also bring to the table a really cool background (season 2) and side story with tsubame. Chika is the comedy relief and acts as a chaos bringer (described by kaguya not me) and I usually hate those “get in the way at the worst moment” type of character but here it actually is very funny especially with kaguya reactions. Miko is a bit putted to the side but she is nonetheless a good support character and hayasaka who also bring to the table an interesting and really funny at times multi-personality trait and also acts as a emotional support of kaguya.
(Spoilers starts here)
Now the writing, what makes love is war a good show… well because it’s too goddam funny, the jokes don’t feel repetitive, we can feel that the characters are evolving and the relationships are so well written, even at the moments of truth the show doesn’t hesitate to hit us with a joke or two. The show never derives from its initial idea. Talking about the moment of truth as a manga reader I kinda knew what was gonna happen but at a certain point manga or not we all knew it was the moment I predicted that the anime community would burst but certainly not to the point of skyrocketing the anime to the #1 anime OF ALL FUCKING TIME, and that’s the first time I’ve seen a confession being hype in anime ever, usually in other romcom the moment of confession feels more like a “Finally..” than a “LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” but that was exactly what I felt after that kiss.
The production is also a key factor in my enjoyment of this show, the effects used are hard to describe, they aren’t flashy nor especially complex, but they communicate EXACLTY and in a hilarious way the feelings of a character at a certain point, for example when ishigami does a arm wrestling against kaguya and ishigami just slide to the side in a white background, from what I said it’s not really attractive but when you see it you can exactly pinpoint the way he felt during that arm wrestling, and there are pretty diverse, of course many of those effects are used to express shock but I never felt like I’ve seen that effect 1 million times before. Also the voice acting is on point, the “Are…”s of Kaguya are some of the funniest shit I’ve ever seen I swear.
To conclude, I will say that Kaguya-sama love is war is the only example I know of a romcom with 3 season before the confession that doesn’t feel forced or gets unfunny, that’s why I put it at the top of my list and an example to take inspiration of for future shows like that.
