Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. You all ready for some Kaguya-sama? I’m frankly not sure I am; after all, we’re four episodes in at this point, and the most the show’s gotten out of me is a light chuckle. I don’t find its comedy particularly funny, and its characterization hasn’t really moved much beyond the initial dynamic, meaning I can’t coast on my fondness for the leads as people. At the moment, I’m more or less clinging to the visual flair contributed by Shinichi Omata’s direction, as well as the potential for an interrogation of how class affects social dynamics that I damn well know the show almost certainly won’t explore.
I feel like I’ve conveyed all this with as much tact as possible over the past four writeups, but it seems like you folks are still enjoying them, as Kaguya-sama’s funding is as healthy as can be. In light of that, I figure people likely won’t mind if I’m a bit less diplomatic in my appraisal, as presumably you must know “gag comedy with no character or thematic focus” falls deeply outside my general interests. Is there truly something waiting down the road that makes this a “me” show, or are you folks just sending me on a long walk down a short pier? Either way, we’ve got a fresh episode ahead of us, so let’s see if my fortunes can turn!
Episode 5
Apparently the summer’s approaching, as the students just went through their uniform change. Nice expression of dread by Kaguya in the background, as she stares at Chika’s chest – but then they oversell it by actually zooming in on her boobs. I’m not a fan of boob envy jokes in general; they’re generally reflective of men’s perspective on women, rather than women’s perspective on each other, and tend to both demean the cast and clearly highlight a show’s authorial bias. Also, they’re just super overused, meaning whatever jolt of “oh shit, did they really go there” energy that the format might once have possessed is now clearly drained. Humor is built on the element of surprise, meaning most joke concepts only have a certain shelf life
A female student asks Kaguya for relationship advice
More specifically, how to smoothly break up with her boyfriend
One of this show’s main jokes is that our two leads have no relationship experience, but cannot admit that, and thus are forced to bluff fluency and confidence in all romantic matters. It’s a fine enough conceit, but the show’s returned to that well a fair number of times now, with diminishing returns. As I said, humor is built out of surprise: even within a single property, if you overuse a particular gag, the audience will start to expect it, and thus find it less amusing
I remember I got in some trouble back when I reviewed One Punch Man, and gave it a middle-of-the-road review, since it leaned so heavily on its one joke. Great action scenes, but how can you find that joke funny for that long?
I do like this unspoken implication that it was Miyuki’s terrible relationship advice that got her into this situation
“I don’t really know how to talk to him, and it feels like there’s a greater distance between us than before.” I like this too – it feels very accurately observed, as the pressure of “being in a relationship” can often mess up the casual social dynamic developed between high schoolers
“Why don’t you start by telling me his good points?” Kaguya doesn’t know anything about romance, but she is very good at stalling for time
“Being bothered by your own menacing look is cute!” Kaguya speaks great wisdom
This girl figures out the entire clubroom dynamic within two minutes
As always, I like the distinctive texturing effect they’re using for this pan as Kaguya speaks. Shows occasionally embrace textures like this, that add a sense of roughness or painterly imperfection to a flat color or pattern. It’s particularly useful for adding a sense of specificity and age to architecture, but I think anime in general could use it more. Though of course, the counterpoint is how ostentatious it can be, how it can draw attention to the artifice of an anime’s visual layers – but for a hypothetical illustration like this, that isn’t much of a problem. And in general, Kaguya-sama is perfectly happy to lean into the artifice of anime staging; that’s one of its main forms of humor
Now Chika’s styled herself as “Love Detective Chika”
Another nice gag, playing off the inherent contrast of Chika’s carefree presentation and unusually sharp perspective. She offers light but practical advice to their petitioner, while Kaguya is quietly torn to ribbons by her pinpoint love detection
Kaguya suggests they grow closer in the traditional manner: by uniting their powers against a common foe
“Everyone has a powerful enemy to fight. It’s called… this society!” YES CHIKA FULL SPEED AHEAD WHOOOO
Hah, a fantastic and beautifully messy cut for Miyuki volleyball serving his own face into the ground. This cut does an excellent job of conveying Miyuki’s steady motion, in spite of being an almost indecipherable mess of scribbled lines
As always, his nightmares of failure end with Kaguya’s devastating “how cute.” One of this show’s strongest repeating gags
Though I think the strongest repeating gag is just Chika mindlessly having fun in the background while our leads overthink themselves into a panic. Also cutest, which may have something to do with it too
“Whatever she thinks about me, it won’t do too much damage.” Harsh, but fair
Nice contrast of their two personalities here – Miyuki’s vast insecurity regarding his athletic abilities leads him to overly praise Chika’s mediocre ones, which immediately inflates her easily provoked ego. A smart use of this setup and these characters
I also like the slight hints of her underlying menace, placed directly beneath that beaming grin. Clear to see how she enjoys tilting the usual power dynamic, in listening to her ask “how is it appropriate to request a favor?”
This show gets an absurd amount of mileage out of Konomi Kohara’s performance as Chika. Her weird, incidental noises are frequently the highlight of any scene she’s in, and here, the punchline of her watching Miyuki fail to hit a ball is mostly the shocked yet understated “ehhh” of her reaction. Humor can rise above familiarity through execution and specificity, and that truth is exemplified by how a particular great actor can make basically anything funny
“President, maybe your image of yourself isn’t in sync with your actual movements!” This describes Kaguya and Miyuki one hundred percent of the time, but I appreciate Chika not mentioning that
“I think you’re good enough to be at the level of a person who just sucks at it.” Okay, that line is fantastic. As usual, Chika is the glue holding this show together
Though to be fair, that might partially be my perspective because I just can’t relate to high school romance anymore. Miyuki and Kaguya’s feelings are almost two decades behind me, but “time to dunk on my idiot friends” is a lifelong emotion
“Why are you trying so hard at this?” “Because I don’t want them to see me look like a dork.” Also very good. I appreciate this extremely petty honesty, contrasted against the inspirational background strings
“I raised that boy.” And a great final punchline, as well! No joke, this was one of Kaguya-sama’s most consistent and genuinely funny vignettes so far
“Not much evidence is left on a rainy day, so that’s when kidnappers target you.” Chika is just full of useful information
Aw shit, time for the umbrella-sharing operation
Ah, I see. Kaguya sees umbrella sharing as an efficient way to mark her territory
I like that the first act’s couple have now become our Default Example Couple
We’re basically back to the original dynamic for this skit, as they vie for control of the umbrella sharing scenario. Honestly, I’m glad we’ve mostly moved past this
We’ve hit my usual complaint: the storyboarding and sound design are doing a terrific job of building up Kaguya’s interrogation of Miyuki, but I just don’t find the underlying joke compelling enough to warrant this laborious delivery
And Done
Well, I can definitely say that was stronger than the previous episode. For this one, it was all about that central skit – Miyuki and Chika’s volleyball practice was likely the show’s strongest skit on the whole, featuring plenty of distinctive jokes, lots of punchy one-liners, pleasingly farcical escalation, and some great, well-used cuts of animation. On the other hand, skits one and three felt all too familiar at this point, and because the central relationship is generally framed in such a farcical way, I don’t really feel any emotional payoff when the leads do get closer. That middle skit was great, but I’m still largely just waiting for the show to become interesting.
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Seems weird to me that you’re coming at this from a gag comedy perspective and not seeing how it’s all thematic focus. This is like the first few minutes of Oregairu: hapless teenagers spout their view of society as in line with PUA garbage, and then has that worldview hoist them on their own petard. Where Oregairu had the teacher literally tear Hachiman’s essay up, this show has Comedy metaphorically tear their manifestos up.
And yet, despite their having fallen prey to a toxic worldview, the kids are gonna be all right. They can still fumble their way to honest connection. And the audience, in the mean time, can enjoy the show making literal how the PUA mindset is childish.
You say this is like the “first few minutes” of Oregairu, but Kaguya’s been repeating these gags for five episodes, and I’m just not thrilled by this style of comedy. I also don’t think the show is really doing much in terms of “tearing down toxic perspectives” – its leads just seem insecure, not like pick-up artists in waiting. I feel something like Bloom Into You or Toradora is a lot closer to Oregairu than Kaguya-sama is.
I think the “pick-up artist” comment refers to the character who you saw briefly from behind at the close of this episode.
No, I don’t mean just Ishigami, though he makes the themes even more explicit, I mean the worldview Miyuki and Kaguya are steeped in, epitomized by the opening monologue of the first couple of eps, and the way each skit ends with the narrator intoning the results of the match.
What the show does, when not viewed as strictly a comedy, is that the characters get in their own way when they subscribe wholly to this view, and actually accomplish their goals when they drop the act. I understand, Bobduh, that you don’t find the comedy working for you, so I’m suggesting that you stop viewing them as gags. View them as sincere characterization. Perhaps that will make the characters even less likable, but plenty of insecure teenagers really are trapped in status games, and fans of the show probably relate to those feelings as much as they find them funny. Consider it like Tsuredure Children on steroids.
The show isn’t actively tearing down the toxic perspectives, true, but it is lampooning them. The characters certainly aren’t benefiting from their hangups, unlike isekai cases. And I honestly did find that the Kaguya-sama cast more actively progresses in overcoming their insecurities than, say, Nozaki-kun did, even if Nozaki started from a lower toxicity baseline of “problematic worldview about romance.”
I’d definitely give it more of a chance. It’ll always be a comedy first and foremost but there are different types of comedy. Ones that are solely comedy with characters who have quirks and they don’t really examine or talk about their characters, then there’s the other type that moves out of the lines of what pure comedy is, fleshes out the characters, imbue it with drama / mini-story arcs. None is better than the other (execution matters more) but Kaguya-sama is definitely the latter type.
As they expand the cast comedy-wise there’ll be more locations and character dynamics available as well. Events also get remembered and there’s a passage of time.