Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be returning to Kayuga-sama: Love is War, where our beleaguered heroes remain suspended between pride and passion. Kaguya and Miyuki are head-over-heels for each other, but to reveal those feelings would be an expression of weakness, which their opponent would surely counter without mercy. Thus they must remain in this fraught stasis, each daring the other to reveal an emotion, each desperate to maintain their indifferent poise.

So far, so normal. But beyond their general adolescent insecurities, I am immensely intrigued by the class dimension that seems to be complicating their relationship. The fact that Kaguya and Miyuki come from different social backgrounds has been foregrounded from the start, with some portion of Miyuki’s insecurity likely stemming from him being “socially undeserving” of Kaguya’s love (for her part, Kaguya must contend with social expectations of feminine passivity). But recently, the active drama has started to play off this class divide, with sequences like the interschool ball or the flower debate emphasizing how Miyuki’s perspective is a direct consequence of his background. And with Kaguya’s maid Ai now acting as both Kaguya’s servant and emotional confidant, the discordant social standing of Kaguya-sama’s leads seems like it’ll take an even more prominent role in the narrative.

That’s pretty exciting to me! Anime high school romances frequently exist in a world divorced from the context of our lives, where romantic feelings are the only driving force. But the best character stories acknowledge that our identities do not exist apart from our environments, and are shaped by our life experiences in countless divergent ways. I’m hoping Kaguya-sama continues to tug at the awkward frictions of its characters’ experiences, as they struggle past artifice and into honest connection.

Continue reading →

Hello everyone, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be returning to Kaguya-sama: Love is War, which, if you’ve been following along with my articles, you know I’ve been having a pretty tough time with. The main issue is simply that I don’t really enjoy its jokes, which are presumably supposed to ingratiate me towards its cast, in order for me to feel that much more invested in its eventual dramatic turns. This is a pretty common structural trick, but if the audience isn’t amenable to your style of comedy, you run the risk of losing them entirely – like in my experience with, say, Clannad, which so utterly failed to amuse me that I instead entered its dramatic phase with a feeling of ingrained resentment.

I’m doing my best, though. The advice I received from readers was to try assessing it as a character piece now, rather than a comedy, so that’s what I’m gonna try to do. With my expectations hopefully calibrated successfully, let’s dig into another episode of Kaguya-sama!

Continue reading →

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!

Continue reading →

Hey folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to keep moving on one of our more recent projects, the goofy and visually enthralling Kaguya-sama: Love is War. If you’ve been following these articles, you probably know my overall impressions at this point – I’m constantly finding new things to rave about regarding Shinichi Omata’s direction, but haven’t yet been hooked by the show’s cast, and am generally just kind of whelmed by its comedy.

That’s not unusual for me, of course. It’s a rare anime comedy that can keep my attention for long, and altogether, I think Nichijou is the only one I’d count as a personal favorite. I’ve discussed before how comedy, like horror, is built out of the element of surprise – and in order to cultivate that surprise, it relies on an assumed set of common cultural assumptions. The more complex and ambitious a joke is, the more it must assume its audience is drawing from a specific cultural and knowledge base – and as a dude from New England, I don’t really possess the experience to parse genuinely clever Japanese comedy. What is left is the stuff that’s universal – slapstick, silly faces, and everything else that translates without translation.

In the end, this means that the anime comedy which I might find genuinely clever is frequently untranslatable to me, while the stuff I do understand feels simplistic and repetitive. Honing the fundamentals can certainly ameliorate this effect (Nichijou and Sun & Moon are strong examples of that), but ultimately, I tend to watch these shows more for the characters than the jokes. So here’s to hoping for more meaty character moments, as we explore one more episode of Kaguya-sama!

Continue reading →

Strap yourselves in folks, we’re checking out another episode of the last few years’ most beloved romantic comedy, Kaguya-sama: Love is War. Kaguya’s first two episodes were an unrelenting visual feast, demonstrating that director Shinichi Omata is just as comfortable elevating farcical conflict as he is illuminating somber dramas like Rakugo. Building off of Kaguya’s own fundamental design, Omata has constructed a dynamic world of red, white, and black contrast, with every scene offering creative new visual punchlines.

Of course, I knew going into Kaguya-sama that the direction would be fantastic, because Omata is one of our living legends. The bigger issue for me is the show’s somewhat repetitive comedic structure, an issue exacerbated by its as-of-yet unwillingness to really dig deeper into its characters’ lives. But even that seemed like less of an issue in the second episode than the first, and I’ve been told the show will continue to expand on its initial premise as it goes, evolving from its basic “spy vs spy reimagined as a love comedy” dynamic to a more character-focused story. With Omata at the helm, I’ll certainly have plenty to talk about either way, so let’s get right into another episode of Kaguya-sama!

Continue reading →

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time! Today I’ll be continuing a journey through one of the most acclaimed recent shows that I haven’t already seen, as we explore the second episode of Kaguya-sama: Love is War. So far, Shinichi Omata’s creative, energetic direction has been Kaguya-sama’s strongest feature by far, with nearly every gag earning itself a unique style of visual embellishment. Building off the base color scheme of Kaguya’s own design, Omata has created a spy-versus-spy reminiscent aesthetic that gives the whole show a sense of cohesiveness and cool, acting as a perfect tonal counterpoint to the show’s absurd conflicts.

Visually, I don’t really have any complaints. However, the show’s initial premise already feels it’s wearing thin for me – meaning for this episode, what I’m really hoping for is some expansion in terms of the show’s scope, and particularly in terms of its emotional punch. I know Kaguya and Miyuki like each other, but I don’t really know them well enough to know why they like each other, or see their relationship as something to actively root for. I’ll forgive a lot in a show if it has a compelling central romance, and if Kaguya-sama can match its stellar visual execution with some endearing character writing, I’ll probably be hooked. Let’s see what’s in store in the second episode of Kaguya-sama!

Continue reading →

Hello friends, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’re exploring the first episode of a show that only came out recently, and which actually aired its second season just this past spring – the much-loved romantic comedy Kaguya-sama: Love is War. I actually watched the episode we’ll be viewing today for Anime News Network’s preview guide, where I gave it three out of five stars. So, uh, there’s that.

My thoughts at the time were pretty straightforward. I’m a massive fan of the show’s director, Shinichi Omata – as one of the most talented ex-SHAFT directors, he’s combined the stylistic quirks of the SHAFT house style with many inventions of his own, elevating shows like Sankarea into thrilling visual theater. More recently, the two seasons of Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu collectively stand as one of the very best anime of the last ten years – but Rakugo was a thoughtfully written period drama, whereas Kaguya-sama is fundamentally a pretty standard romantic comedy. I find most anime comedies to be some combination of too repetitive and too simplistic in their jokes, and in spite of Omata’s welcome visual embellishments, he still wasn’t able to elevate Kaguya-sama into something I’d want to watch weekly. Even by the end of that first episode, I was basically just clamoring for the leads to confess to each other – my days of being satisfied by “will they or won’t they” drama are at this point years behind me.

Given that review, I was frankly a little surprised Kaguya-sama ended up getting funded for notes writeups. But I’m perfectly willing to give something a second chance, and with Omata at the helm, I’ll likely be well fed visually even if the show’s jokes don’t thrill me. Additionally, there’s frankly a pretty wide spectrum of media that is interesting or noteworthy enough that I’d like to have a solid opinion on it, but not so personally appealing to me that I end up watching it in my free time – and given Omata’s presence, I’d say Kaguya-sama falls pretty squarely within that space. With both Omata’s and my own history established, let’s take a second crack at Kaguya-sama: Love is War!

Continue reading →