Kaguya-sama: Love is War - Season 2 Premiere Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out This review contains spoilers for the Season 2 premiere of Kaguya-sama: Love is War, now streaming on Funimation in the US. Episode 1 premiered on April 11, with new episodes rolling out weekly. [poilib element="accentDivider"] What might be anime’s best romantic comedy, Kaguya-sama: Love is War (now stylised with a question mark at the end of the title) at last makes its more-than-welcome return. Directed by Shinichi Omata and written by Yasuhiro Nakanishi, the show is adapted from the immensely popular weekly seinen manga from Aka Akasaka (with the translated title: “Kaguya Wants to be Confessed to: The Geniuses' War of Hearts and Minds”). The show is focused on a battle of wits between the wealthy heiress Kaguya Shinomiya and the workaholic star student and council president Miyuki Shirogane, both trying to make the other confess their love for each other, as they’re both too proud to admit it. In the hands of anyone else it’d be a boring and routine “battle of the sexes,” but Love is War has continually shown itself to be above such clichés. With its James Bond-esque opening titles (scored with an infectiously catchy number from “Japan's King Of Love Songs” Masayuki Suzuki) and penchant for ludicrous escalation, the first season made hysterical overreaction its whole modus operandi. The ridiculously elaborate schemes by Shinomiya and Shirogane to make the other confess their love constantly defy predictability, as any one might find itself undone by their meddlesome friends, pure coincidence, or one of the two panicking at the prospect of intimacy with the other. The show is kept at a ridiculous and intentionally infuriating stalemate, as the stubborn leads refuse to be honest with each other or themselves. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/09/my-hero-academia-season-4-finale-ending-explained"] What keeps this back-and-forth interesting is how the comedy stays informed by character; Shirogane’s obsessive work ethic stems from his family’s financial insecurity, while Shinomiya’s emotional insecurity stems from her lavish and extremely sheltered upbringing. The incredible voice performances from Makoto Furukawa as Shirogane and Aoi Koga as Shinomiya both keep the intentionally frustrating dynamic fresh and funny even without interruptions from fan favourite agent of chaos Chika Fujiwara (Konomi Kohara, excelling in conveying a bubbly hyperactivity) and the human punchline Yū Ishigami (Ryōta Suzuki, keeping a precise monotone). The first season was more from the perspective of Shinomiya, examining the lifelong insecurities that drive her obsessive psychological battle with Shirogane, and her inability to be emotionally honest. That surprisingly genuine sincerity of the first season’s latter half revealed Love Is War’s surprising depth and capability for a lot more than simple laughs at the character’s expense. The second season looks to expand this sympathy to the supporting characters, first and foremost Ai Hayasaka, Shinomiya’s long-suffering but nonetheless loyal attendant. As with the previous season each episode is split into three or four vignettes, with the first of this new episode opening on a characteristically ridiculous scenario with Hayasaka at the center, detailing the absurd lengths she goes to meet Shinomiya’s impossible demands, and preserve the happiness of her mistress. It also appears that animation studio A-1 Pictures has a little more weight to throw around – scenery and characters are drawn and animated with loving exactness – with a particular adoration of absurd facial expressions in almost every cut to a close-up. Even the most mundane scenarios of the episode make use of wild, exuberant movements and great detail. It’s almost reminiscent of shows like Nichijou, as Love is War makes use of anachronistic homages to other genres such as action thrillers even in the most mundane of stories. Case-in-point, the episode’s first part has Hayasaka fully decked out in tactical spy gear as she infiltrates the Student Council room to swap out Shirogane’s coffee for decaf (he almost immediately passes out upon drinking it, reacting as though it were poison - a relatable action). [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=top-25-best-anime-series-of-all-time&captions=true"] The new episode is crammed with jokes from beginning to end, full of subtle but extremely funny callbacks to the previous season alongside its farcical set-pieces, sharp one-liners and clever visual humour. There will no doubt be some jokes lost in translation (the opening credits jokingly crosses out the extremely long subtitle of the original Japanese), with various plays on words and blink-and-miss-it accompaniments to graphics, but the script moves at such a pace that it doesn’t really matter - it only makes it more rewatchable. The timing of each scene is impeccable, and perfectly balanced with the ongoing commentary of an omniscient narrator that recalls the pithy reality checks of Ron Howard in Arrested Development, only with a more intense delivery in this case. The following chapter, “The Student Council Has Not Achieved Nirvana”, revisits the continuing story of a student couple given (mostly bad) romantic advice by Shirogane and Shinomiya, the boy having returned from summer holiday to gloat about his happiness. The newfound confidence leads Shirogane and Ishigami to suspect that the couple have “experienced nirvana”, and Love is War continues to walk the line between a refreshing frankness about sex while having the characters act hilariously coy when talking about it (in this scene, the act is only ever referred to as “nirvana” or “the divine dance”). It continues into a breakdown of the student council’s lacking understanding of the dynamics of romance, getting plenty of mileage at their bewilderment at each other’s expectations (“holding hands on the first date?!” Shinomiya gasps). All-in-all, it’s an excellent and well-rounded reintroduction to the show, showcasing and perfecting its most common kinds of scenarios. Take “Kaguya-sama Wants To Get Married,” a fairly typical set-up for a number of the last season that once again has Fujiwara create a game that Shinomiya and Shirogane take far too seriously, and only suffer for doing so. In this instance it’s a bastardized version of The Game of Life, which inevitably leads to overreactions about fictional marriage and the road it leads down. For Shinomiya, it becomes a darkly comic reflection on the life that could await her, should she follow the pre-ordained path that her closed-off father has decided for her. She ends Fujiwara’s game as an immensely wealthy but miserable business magnate (for Shirogane, it’s mostly just debilitating debt). “Kaguya Wants to Celebrate” ends the episode on a light note, with a tense back-and-forth between Shirogane and Shinomiya as the latter tries to persuade the former to celebrate his birthday, attempting to coax the date (which she already knows) out of him by having him join in on a horoscope reading with Fujiwara and Ishigami. Shirogane refuses, claiming it’s foolish but secretly being an obsessive fan of horoscopes (“Yes! Virgos is in first place!”), and being quietly devastated at having read in a previous one that he and Shinomiya are incompatible. Scored with overly-dramatic music, the stubborn back-and-forth leads to some wonderful facial expressions (like Kaguya’s rage leading her head to expand like a balloon) and quick one-liners. It’s a fairly familiar conclusion to an episode firing on all cylinders, but if the first season of Love is War proved anything, it’s just how much this show is truly capable of.

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