The reason why this post exists however is because I've wanted to check out the more highly acclaimed romance series for a while now as I don't dislike romance in the series I read i think it's important to get a taste of what people like to see. I've been reading Domestic na Kanojo (taboo romance manga) and 5Toubun no Hanayome (one dude meets five identical sisters) and I'm looking forward to Chihayafuru season 3 and Fruits Basket to air. Just last week I asked for recommendations and people mentioned this romance-based series that aired just earlier this year and that's what we're here to talk about today.
Kaguya-sama: Love is War by A1-Pictures is an adaptation of a romcom manga by a very similar except longer name Kaguya-sama Wa Kokurasetai - Tensai-tachi no renai zunousen, or in English, Kaguya Wants to be Confessed To: The Geniuses' War of Love and Brains, created by Aka Akasaka. A-1 Pictures and I go a long way. They usually adapt series that have great original material such as Ace Attorney, Magic Kaito 1412, Black Butler, Erased, Seven Deadly Sins and many others tend to get filler endings with contrived writing, really bad animation and off-character designs as well as very, very rushed pacing, adapting over 100 chapters a season, for SDS for example. So I've never thought that A-1 is the ideal studio that I'd want to take over any of my favourite series, but sadly, they seem to mass produce a decent amount of anime every year, which I assume is the reason for their low-quality series. They sometimes do have an eye for what is a well written plot to adapt in order to pull in audience though.
However Kaguya-sama is one of A-1 Pictures' best adaptations ever when it comes to what a group of animators can do to enhance the original series.
This narration-heavy story starts off by introducing the watcher to the concept of what this series will be about: when it comes to the ideology of the show, two people who love each other are technically constantly at war with each other as relationships, according to the narrator, consist of a person who reigns supreme and controls, in other words a "winner" and a person who becomes a "loser" and obeys the winner.
Although that type of over-the-top introduction and the hype from the series' fans calling it the "Death Note of romance" might make you feel as if this show will have some supernatural mind games or heavy drama, there is literally none of what you'd expect. The first episode of the anime surely shows some potential to showcase psychological aspects well, but the show dusts that off right away and stays a simple romantic comedy series about a limited cast of characters in a limited setting.
Shuchi'in private academy is known to be one of the more special academies in Japan with a long-lasting history going back to the era of nobles and samurai. Nowadays the academy works to graduate the children from rich families so that those children will grow up to become the new leaders of Japan.
In Shuchi'in academy the school assets and love lives of the students are being handled by the student council, which our main characters are part of.
Kaguya Shinomiya is the character that the show is based upon so we can assume she's the main character, however there are two equal characters in this show that can be called the main lead and the deuteragonist. Kaguya Shinomiya is the vice-president of Shuchi'in academy's student council as well as the daughter of a man named Gan'an Shinomiya who is a multi-trillionaire. As a person with such heavy family history, Kaguya has trained to be multi-talented, perfecting the art of many different subjects from music to martial arts, and became known as a so-called genius in the academy.
However there is a person who Kaguya has not yet surpassed when it comes to exams.
Miyuki Shirogane is the show's deuteragonist and a young man known for his exceptional intellect and wisdom as the person who scores the best in mock exams out of anyone in Japan, always getting maximum points and the first spot. Unlike Kaguya, Miyuki is not as well versed in multiple different talents, however since he is the greatest academic, Miyuki Shirogane's exemplary behavior was what earned him the spot as the student council president itself.
 |
The show is about the so-called mind games in which Kaguya plans a certain situation out and prepares it in which she will try to trick Miyuki to acknowledge her/ask her out/say he loves her in even the most ridicilous situations, and Miyuki also tries to think ahead on how to counteract and make Kaguya to ask him out instead or say she loves him or such. As the storytelling in this show is mostly episodic, you can instantly tell that this type of writing would get old and fast. And it does. The student council's secretary, the big-breasted Chika Fujiwara, is what usually breaks the mold and turns the planning the two do upside down and sideways, however Chika does that far too often so that gets tiring as well. Aside from Chika there is really only one more notable side character called Yuu Ishigami, a computer-savvy student who fails grades constantly. Yuu Ishigami appears rather late into the show since it's only 12 episodes but the episodes he appears in tend to be the funniest out of them all. The comedy of Kaguya-sama is not that great in general. There is an episode focusing on grade-schooler level wiener jokes and it excuses those jokes by saying that Kaguya's dark humour is grade-schooler level. It's kind of sad and bland to watch and the original mind game aspect of the lovers also seems to quickly lose its oomph just couple episodes in, the story becomes a pretty shallow romcom that doesn't lead anywhere.
The anime itself feels like it's been done by Shaft. The presentation of this show is very good. Character models look decent but the clever ways of showcasing what's going on are the best aspects of this show. The framers transform and many different styles of wide variety are used in quick succession to make almost everything that happens in the show look and sound much more interesting than they actually are. The soundtracks are fine but nothing special. The voice actors are okay and they handle some comedic scenes well.
The worst aspects of this show that really make watching the mere 12 episodes of it tiring for me is the lack of substance, the cast of characters and the settings in which the story takes place. For an episodic story, it seems to only pull jokes or try to do tricks instead of setting up a real short-story. I did not feel any presence of life from majority of the episodes and they seemed The pacing of the show felt off for me on many occasions.
When I say that the cast of characters is what make the show tiring for me I mean that I personally did not like any other characters than Kaguya, Miyuki and Yuu. And if I did try to find someone else, there was barely any left. This show lacks characters heavily. You'd expect every episode to show one-off and overarching characters but the show only focuses on what's going on around the main cast - and what is going on around, is not much and that brings us to the third point.
I have a problem with the characters being sold to us as geniuses that play mind games when they don't act like ones and act more like the shy teenagers that they are rather than the mind-controlling geniuses that they wish they were.
The settings of this show are bland at best. Majority of it takes place in the student council room, dealing with the exact same characters doing similar types of jokes that have to do with romance. For an episodic series I really do loathe when the setting stays the same with how easy it should be to change it around.
Thus it's clear that basically all the problems of Kaguya-sama come from the original manga series instead of the anime adaptation by A-1.
To wrap this all up, as I mentioned Kaguya-sama reminds me of Shaft's Nisio Isin works in how it spams dialogue and presents itself, making it seem like there's a lot going on in a frame, but those moments are mostly used for gags and there is rarely anything to talk or theorize about, it's essentially mindless fun. It is not a downright bad anime, the animation studio does many favours for the original series to make it more bearable for me, and people who care more about superficial aspects such as presentation rather than anything with substance can understandably love this show quite a lot, as there is a huge fan base for this series. However the show is not something that I'd expect from what sells itself as the "Death Note of romance."
No comments:
Post a Comment