Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Tensai-tachi no Renai Zunousen is the last of the major new series on my radar for this somewhat undersized winter schedule. And it’s a big one too, the third of my top-level expectations shows for the season. But I was feeling oddly trepidatious going into this premiere. Usually with those series I’m either familiar with the material and extremely confident, or going in cold turkey on a hunch. But though I haven’t read the Kaguya-sama (fuck me if I’m going to type that whole title out one more time this week) manga, it almost feels like it because a lot of folks have – and it seems as if almost all of them have strong feelings about it one way or the other.
Still, in all, this is one of the best aggregator-reviewed romcom manga out there (for whatever that’s worth). It’s published in a seinen magazine (which is probably worth more). And it’s directed by Hatakeyama Mamoru, fresh off one of the finest anime of the decade in Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu (which counts most of all). So yeah, my expectations had to be pretty damn high – but the tempestuous reactions of manga readers had me thinking I was either going to love this series or hate it.
Funnily enough, it was neither. I liked a lot about this first episode, some stuff about it bothered me, but my main reaction in the end was mild puzzlement over why this series seems to be such a big deal. It’s certainly not awful, so hard to get why some folks would feel strongly in that direction – but it didn’t strike me as being anything all that exceptional, either. I mean premise wise, it’s strictly retread tires with one twist (albeit the twist is central to the plot). That really means the strong feeling it elicits comes down to execution I guess, and the jury would still be out on that for me.
First off let’s get the negatives out of the way, so we can focus on the good parts. The narration – that was a lot to take. I certainly have nothing against Aoyama Yutaka as an actor, or even with his performance here, and I get that the narration is part of the gag construction. But that was a lot to take. A lot – I mean, it was unrelenting. And it created a sort of implicit hand-holding by the narrative to make sure we knew when we were supposed to laugh. I don’t need or want that – I’ll laugh when something is funny (and I often did with this ep) and I won’t if it isn’t. One of the oldest rules of joke-telling is never explain the joke.
That unrelenting quality – which extended to the visuals too – gave the whole episode a sort of SHAFT quality which hung in the air like a slightly-off smell in a crowded elevator. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Hatekayama-sensei cut his teeth at SHAFT, though he worked under the name Omata Shinichi there. Hey, I’d change my name if I used to work at SHAFT too, but old habits sometimes die hard. Shouwa Genroku certainly represented a big stylistic shift but 2012’s Sankarea was a lot closer to this post-SHAFT vibe Kaguya-sama is repping. I will say that it worked quite well for me with Sankarea for the most part (it might have even been a top 10 series if 2012 hadn’t been an all-time great anime year), but it remains to be seen if it will with this series.
Apart from that, what essentially saved this premiere from going down the sinkhole was that it actually was funny a good chunk of the time. Romcoms about two essentially unlikeable people have some hills to climb, and student council veep and general ojou-sama Kaguya Shinomiya (Koga Aoi) and seitoukaichou and top-ranked student Shirogane Miyuki (Furukawa Makoto) are pretty unlikeable by design. You climb the hills mainly by casting those people as vulnerable (check) and by not taking the material too seriously (check). The gag is that the two of them are in-love with each other but so driven by pride and the idea that “love is war” that they’ll be damned if they’re going to be the first to confess. Hijinks, naturally, ensue.
There were three mini-stories packed into this episode, with each principal “winning” one of them and one ending in a draw (I don’t know if that will be the case every week). The funniest of the three was the bento chapter, and it may not be a coincidence that it was the one that most prominently featured Fujiwara Chika (Kohara Konomi), the cheerfully airheaded student council secretary and general relationship obstacle/facilitator. Funnily enough, it helps when Fujiwara is around because she talks so much she pre-empts the narration, which feels like a welcome break. There were some good gags, sight and otherwise (the weed, and the indirect kiss) and the general youthful foolishness of the leads was exposited quite well.
My worry here is staying power. The first episode was exhausting, yes – but equally of concern, my sense is that this is basically a one-joke premise. I love a good joke as much as the next man and probably more, but you’ve really got to be on your game if you’re going to milk the same one for an entire series and not have it go stale at some point. I see comic potential here, but unless the execution is so spectacular it changes the rules of the game, I would think there’d need to be some tonal variation and diversification of the humor to carry Kaguya-sama for an entire cour. Who knows, my read could be totally off and both of those things may be on the way in weeks ahead. I hope so, because I really want this show to work.
Yuuki
January 13, 2019 at 8:18 pmThe best thing about Kaguya-sama is that it starts good and just keeps getting better and better.
Its okay if this episode didn’t blow you away because it’s certainly not the best the show has to offer. They just need to nail the execution and so far, so good.
Simone
January 13, 2019 at 8:29 pmI think the narrator’s purpose is less to explain the joke and more to make the situation purposefully over-dramatic, which in itself is part of the joke. The big contrast between tone and content is one of the huge draws of this series, and the narrator can be both over-the-top or deadpan depending on context. It’s more something in the vein of an affectionate parody of stuff like the narration in Kaiji or in HXH applied to much more trivial situations.
As for the staying power… I guess that increases with both the introduction of new characters (there’s two in particular who are basically mains too in the end) and the development of the characters. In many ways this is like following one of the couples from Tsurezure Children, where ‘mind games’ are the resident gimmick. I think a big part of how well this works in anime form will be the choice of chapters to adapt. This first episode was very liberal in its choices (the three chapters adapted were 1, 12 and 5, in this order) so I suppose they just picked an overall order that will allow them to best tell a self-contained story of sorts with a good amount of progression, skipping material that feels repetitive and one-note (which DOES exist, but is mostly concentrated in the early parts of the manga, when Akasaka was sort of flexing his muscles).
Guardian Enzo
January 13, 2019 at 8:33 pmHe may not be literally explaining the joke, but his role is largely to make sure we know when to laugh. At least that’s how it played to me.
More side characters – yes, please, I can sense this premise really needs the contrast. I also hope it doesn’t stay this SHAFT-y for its entire run because honestly, I felt like I needed a valium and a sidecar after that.
Also, it sorta bugs me that the two leads call each other by their titles (which fits with the premise) but the subs act like they’re using each other’s names. A quibble, but not an insignificant one. It makes no sense to me.
Simone
January 13, 2019 at 8:53 pmIf the staff knows what they’re doing (and it seems to me they do), they’ll quickly start introducing the other side characters. One (Hayasaka, Kaguya’s live-in servant) was already seen in the last scene of this episode. It’s what really diversifies the dynamics in novel ways and gives the story many more ways to do humour besides “here’s Kaguya and Shirogane thinking way too much about something”.
bnbros
January 13, 2019 at 9:07 pmYou’re not the only one bothered about the subs. A number of manga readers including myself took issue with the subs’ “liberties” because aside from how jarring they are to read along with the audio, the way the characters address each other does become a bit of a plot point later in the story (I won’t go into specifics, but I hope this doesn’t count as a spoiler). Some readers had mentioned a similar problem with the official localization by Viz too, if I recall.
Guardian Enzo
January 13, 2019 at 9:26 pmWell, I guess I can just listen to the words and ignore the subs when they’re addressing each other directly, ROFL.
bnbros
January 13, 2019 at 9:41 pmHeh, that works too.
As for your original question of whether it’s worth sticking with the series. Besides what Simone has already summed up nicely, I would add that another draw to the series for me is how the episodic gags are more than just one-off jokes of the week. The author Akasaka Aka is pretty good at using these gags to showcase and develop many of the characters’ quirks and occasionally makes references to them in future chapters, which keeps the humor and characterization consistently solid.
This first episode did well at establishing the tone and groundwork of the series and things will get better from here on imo, especially if A1 can maintain this level of quality.
Guardian Enzo
January 13, 2019 at 10:31 pmWell, I’m not going anywhere in the short-term – the leash will be pretty long with this one. But I sure hope Hatakeyama-sensei turns down the SHAFT.
Haraga
January 13, 2019 at 10:38 pmI’ll join everyone who says the series starts good, but gets much better over time. Around the second third of the season it is going to improve a lot, as the character quirks and gags set up in the earlier episodes will start to pay off, while the narrator starts expanding jokes instead of explaining them.
I know fans saying “it is going to get better” often doesn’t turn out to be true, but this one will surely be the instance where it turns ot to be true.
Nayrael
January 14, 2019 at 2:56 am“I liked a lot about this first episode, some stuff about it bothered me, but my main reaction in the end was mild puzzlement over why this series seems to be such a big deal.”
Kaguya-sama is not one of those popular shows that is such due to being unique, or because it starts with a bang, and keeps people for that reason. Rather, I’d say that the popularity is based on the author’s long-term handling of the story and characters: he/she knows exactly when to introduce a new major members of the cast, when to introduce a new tertiary character, how to use those characters in new ways later, when to touch a reader’s nostalgia, how not to make their scenes oversaturated, how and when to progress the character development, there is very little fanservice (the author is pretty proud of this), no harem (for the MC, ironically a secondary male character is someone around whom ship wars revolve), and so on. Basically, it’s not something overly original or excitingly unique: it’s just a good story with a good long-term execution.
Sam
January 14, 2019 at 7:23 amHmm this adaptation was somewhat watchable, unlike 5Toubun. I’m somewhat intrigued to see all the folks coming here to somewhat passionately defend this one whereas all you get on 5Toubun was trashing (me included btw), lol. Sure Kaguya-sama is probably a bit better but they are almost equally popular, so probably it tells more about the folks visiting this site than anything – I don’t think the difference (in source materials) is night and day and they each have their shortcomings.
I have my issue with this show – I don’t think it’s super great and while I do agree that it gets a bit better in the middle, it has dragged far too long (about 20-30 ch too long IMO) with the mostly one joke premise, resulting losing interest rapidly and fatigue setting in (again, for me). Yeah it has other side characters and small jokes go along to support but the show’s main backbone is strictly on that one joke premise and it relies quite heavily on it on most occasions. Evidently I can’t keep my interest for 134+ chapters with that setup while some others definitely can. 🙂
One positive thing about anime adaptation on gag manga like this is that they never cover the whole thing and is in almost always just a digest form. Having only 12ep could help on the main issue I have with the source material.
Simone
January 14, 2019 at 5:30 pmI don’t know if it’s just sample bias like you suggest is going on here, but on Reddit anime I’ve barely seen Gotoubun discussed, while the Kaguya thread got gilded such an insane amount of times it actually became the most gilded thread in all of Reddit for the day. So I wouldn’t say they necessarily are that close in popularity. At least in some subsets of the fandom, Kaguya looks significantly more popular.
Guardian Enzo
January 14, 2019 at 6:30 pmIf you believe MAL is a representative sampling, it’s fairly close – Kaguya has 67K followers and Gotoubun 46K.
Sam
January 14, 2019 at 11:00 pmI have no idea on the Reddit anime forum as I don’t think I ever visited – I was comparing the popularity of the source materials. Both seem quite popular among English audience (reddit r/manga, MAL, etc), at least. They both are among most talked about whenever a new chapter drops. Kaguya has about 2+ year head start on Gotoubun, so it may have a tad more fanboy/girls, sure.