My deep thoughts on the Kaguya-sama manga (Major spoilers)

For the past five years, Kaguya-sama has been a huge part of my life. It’s the series that’s given me consistent hard laughs with its comedy as well as given me inspiration with its serious character developments. Even after I finished this manga, I refuse to believe it has ended for real. After ruminating my thoughts on Kaguya-sama as a whole, I think this series is a 10/10 for me. I say this with utmost earnest, even when I have my gripes on some later parts of the story because no other manga has ever made stupendously happy as Kaguya-sama.

A huge part of what makes Kaguya-sama so enjoyable for me at least is the lightning in a bottle comedy that 100% suited my sense of humor. A part of what makes the comedy formula so good is the mind game aspect. It involves battles between two young genius characters that have yet to fully figure out what love is trying to outplay each other to confess first. It’s very interesting to see what goes into the minds of these characters in each battle, only for it to fall into an unexpectedly funny result. This formula works so well because it’s presented in a largely serious and exaggerated fashion through the art, character expressions, the narrator, and backgrounds. It perfectly encapsulates what goes through the minds of young teens with overthinking at that stage of life and utilizing that aspect to its fullest comedic advantage. The whole plot of each mind game in each chapter is the joke itself with the entire journey of it being hilarious and cute as hell.

Aka is able to keep the comedy refreshing with brand new situations and new characters. Even when the author isn’t doing mind games, he still can write hilarious character interactions that utilizes each character’s key traits to the utmost. The characters bounce off each so well. Add in the fact that Aka likes to put in touches of cultured degeneracy in some of the mind games that come at the stages of youth (sex, obsession with otaku culture, gaming, etc.) and it becomes a comedy that feels like it caters to me. My favorite comedic interactions in this series ever will always be the Shirogane-Ishigami-Chika ones.

I love Chika coaching Shirogane on different hobbies that he performs horribly on. I love Chika looking down on Ishigami while he does his damndest in one of Chika’s games to show her a lesson or two whilest going on a depressive episode at the same time. I love the man-to-man interactions between Shirogane and Ishigami as they tackle situations that involve male degeneracy. To me, these interactions show the best of Aka’s comedy writing. This isn’t to downplay the other dynamics, including the main one between Kaguya and Shirogane. They’re all great. It’s just that I like those interactions the most. In general, Aka has a strong understanding of his characters and good intuition in humor that he’s able to make comedy so effective for me.

Early on when I first got into Kaguya-sama and was following it week by week, I initially felt mixed on how Aka how utilized and palced serious arcs in the story because they weren’t as good as the comedy, even if the character developments that happened were very good. I started to feel this way around the Ice Kaguya arc. But having revisited the series and binged it all, I didn’t feel those criticisms anymore. I actually like how the series leisurely takes its time to do comedy and serious parts whenever. It made the journey through reading this series much more precious. Having seen how Aka develops his characters, it’s clear to me that he takes extra care to make sure every character is given some level of growth. He really explores character struggles through backstories and internal thought process that makes the entire cast feel very human. Even the most dimwitted character Chika has depth and an an interesting arc on her own. I now think that most of the serious arcs are just as good as the comedy.

That said, I do have my own take on how the endgame arcs were handled. I do kind of agree with others that the final Shinomiya family conflict didn’t meet expectations for how built up the antagonists and characters were. But for what it is, it works very well enough because all the main characters managed to uphold the courage and put in an admirable effort to help Kaguya escape from her family debacle. That endgame arc showed how much these characters have grown and how close they become to one another, who would’ve otherwise not handled or helped Kaguya at all had they not been friends. It made me very proud and happy that these characters I’ve been attached to and have understood on a deep level for so long have done such admirable actions for the sake of a friend.

I do understand how that group effort easily trumping a Kaguya’s family and ending it like that is underwhelming. I also understand that the story shifting away comedy for a long period of time to focus on that family conflict made the journey less fun and enjoyable. I feel like the fundemental problem of the family conflict is not that it has an underwhelming clear cut villain running the scheme, but that there just doesn’t seem to be much of a huge mind game going on at all when the entire series has been focused on characters that think very deeply about their situations to solve conflicts. If I’m honestly speaking here, I wanted to see how these young teens would be able to outwit adults with much more experience, with the entire arc becoming more of a constant outwit mind game between wise adults and wise teens until Shirogane and Kaguya make the final gigachad 4D chess move.

That did not happen. In reality, Aka wrote the Shinomiya adults as somewhat smart, but also dimwitted and one-note. They don’t have the adults use online communication much to outwit the teens for instance, where as Ishigami and Miko take full advantage of that. Thus, it doesn’t feel like there’s much of a satisfying payoff for our main characters because it was too easy to overcome. That said, it is simultaneously understandable that this huge conflict turned out to have this outcome because the Shinomiya family in general is very sheltered, so much to a point where Kaguya didn’t know online terminology and how app usage in modern phones work. Aka could’ve easily done much more to make the Shinomiya family much more of a smarter menace, but didn’t. In that way, I should have felt majorly disappointed.

But looking back at the entire series, I just can’t really feel this way. More than anything, the joy I’ve gotten to loving and laughing at all these characters that I’ve come to understand deeply outweighed any disappointment that I may have had. And even then, the last 20 chapters where they close off all the arcs for most of the characters brought back all the core aspects of what made me enjoy Kaguya a lot in the first place. These arcs are closed off strongly with strong back-to-back parallels that made me more impressed of Aka Akasaka as a writer.

So I can say at the least, I’m content and satisfied with the ending. I can say that I will miss these characters dearly and will never forget them. I can confidently say that I’ll never forget the sayings and quotes from these characters relating to the struggles of love/inferiority/motivation that have inspired me and will stick to me for the rest of my lifetime. I can say for sure it is the #1 definitive, high school coming of age story with the #1 definitive romance and #1 definitive comedy. I love Kaguya-sama: Love is War so much. It is still one of my favorite manga series ever. In my opinion, this series is a 10/10 experience.

Thanks for reading! I just wanted to share my opinion here cause I feel I had a lot to say as a huge fan.