Creative Staff:
Art/Story: Aka Akasaka
Translation: Tomoko Kimura
English Adaptation/Editor: Annette Roman
Touch-Up Art & Lettering: Stephen Dutro
Cover & Interior Design: Alice Lewis
What They Say:
Two geniuses. Two brains.
Two hearts. One battle.
Who will confess their love first…?!
Will Kaguya figure out what Miyuki wants for his birthday plus present him with the perfect cake? Is treasurer Yu flunking out of school and beyond help…or can the person he fears most get him back on track? Then, the romantic Autumn Moon Viewing Festival leads to some stellar night moves. The student council plays a role-playing game in which at least one member doesn’t get to play out their fantasy. Ai assumes an alter ego to prove she can get Miyuki to fall in love with her in just one day. And Miyuki’s time as student council president is up!
We play many roles in life.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The key to continuing a series where the central premise (Kaguya and Shirogane are both competing to see who can make the other confess their feelings first) requires constant resets to the starting positions of the main actors is variety. And with this volume, we can see that Aka Akasaka is capable of maintaining the required level of variety to keep the ball rolling.
While all loosely connected, the individual chapters continue to be self-contained vignettes that mainly pit the two leaders of the school against each other in intellectual combat. For Kaguya, the greatest hurdle is to give Shirogane a birthday gift. In order to help her decide what would be most suitable, she goes on a window shopping trip with Shirogane’s younger sister Kei (who is very much like her brother, though quite independent of him) and the Fujiwara sisters during which Kaguya learns more about the home life of the Shiroganes. Having successfully navigated that minefield, however, Kaguya loses her cool when her assistant Ai Hayasaka berates Kaguya for her constant missteps and self-sabotaging behavior. Challenging Hayasaka to make Miyuki fall for her in one day, Hayasaka undertakes the challenge…with possibly unintended results. Not to leave the other members of the Student Council out of things, Chika brings a new game developed by the Board Game Club (with suitably comic results) and when Yu Ishigami is in danger of failing for the year, Kaguya steps in to see him at least pass his exams.
While the focus naturally shifts slightly away from the two protagonists (perhaps we should call them the two antagonists, considering their mutually-exclusive goals), giving the spotlight at times to the secondary and supporting cast (Chika, who is considered a lead by the author; Yu; Kei Shirogane; even Kashiwagi, the girl who is part of the couple that Shirogane helped to create through his ignorant dating advice to her boyfriend) is a necessity. It helps to keep the narrative from bogging down and most importantly helps to keep the laughs flowing, since there are only so many times you can laugh at Shirogane and Shinomiya attempting to outwit each other without any sort of break in their “war.”
All in all, this volume continues to bring the comedy that has made this series stand out, while also providing a few heartwarming moments here and there, to show us that the characters are not just shallow hand puppets delivering lines. I continue to look forward to how next things will play out.
In Summary:
Kaguya wants to give Miyuki a gift, but what can she give him that won’t leave a bad impression? Then Yu Ishigami is in danger of being held back a year if he fails his exams. As Kaguya owes him a favor, she decides to take it upon herself to see that he does not fail. And what will happen when Kaguya challenges her assistant, Ai Hayasaka, to try to seduce Miyuki in one day? All is fair in love and war, especially when love is war.
Content Grade: A-
Art Grade: A-
Package Rating: A-
Text/Translation: A-
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: January 1st, 2019
MSRP: $9.99
