Is there anything Ai Hayasaka will not do for her employer, Kaguya Shinomiya? We might be about to find out in this volume, where many a challenge is placed before the young lady of many disguises.
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:
Can Miyuki and Kaguya help Yu escape the aggro of his female classmates, let alone the win the favor of the girl he’s crushing on? Then, it’s Miyuki who’s teaching Chika a new skill for a change. Kaguya faces the temptations and pitfalls of her new smartphone and social media. Ai take on yet another secret identity. And the student council’s parents cross paths at school conferences where they must decide what colleges their children will apply to.
When you make plans, the gods laugh.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The problem with long-running series is that they often fall into the trap of repetitiveness. It can be very hard to avoid that trap and so a great deal of standard countermeasures are employed by mangaka (with, no doubt, the input of their editors): the author can add new characters, which will bring with them new relationship dynamics and new backstories to be filled out. The new personalities can also bring new conflict and new tension…or defuse the tensions existing among the original core cast. Long and lengthy flashbacks giving even greater insight into the essences of the main characters can be used to help ring out the changes. New and unexpected zany events can also be introduced to throw a curve at the readership. Classic set pieces, whether romantic or comical, can be deployed on a regular basis.
Kaguya-sama has done all of these things. Does that make it a boring, conventional work? No. How is that? It all comes down to execution.
The stories introduced in this volume themselves do not greatly stray from the work we have seen so far. There is yet another “Miyuki has Chika train him to do X” segment. Poor Ai Hayasaka has to put on yet another persona in order to hide her identity as an employee of the Shinomiya family. Yu Ishigami and Miko Ino continue to bicker (but at least we get an excuse to see how wonderful Osaragi is). And we have another appearance of Maki Shijo, continuing to chafe at the relationship between her friend Kashiwagi and Kashiwagi’s Boyfriend (who finally gets a name, 104 chapters into the story).
Conventional elements, but executed well. Even though we know that Chika making any attempt at helping Miyuki will result in pain for her, we still laugh heartily when we see the visual horror on page 113. Luddite Kaguya trying to get the hang of social media etiquette now that she has a smartphone was certain to yield some humor and it does. The author has also decided to get a bit meta towards the end in a chapter that on the surface is talking about manga being turned into anime and what exactly an “anime otaku” is, but underneath mocks itself by pointing out how the author himself is using standard anime/manga tropes in the work you are reading. The future paths of the characters after the story itself might end are also hinted at in the final chapter of this volume, but done in such as way as to open up new avenues before “our time is up.”
What makes this series work is the careful balancing of sentiment and silliness. We get our big laughs on a regular basis, but we also get some nice little bits of heartwarming emotion (the highlight of that is when Miyuki uses rap to get across his thoughts on Hayasaka’s cynical view that you can never be loved unless you put on an act for others—of course, the process of getting to that rap is filled with humor). It’s balanced, but that does not mean equal. The humor quotient is still much higher than the sentimental segments…as it should be. I continue to enjoy Kaguya-sama even if I may be a little slow in reviewing it.
Other than one minor typo early in the volume (an omitted word on p. 11 which can be figured out easily from the context), the volume is produced up to the usual standards.
In Summary:
Miyuki wants to get his feelings across with rap. Kaguya wants to learn how to properly engage with her friends over social media…though she winds up leaving them on “Read.” Hayasaka is driven to silly extremes in order to prevent her schoolmates from knowing about her job…a job she would really rather leave if possible. Yu dreams of a sempai. Miko Ino dreams of castigating others. It’s Kaguya-sama: Love is War exactly as we want it.
Content Grade: A-
Art Grade: A-
Package Rating: A-
Text/Translation: A-
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: November 5th, 2019
MSRP: $9.99