If your partner says the phrase “six-month anniversary,” break up with them on principle.
What They Say:
“Nagisa Kashiwagi Wants to Kill / Maki Shijo Wants to Take Action / Miyuki Shirogane Wants to Be Believed”
Shirogane accidentally steps on Maki Shijo, a female student who had collapsed on campus, and takes care of her in the student council room. Apparently, she has suffered from the sorrows of love. When Maki discusses her situation with him, her expression changes from high-spirited, to anxious, to explosively angry, to tearful. After witnessing such an intense range of human emotion, for some reason Shirogane was struck by a strong sense of déjà vu. What on earth was this feeling?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Nagisa and her boyfriend have been mainstays in the expanded Kaguya-sama cast since the beginning, running a side plot in the background depicting a romance forged by our protagonists despite their inability to take their own respective advice and only of relevance when they need more advice. Nagisa’s latest therapy session is motivated by her suspicion that her beloved boyfriend has in fact been cheating on her! A bold accusation indeed, but as should be expected, her reasoning is about as solid as the kind of leaps Kaguya takes when she gets jealous about Shirogane.
It’s appropriate, then, that Kaguya finds herself agreeing with nearly all of Nagisa’s extreme assumptions and more extreme reactions. To act as their foil, Miko plays the straight man as she often needs to. Being the stickler for rules that she is, Miko looks at all of this through the lens of a formal legal proceeding, which makes nearly all of Nagisa’s actions unacceptable and unwarranted. Kaguya stands in solidarity with Nagisa; we don’t need to see it to know that she’s imagining if Shirogane did any of these things (despite the fact that they’re not even dating). The twist comes in a callback to last week’s episode, where the most damning evidence matches what Shirogane just did and Kaguya finds herself forced to defend such a situation, because to accept that as cheating would be to admit that Shirogane “cheated” on her.
Similar to last time, this leads pretty directly into the second part, starring the new character of Maki Shijo. She was formally introduced as Nagisa’s rival (and potential murder victim) in the cheating case, but manga fans have noted her cameos sprinkled throughout scenes of Nagisa and her boyfriend – I’m certain he had a name once, but I think not knowing it is part of the joke – throughout previous seasons, a fun Easter egg to throw in. While previous romantic advice sessions have typically been divided by gender, Maki breaks this tradition by seeking out help from Shirogane and Ishigami. Well, not exactly – she would never simply ask for their advice, because she does her best to act superior to them, using her distant relation to the Shinomiya family as one reason for her arrogance.
Maki is a classic tsundere, fluctuating between the extremes of each side of that equation so rapidly that she puts Kaguya to shame, particularly because she does so to two male strangers, while Kaguya is able to keep her public face mostly consistent while only letting her inner self out to Hayasaka in her own home. Apparently these tsundere tendencies (say that ten times fast) run in the Shinomiya family, and while Ishigami is honest about the appeal of the archetype Maki embodies, Shirogane can’t help but find her similarities to Kaguya cute. Maki is obviously the star of this section, but the boys have some great interactions with her and by extension each other, particularly Ishigami pointing out the ridiculousness of how Maki approaches her feelings in a way that hits Shirogane in the heart and ultimately tears apart the entire premise of the series. Ishigami is such a great character for his harsh reality amongst this absurdity.
Finally, the events of the previous episode become even more relevant as Kaguya continues to contemplate the purpose of a group date and what might’ve transpired in one, leading Chika to do one of the things she does best: coming up with a game for the group to play. Proposing a game that requires honesty with this group seems like a futile effort, but along with the anonymity protecting the participants, Chika brings along a polygraph to ensure that nobody attempts to lie. Ishigami has another obvious but great line about this being guaranteed to get you kicked out of group dates, but ultimately it’s never relevant beyond that initial gag.
Because it wouldn’t be this series otherwise, Kaguya and Shirogane find ways to use the game as a way to further their own agendas and counter the other, respectively. An incredible skill of this series is its ability to genuinely make it seem like “this will be the moment the truth finally comes out” as often as once an episode at times. Of course it won’t be in something as simple as a game like this, but the fact that it can come up with so many ways to build up that tension just as it exists within the characters, even in the simplest of ways, is a testament to its mastery of its own established formula. It’s something that should seem annoying to more or less repeat for so long, but it’s executed so well that it truly never gets old.
In Summary:
Another episode of simple gags comes and goes, but it’s far from frivolous. In addition to continuing on the continuity of previous events (some of them within the episode itself) for all three segments, it introduces a delightful new character who could have a lot of potential for the future. Maki is something of a twist on Kaguya’s character – appropriate given their distant blood relation – and having her first major appearance take place with Shirogane and Ishigami presents a fresh dynamic with a lot of fun results. All of the characters continue to shine, especially Ishigami with his deadpan, relatable one-liners.
Grade: A
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
