Kaguya and Miyuki are the respectively richest and smartest kids at their school, the Vice-President and President of the student council, and widely assumed by all of the other students to be a couple. But these two privileged tsunderes have nothing better to do than to try and trick the other into confessing and in this game of war, the first one to admit their feelings loses!
The gist of Kaguya-sama is laid out clearly in the first chapter and then just repeats itself over and over until the volume ends. One might think that there might be some way to keep the story fresh and interesting, after all many romances retread similar emotional and plot arcs on a regular basis without being utterly uninteresting, but it appears that you cannot stretch this thin idea for a story far at all.
Kaguya-sama may have worked well as a one-shot, either a one-shot chapter or one-off volume, but as an ongoing series this additional length only highlights just how completely unlikeable and ununderstandable these two lead characters are. Kaguya and Miyuki certainly don’t hate each other, but neither of them seem to have that many feelings for the other either. Instead, it seems as if the two of them are falling for each other solely based on the idea of making the other “lose” to them, making them the one with the “power” in the ensuing relationship. Kelly Quinn Chui of One Panel Later describes the series as something a little bit like a romantic Death Note, a series where the older readers get a kick out of watching the insane schemes the younger protagonists come up with in each chapter to try and trick the other into confessing, and while I do agree that I believe the series intends for the readers to find Kaguya and Miyuki’s antics wild in a way that the two of them would not think of them within the story, even looking in from the outside doesn’t make the story any funnier.
This manga has no relation to the popular Vocaloid song with the same name as far as I know (indeed, the Japanese title translates more directly to “Kaguya Wants to be Confessed To: The Geniuses’ War of Love and Brains”), but perhaps it would have been nice it if had since the popular music video for the Hatsune Miku song had catchy, attractive visuals that were a common sight at anime conventions for years. I typically balk at the idea of calling the art of any comic “generic,” since there is simply so much variety out there no matter if you’re looking at manga or webcomics, but Kaguya-sama’s art felt bland and like I had seen it a million times before despite the fact that I have not in fact seen any of the manga-ka’s other, unlicensed works. The art, one half of any successful comic, just sits here, flat and unengaging. To compare, while I might not like the anime series Monogatari, which also featured a number of tsundere characters matching wits, at least that series had the good sense to keep the visuals lively and to let them move the story along in ways that the dialogue wasn’t doing. Kaguya-sama’s art is both far less pervy and far, far duller than Monogatari’s art and the many other romantic comedy series I’m also currently reviewing.
The dull art was the final nail in the coffin for my interest in Kaguya-sama. Combined with a listless, repetitive story and inane, unimaginative characters, there is nothing to hold this “not a fan of romance” reader’s attention.