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Review: かぐや様は告らせたい ～天才たちの恋愛頭脳戦～ 1

かぐや様は告らせたい ～天才たちの恋愛頭脳戦～ 1 かぐや様は告らせたい ～天才たちの恋愛頭脳戦～ 1 by Aka Akasaka
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Series Review: ★★★★☆ (Scroll down for my Volume 1 review)
Kaguya-sama: Love is War is the funniest manga/comic that I've ever read and I recommend you try it out if you're in the mood for some laughs. The characters are super-funny-lunatic-tsundere-geniuses who are super overdramatic and take everything to extremes, which is where most of the comedy stems from. This first volume didn't completely blow me away right off the bat, but I'm now completely caught up with the series and I can definitely say that it's become one of my favorites. This series is very much in the sitcom format, however later on it even starts to have some story arcs which are also very fun. If you like Saiki Kusuo no Ψ-nan or Gintama, Kaguya-sama is in their same vein and format. This also applies vise-versa. (Saiki Kusuo no Ψ-nan and Gintama are two of my other favourite comedies, though I've only seen their animes.)

If you would like some more specific details feel free to read my volume one review below, or my reviews for the other volumes (links are at the bottom of this review), all of which are spoiler free. Not that there's really much to spoil anyway.


Volume One Review: ★★★☆☆
Ah, Kaguya-sama! I’m pretty sure some people on /r/Anime indirectly recommended this to me because they said it is really funny, and they were not wrong.

At first I thought this was going to be about a genius/nerd boy called Kaguya who was going to somehow go around using tricks and intellect to convince girls to fall for him or something. I was mostly wrong.

First of all this is actually mostly about two geniuses, not one. A girl called Kaguya and a boy called… Well his last name is pretty long and it starts with S, that’s all I remember. Can you tell I’m not good with Japanese names yet!? They are geniuses who like each other, but both of their prides are too big to allow either of them to confess to the other, and thus the battle of trying to make the other person confess first begins! This whole situation is taken extremely seriously by both parties, which is what makes this pretty funny. Got me giggling a few times in the first chapter alone.

I think the cover is super misleading. This is a comedy. It’s a funny haha for laughs book. The cover is soooo spooky for some reason?? It makes it look like this is some horror book or something, which is literally the complete opposite of what it actually is. So don’t be fooled by the cover! If you were looking for spooks, I’m sorry, you won’t find any here. But it’s still a good read. There are 10 chapters in this first volume, so by the end of it you’ll get a pretty good idea of the story and humor and if you’ll want to continue reading or not. You know what, you’ll also be able to tell all those things just from the first chapter as well. It’s written in a sitcom style, in that so far there is no overarching plot (besides their mutual goals of getting the other to confess) and each chapter is a new scenario.

I always say how art is one of the most important parts of the reading experience of sequential art. I still think this is mostly true, but I now have an exception. I’m not going to lie, the art in this manga is pretty… Bad. Or, I mean this is all pretty subjective, but let’s just say I’ve read a lot, lot, LOT, better looking manga. BUT! And there’s a big but! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) As I’ve already noticed with anime, in a comedy bad art doesn’t really seem to be a problem. If anything it just adds to the goofs and gafs and gives the comedy even more charm. So where I by no means ever found myself swooning over the art, this was not a problem at all for me. Also I feel like I might be being a bit over dramatic. The art was not UGLY, okay? I just have high standards because I’m an art buff, so I’m sure you probably won’t even have any problems with it.

This all seems pretty positive at this point, so why only three stars? Well, because on Goodreads three stars means "liked it", and well, I did like it. So yeah. "Really liked it" seems a biiit like a stretch. Like, it was good, but I'm not sure if it was "really liked it" good. But I really feel that this series has a lot of potential for the plot and the characters to grow. As of the writing of this review this series only has 46 chapters, so this is still a pretty new manga, and I’m excited to see where it goes! I see a bright future ahead of it.

Click here to read my re-read review! 16 months and 6 volumes later, I return to the volume that started it all. Have my opinions changed? Click and read to find out!


Please consider giving this review a "Like" if you've made it this far, it helps me out a lot! And follow me if you want more!
Click to read all of my Kaguya-sama: Love is War Reviews:
Volumes: 1* | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |

*Current review


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