English Dub Review: Kaguya-sama: Love is War “Ai Hayasaka Wants to Stave Them Off / The Student Council Has Not Achieved Nirvana / Kaguya Wants to Get Married / Kaguya Wants to Celebrate”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The student council is back in session, and everything starts off with Kaguya switching out Miyuki’s normal coffee for a decaf version that puts him right to sleep. However, her plans backfires when he falls asleep on her and then Ai has to guard the room. Next, the boy who has been dating Kashiwagi comes back under the guise of getting relationship advice, but really he just wants to brag.

Later on, Chika invites the group to play a board game she helped devise, but things don’t go according to plan. Even though Kaguya doesn’t make any mistakes, she has to watch Miyuki wind up married to Chika through the luck of the draw. Finally, Chika wants to read Kaguya’s fortune via a horoscope app, which leads to some tension between the president and vice president about his birthday.

Our Take:

Kaguya-sama: Love is War was a surprise hit of the winter 2019 anime season, and now Funimation is delivering an English dub of season two. The first season will remain undubbed for now, so myself and dub fans alike are going in relatively blind. The premiere makes no real effort to welcome in new viewers, immediately dropping us into the comedy skits of the club to varied effect. The first episode of season two has some solid jokes, but overall, it feels like a filler episode that should be happening in the middle of a season.

The characters are the same as in the first season: Miyuki and Kaguya are the president and vice president of the student council. They’re prideful, arrogant, and head over heels in love with each other. But good luck getting them to admit this fact. Yuu, Chika, and Ai round out the rest of the supporting cast in this premiere episode. None of them are very interesting characters so far, although it’s somewhat interesting to see the tension between Miyuki and Kaguya due to their unspoken feelings.

The show is divided into skits rather than full episodes of plot. This is both good and bad. It’s good because there’s less time spent on storylines you don’t care for, but it’s bad because there’s less time spent on the scenes you do like — a double-edged sword. The premiere episode falls flat for the first couple skits. The decaf coffee is a fine gag, but it’s drawn out too long to be funny. And the entire relationship advice thing was just weird. Luckily, the episode finds its footing later on with funnier skits about board games and the horoscope app.

The English dub delivers on the casting, but the nature of the show will leave Funimation viewers wanting more due to the untranslated Japanese onscreen. Alexis Tipton and Aaron Dismuke do solid work as the two leads, with good emotion and personality in their voices. Jad Saxton and Austin Tindle are a bit generic as Chika and Yuu, really playing into their stereotypical characterizations. Ian Sinclair is a welcome narrator, though. What was less welcome was the near constant presence of Japanese text in the episode that remains untranslated in the dub option on Funimation’s website. From titles on screen to texts on a phone display, it’s bothersome to not get the full picture of what’s going on.

Kaguya-sama didn’t suck me in with the first episode of season two, but I’m sure viewers of the first season will be happy to learn there’s a dub that seems fairly well done for now. I just hope the show gives this talented cast more to work with as the season progresses.