English Dub Review: Kaguya-sama: Love is War “Miyuki Shirogane Wants to Gaze at the Moon / The 67th Student Council / Kaguya Doesn’t Want to Say It”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

It’s a special night in the cosmos, and President Miyuki is ecstatic. Together with Kaguya, Yuu, and Chika, he gathers on the roof of the school building to observe the celestial bodies. But there’s another body who wants to do more than observe him. Kaguya is keen on getting him alone and forcing him to put himself into awkward positions. Luckily, he’s too caught up in the moon to notice.

Later, the four class officials clean out the Student Council Room and reminisce about all the good times they’ve had over the last four years. After some heartfelt moments, they head to a restaurant and Kaguya obsesses over what to call the President now that he’s no longer the President. Afterwards, he walks her home, and she pleads with him to run for office again, to which he replies that he already is.

Our Take:

The third episode of Kaguya-sama’s second season is sort of a strange bird. Even though it’s only the third episode, we’re already getting heartwarming scenes of saying goodbye and remembering times past. It honestly felt like a season finale or a season opener to me. I can’t help but wonder why these events are taking place in the third episode. Still, there were some great scenes in this week’s new entry all the same.

My favorite was probably the first storyline, where Kaguya gets mad at Miyuki for being more in love with the moon than with her. It’s funny to see how far she goes in order to trip him up, and even funnier to see how he has no attention span for anything that’s not thousands of feet above him. The bit goes on a bit too long maybe, but hey, it’s a good bit.

The scenes in the classroom while tidying it up were nice, but I feel like they would be much more affecting had I actually gotten more invested in the characters beforehand. For dub viewers only arriving two episodes ago, these moments won’t really land as nicely as they do for seasoned sub viewers. (Funimation has said it will be dubbing the first season, but not for a while.)

Kaguya’s walk home with Miyuki was sweet. It’s nice to see little moments like this that really make you believe the two of them might be able to work things out between them… until one of them snaps and the illusion is shattered. The third episode of Kaguya-sama does a good job pulling us into the relationships between the core four, even if it does so a bit awkwardly with a year end storyline.