English Dub Review: Kaguya-sama: Love is War “Yu Ishigami Closes His Eyes, Part 3 / Miyuki Shirogane and Yu Ishigami / Kyoko Otomo Doesn’t Realize”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The sports festival is in full swing. Ishigami’s performance with the unique genderbending-costume cheerleading squad goes off swimmingly, but he can’t quite get himself to enjoy the experience due to the fact that he still feels guilty for the situation that occured in middle school.

Later on, the head of the cheerleader’s trips on a fence, and injures himself. Ishigami is selected to fill his position in an upcoming race, but he’s nervous and afraid he’ll mess things up. When he sees Otomo in the crowd, things get even worse for his state of mind. He ends up not finishing in first, but realizes that’s okay.

Our Take:

The penultimate episode of Kaguya-sama’s second season is an outlier of sorts. It’s a strange episode that, if memory serves correctly, is basically the only episode in this season to stick with a single character and storyline and follow it throughout the entire runtime. Normally, the show breaks things up into segments that deal with different characters and situations, but that’s not the case this week.

That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if the situation was a good one. While Ishigami’s plight is definitely darker and somewhat more serious that the show’s usual comedic leanings, it can’t quite be successful due to the sheer frustration it conjures up in the viewer. Ishigami has been dealing with the fallout of the events with Otomo ever since middle school, but his actions have been a big part of the suffering that all three of those involved have been enduring.

When Ishigami catches Otomo’s theatre boyfriend cheating on her, he doesn’t tell her. He doesn’t even try to. Rather, he goes and picks a fight with him, only to be made into the bad guy. And afterwards, it doesn’t seem like Ishigami made any efforts to tell the truth, or to warn her about the guy she thought was a saint. This renders the entire situation pointless. All the while Ishigami is being an angsty loner, he could’ve just explained to her and she would’ve cleared things up. Instead, he remained silent and the whole thing would be laughably simple to clear up with a little conversation. When things drag on that could be easily resolved with a little talking between the characters, it makes for a very frustrating watch.

What’s even worse is how the show seems to paint Otomo as the villain here. Her boyfriend transferred schools and is said to be doing well now, but the series gives us a girl full of spite for the guy she still believes ruined her relationship — because he never told her what actually happened. I got the feeling that the episode is trying to make us feel sorry for Ishigami, the brave hero, but in reality, he’s only hurting Otomo, not helping her.

Combined with all this annoyance that could’ve easily been avoided, this episode just isn’t funny. Of course, it’s harder to find laughs amidst all the drama going on, but for a show that’s in large part supposed to be a comedy, all of this dry, pointless angst really rubbed me the wrong way. Kaguya-sama has had a solid second season up until this episode, but this felt like a major misstep to me. Hopefully things get back on track with the finale next week.