Kaguya-sama: Love Is War (anime)



Kaguya-sama: Love Is War is an anime created by A-1 Pictures. Season 1 was released in 2018. It is based on a manga from Aka Akasaka.

Shuchiin Academy is the source of all things prestige. If you are in Japan, is of exceptional intelligence, and has a moderate amount of self respect, this is where you would go. But what happens at the top of the top? Of the most powerful of powerful, the most elite of elite, on top of the highest mountain, sits Miyuki Shirogane and Kaguya Shinomiya. And not even they are immune from Teen Drama.

To the average user of All The Tropes, love is just another part of life. Just like water, air, and the sun, love is something we all take for granted for part of the life. Sure, it's heartbreaking when you get rejected, but rejection isn't exactly life threatening. You just learn to move on.

Except they're wrong.

For you see, there is nothing more serious than drama resulting from love. On top of the highest mountain, on the highest point in one's life, for the highest point in society, sits the battle of love. It is a dangerous one, a carefully planned psychological maneuver where you desperately try to dodge the incoming missiles to get another to confess. Even the cutest couples have power dynamics. To confess first is to admit the loss of this great battle. The person who gives their heart first will forever live their life in shame, dominated by the other lover.

The stakes are just a little high.

Has absolutely nothing to do with, and in fact is the exact opposite, of The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.

Frequently used tropes
You know how Omnipresent Tropes have too many examples to list? Well, these tropes pop up in Love is War so much we'll explode every hard drive in existence trying to list every single example of them in this series.
 * Art Shift: Whenever a character has an Inner Monologue (which happens more often than you would expect), an art shift probably happens. A particularly noticable exmample occurs when Chika suggests the student council should visit Mount Osore. The scenes depicting the mountain are vastly different than any other shots in battle two of S1E2. They're much more realistic, darker, with more black stroking outlines.
 * Crush Blush: Characters get them all the time. Miyuki and Kaguya gets them every other episode, as well as in the season 1 opening.
 * Gambit Roulette: The series uses the trope so much, we're pretty sure it would be a trope namer if it was released earlier. Each episode has around three parts. Every part usually has at least two (one from Miyuki, and one from Kaguya). Any scene involving Teen Drama (you should expect a lot of Teen Drama in a show literally titled Love is War) has two of these.
 * Inner Monologue: The entire show can be renamed to just "Inner Monologue: Love is War", giving you a title more descriptive than the current one. Every other minute, a character bursts into inner monologue trying to decide the best plan forward in a world of chaotic Teen Drama. Intense schemes, and traps are all planned out in their inner monologue, with the objective of trying to get the other person to confess their love. These monologues are often accompanied with abstract shots depicting what they're saying.
 * Lemony Narrator: The English narrator, Ian Sinclair, goes so wild in the English dub there's an entire genre of YouTube videos titled "Kaguya dub". Take a look.
 * Teen Drama: The entire series basically evolves around this.
 * Will They or Won't They?: Welcome to Will They or Won't They?: The manga: The anime. We hope you enjoy your stay! It's quite impressive to build an entire series around this one singular trope.

Other Tropes
She's standing right outside the freaking door! Good thing I noticed!"
 * Absurdly Powerful Student Council: Averted. You would think this trope is in use with all the shenanigans going on in the student council, but nope. It's actually a pretty normal student council doing the usual things a student council does.
 * Beach Episode: One is teased in battle two of S1E2, but it never happens. Kaguya wants to turn the whole thing into a beach episode, but Miyuki wants to turn it into a mountain episode. Miyuki states he will never go to the ocean as he cannot swim, and prefers drowning over using a floatie.
 * Bragging Theme Tune: The ending of S1E3, straight up titled "Chikatto Chika Chika♡ (チカっとチカ千花っ♡)", is basically Detective Chika bragging about her ability to uncover mysteries about love. The song says that even though Chika has an IQ of 3, she can handle the job.
 * Breather Episode: Part 3 of S1E4 is a nice, relaxing contrast with the romantic drama that comes before (and after) it. There's still romantic drama, but there's more calmer and relaxing scenes.
 * Cat Eared Headband: In part A of S1E4, both Kaguya and Miyuki gets to wear one of those. Each other keeps remarking on how each other looks inside their Inner Monologues, which leads to the start of another intense battle.
 * Cell Phone: Miyuki gets one in the first part of S1E2. This leads to an intense battle where the he tries subtle to convinct Kaguya to ask for his contact info, while Kaguya tries her hardest to get him to ask for her info. Kaguya has a flip phone she used since pre-school. She's quite attached to it, but it does become a problem as it cannot support any apps. There's also a sequence involving Kaguya not wanting to be the first person to send Miyuki a text message, instead wishing for Miyuki to text her back.
 * Colour-Coded Characters: Kaguya is mostly associated with red while Miyuki is mostly associated with blue. This is best seen in their eye colours. It's also quite prominent in the opening of season 1.
 * Conspicuous CG: A lot of times when the camera is moving in 3D, it's quite easy to tell that some background elements are in CG, as they are way too smooth in both outline and colouring.
 * Dramatic Irony: In battle three of S1E2, Miyuki is giving out relationship advice to get Tsubasa Tanuma paired up with Nagisa Kashiwagi. Little did he (but a lot did the audience) know, Kaguya is actually behind the entrance to the student council door, and is eavesdropping on everything he's saying. This only gets more dramatic when he pretends there is a girl on the other side of the door, then walks up to it, and confesses his love, right while Kaguya is listening on the other side with a blush too big. Then, things become the most dramatic when Miyuki talks about why he likes Kaguya right in front of Kaguya. "Miyuki: She's so stinking perfect I can barely believe she is real! That's right! Between you and me Shinomiya is everything I want in a girl!


 * Exact Eavesdropping: In battle 3 of S1E2, Kaguya walks in on Miyuki during the exact time he's handing out relationship advice. She figured she could weaponise her words against her.
 * Exact Words: Miyuki brags he has never been rejected by any girl. This is indeed true, as it is quite hard to get rejected when you haven't asked anyone out. "Narrator: He isn't lying, but that's cause he's never asked anyone out."


 * Flashback: In S1E2, another student of Shuchiin Academy enters the student council to ask for relationship advice. He gets a flashback to when girls state that he's "still on the market" (translation: still looking for a girlfriend).
 * Gainaxing: In episode 2 of season 1, sequences depicting Chika in a bathsuit features quite a bit of this. Kaguya gets insecure her ability to Gainax is lesser than that of Chika, and immediately wishes to go to the mountain instead of the beach.
 * Genre Shift: The third part of S1E3 takes the usual high-stakes Rom Com Teen Drama into a Slice of Life segment closer to a typical Studio Ghibli production. There's no intense romance scheming, rather, we get a nice story about helping a girl cross the road and walk to school.
 * Ghibli Hills: In the second battle of s1e2, Miyuki wants to go on a trip to a mountain. Ghibli Hills appear in mental sequences of him visualising the location.
 * No Fourth Wall: The fourth wall is shattered as, halfway throughout the first episode, the narrator straight up reveals that despite only being twelve minutes into the episode, the audience probably knows Kaguya enough to know she is not being honest.
 * In the epilogue of S1E1, Kaguya straight up tears through the end screen and asks to be left alone. The narrator apologises.
 * Opening Narration: Delivered in the first episode to explain the background of the two leads.
 * Photographic Memory: After seeing the picture of childhood Miyuki for around 2 seconds, the narrator states that Kaguya instantly memorised that picture in the first battle in s1e2.
 * Post Modernism: The entire show contains enough grain filters to make The End of Evangelion jealous. There also happens to be no fourth wall. Also, all concept of linear storytelling is abolished as every other shot takes you into the mind of a character.
 * Sailor Fuku: The female uniform at the academy.
 * She Is Not My Girlfriend: Any time anyone suggests Miyuki and Kaguya are dating, their immediate response is this.
 * Super-Deformed: Around seven minutes into s1e2, several super-deformed versions of Kaguya Shinomiya scroll down on screen.
 * Together Umbrella: It's a nice trope to demonstrate the essence of this show. In the last part of S1E5, Kaguya and Miyuki wants this trope to be used, except, as the title suggests, love is war. The first to confess is the one who loses, and offering to share an umbrella with the other couple is essentially the admission that you want to be with them, which is just another way to say "I love you". Plus, they are too busy distracting themselves with the promise of sharing an umbrella they both forgot to bring one in the first place. The two just removed the "Umbrella" from "Together Umbrella", and, although they would like to end up together, neither wants to be the first to confess. Except they have distracted each other distracting each other because the two of them did both bring an umbrella, but is just waiting for the other person to offer up their umbrella because that makes them lose the love game. The two are seemingly locked in a stalemate when Chika comes out with an umbrella, saving the day.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Chika Fujiwara just has pink hair.
 * Victoria's Secret Compartment: In the first battle of s1e2, Kaguya pulls a bottle of maiden tears from this secret compartment

Today's Troping Outcome: (For spending too long editing All The Tropes instead of studying for school tests) Editor Loses!