Kaguya-sama: Love is War Early Access Eps 1 & 2
Added 2023-06-05 21:17:36 +0000 UTCThanks again to Ariel for sponsoring these.
Comments
I'm really glad you recommended this, I'm exporting 3 and 4 now and I loved them even more. Back to Attack on Titan, I can say that when I was 13-18 the home life was so traumatic that romance was literally the last thing on my mind. In fact, I didn't go on my first date until I was in my 20s because I spent a few years in therapy focusing only on myself after I was on my own, plus Mom was dying of cancer from 18-21. So I can totally believe that if things are bad enough, the teenagers aren't going to spend a lot of time on that. But to push back on that point, we've got 18-20 year olds in the military in wars and they spend plenty of time thinking about it so I'm sure it does vary. LOL
Dexter Goad
2023-06-07 23:24:08 +0000 UTCAnother thing I just remembered I wanted to comment on, I was a little worried that you might not like this because of your views on shipping, which I understand your explanation, but I think depending on the show/setting, it’s realistic that there would be crushes/romance/flings/etc, but when the time dedicated to those things is superfluous to the plot, it can be frustrating. Honestly, so many things in Attack on Titan are represented so realistically well from a human standpoint, I would have expected more of those kinds of things given most of our main characters are teenagers- but from what I’ve gathered, Isayama is kind of shy about that kind of stuff. I think it must happen in that show (even or maybe especially given the usually dire circumstances), but it’s all off screen lol. But I’m still happy with what we got, it really left more screen time for more plot relevant story points, even if it took away a tiny amount of realism. But I’m kind of digressing, I was mostly not sure how you would like this because it’s so different from most of what I’ve seen you watch so far- I think this classifies as a “slice of life” anime, more specifically a rom-com- so there’s no super powers, supernatural elements, life or death stakes or fighting (other than figurative or metaphorically lol)
Ariel Causey
2023-06-07 23:14:11 +0000 UTCSo, first off, I'm glad you're enjoying this, I wasn't so sure about whether it would be something I would be into until I got past the intro and theme song, after that I was hooked, and for some of these episodes/scenes, I've never laughed harder in my life. The main character is Kaguya, thus the title, and the "sama" is a Japanese honorific- like san, chan, or kun- but sama is used for someone of extremely high status and/or commanding great respect (for instance royalty), which makes sense given Kaguya's upbringing and view of herself as being "above" most everyone. Most of the characters are more often than not addressed by their surnames, it's a bigger deal in Japan to be on a first name basis with someone than it is here in the States- so Kaguya is "Shinomiya," Miyuki is "Shirogane" (it took me some time to get those two straight since both of their names start with Shi lol) or really most often just called President, and Chika "Fujiwara" (at least of who's been introduced so far). You'll notice that Fujiwara does call Kaguya by her first name most of the time, they've been friends a while (though Kaguya was ready to denounce that friendship and kill her at times lol). Season 1 was 2019, so yeah, it was a little odd for episodes 1 and 2 to have the first 5 minutes or so be so similar, I don't blame you for questioning the episode. It's probably as you said, to hammer in important points about the setting and the main characters. The voice that pushed me to choose dub is actually the narrator lol- but I do really like all of them. From what I understand, season 2 was dubbed before season 1, and they apparently let the narrator go a little (or a lot) off the rails compared to the Japanese counterpart- the Japanese narrator keeps a straight/more serious tone throughout (maybe occasionally more involved/emotive), and it's also pretty comical to keep a mostly serious tone given the scenarios these characters find themselves in. I watched an interview with the voice director for season 1 (who happens to be the voice of Miyuki), and they actually had Ian Sinclair (the narrator) tone it back down for season 1 compared to season 2 (presenting more like the Japanese version for a bit of it). I watched up to the first episode of season 3 in dub, then switched to Japanese because it was still being released at that point, so I haven't gotten around to watching that in dub yet, but from compilation clips I've checked out, he goes even more nuts there lol. On dub compilation videos, a lot of people in the comments seem to be of the opinion that they didn't give him a script, and/or he was high haha. The series gradually expands the "main" and recurring cast as you go, my favorite character gets introduced a little later this season (my favorite voice might be the narrator, but that doesn't mean that's my favorite character). Fujiwara is definitely a chaos agent (probably my second favorite character), another reactor said it perfectly, that Kaguya and Miyuki may be metaphorically playing mental chess against each other, but Chika is like a toddler crashing the game board and messing up all the pieces lol. And episode 3 has a "special" something as the ending song that I know wasn't dubbed, and I don't even think it was translated in the subtitles, I might drop you a youtube link I found where someone did put an English translation on it.
Ariel Causey
2023-06-06 01:10:58 +0000 UTC
