With another Valentine's Day upon us, I wanted to take a critical look into the most popular romantic comedy this season -- that being Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Tensai-tachi no Renai Zunousen, or Kaguya-sama: Love is War. For the majority of my anime "career", I've been some what of romcom connoisseur, mainly in the romantically repressed years of middle and high school. Growing up watching these type of anime, I've come to the perspective that a majority of these romantic comedies typically focus on the comedy half of the genre, at the cost of reducing or out right removing the romance half. Looking at the premise of "Kaguya-sama: Love is War", it isn't a surprise that I think this series is no different.
From the first episode, I had the sneaking suspicion that the romantic progression would hinder the comedy of the show because the crux of what is funny is the scrimmages between Kaguya and Miyuki. However, before I actually continue on this line of reasoning, I do want to at least define terms to have a clear stance on what I am arguing.
What is "romance"?
...focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate romantic involvement of the main characters and the journey that their genuinely strong, true and pure romantic love takes them through dating, courtship or marriage.
Source: Wikipedia
Squaring this definition up with Kaguya-sama: Love is War, the clearest romantic angle this anime focuses on is courtship. As I mentioned above, love is War is the main theme for this anime and with the focus being on courtship, or "wooing", we can see the rational for not wanting advance much farther than this stage because the war would end as a result.
Going back to my first impressions, did my initial thoughts ring true now that I've watched five episodes? Simply put, yes. As of right now, the romance advancement is very slow for my tastes, but the comedy is still entertaining enough to continue in this series. However, even with the slowness being subjective, it is pretty clear that romance has taken the backseat, even with the framework of the comedy being setup with romance in the forefront. This somewhat confusing circumstances is the result of trying to keep the series going while still trying to feel like there is some type of growth in their relationship. This makes the majority of interactions between Kaguya and Miyuki feel like a tug-of-war, that features incremental change but the inevitable reseting of that progress between each scenario.
The Treaty
The feeling of you being strung along is one of the most frustrating things about watching a majority of romantic comedies, because of the predictable nature of the series' resolution, the journey inherently seems meaningless. Keeping that in mind, how do we finally get away from the predictable and shallow understanding of the romance genre? Looking at my some of my favorite anime in these genres I can gain a bit of persective as to why I enjoy them, in comparison with onces that do romance poorly. Pulling from Ore Monogatari I can observe that focusing on the foundation of the relationship, and how to grow from there, helps create a meaningful romance. Ore Monogatari fixates on the strengthening of bonds held by Gouda and Yamato because getting to the dating stage was quick and was expanded on in the twenty plus episodes.
The other solution I found was from Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou, which mostly had to do with the believability of the characters in the story, along with each of their relationships. Having well developed characters that aren't caricatures or archetype make for authentic relationships that can be expand on in multiple fronts without it feeling drawn out.
Obviously I don't expect Kaguya-sama: Love is War to adopt something like these two anime, but for the future of romcoms -- as well as my sanity -- I hope some do get influenced by them and create fulfilling romances that also have a good balance of comedy.
