Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: First Kiss wa Owaranai

Until now the anime's production earned a reputation of making miracles come true. It was impressive how much of a well-done adaptation Season 3 was considering the various production hurdles. This 'movie' would look like an even harsher challenge, since the announcement frankly came out of nowhere and it was delivered so quickly after season 3. For the most part, this release looks like another miracle. However, this time there are parts of the adaption that have been lackluster and some that are pretty bad. I won't go into specifics in order to avoid spoilers. But basically, the movie is mainly adapting an arc of themanga that's usually competing for the title of the best arc in the manga. And for the most part, the adaption of that material is quite good. In a previous review I used words like 'perfect' or great. But upon a second rewatch and trying to be more analytical about it. It's not really perfect. There are things to consider. Although it was advertised as a movie. The animation quality is more like a continuation of what you'd seen in the later episodes of season 3. Not bad at all but not exactly what you'd expect in a silver screen release. This is more of a case of the advertising being confusing. As there are parts of the marketing material that really avoid saying the word 'movie'. The more accurate promotions describe it as a "special advance screening before the TV release". Another aspect is the pace. These are some of the most content-dense chapters and 96 minutes is a rather tight limit. You could say that as such the number of scenes skipped or shortened is understandable. I don't agree with it. I don't think it needed to be released as a movie, and I certainly don't think it needed to be released as a 96-minute movie that also spends too much time teasing another arc between secondary characteres that was not actually going to be properly developed in the movie. There were many ways to adapt this arc differently and avoid these pacing issues. But the source content is still incredible and there are still many situations where A1 went above and beyond in the adaption. The two main characters are facing their worst inner demons and have to help each other out in order to continue their romantic story. The previous paragraphs were mostly nitpicks, although really the intention is to fight the common claim that this part is 'perfect' and deserves the highest score. As for the most troublesome part of this movie, after the main arc is finished, the animation production made the bizare decision of adapting a much-later chapter. The transition from the end of the movie's arc to the later chapter is really jarring. And in order to have some context it has to show scenes from skipped chapters as flashbacks or as short moments. All of this is done in less than 5 minutes. This was simply not the correct way to adapt this chapter. Specially because it is a really pivotal chapter in the manga. From what I could see out of anime-onlies, they either missed that there was a strong message there and would instead focus on the better part of the movie or got completely confused by this scene. So, "mixed feelings". I think most Kaguya-sama fans will enjoy the way the main arc was adapted and will get their fee fees kicked into overdrive and I can recommend that part. As for the end, my recommendation is to not pay a lot of attention to it if you are anime-only and if you are a manga reader, you might like to leave the theater. We can hope that maybe this is a result of time availability issues and that this thing will be corrected as part of re-cutting this release for TV. A different cut, either making use of a lot more screen time and giving all the arcs adapted justice or sticking to 96 minutes but avoiding wasting time in parts that don't belong to the main arc would have been truly worthy of 9/10. Add Movie-quality animation to that and we would have a good 11/10.

As a moderate Kaguya fan who's never read the manga I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Was it was wacky and goofy as the series? No. But that wasn't a bad thing. In fact I found the rather serious moments between Kaguya and Shirogane quite good and shows a different side of them. Don't worry though there are still plenty of comical moments. My only critique of the film is how little we got to see of the other characters. This truly focuses on the President and Vice-President's tangled, confusing relationship. As it should becuase, at the end of the day, they are the stars ofthe show. It's just, they hinted at developments for the other characters but never expanded on them. I wonder if I'd get more details in the manga. Anyway, definitely watch it if you have a chance....Oh yea and the soundtrack was great too!

Like the genre, this movie had a perfect balance of Romance and Comedy. It probably made me laugh the most compared to all the anime I have watched. The romantic part kept me excited to see what was going to come. If you are a かぐや様 (Love is War) fan, this is a must-watch. However, if I were to criticize one thing, it will be the lack of pacing in the last part. I think I could have been improved but I digress. By the way, this movie takes right after "Ultra Romantic" so make sure to watch that first. P.S Watched it at thetheatres twice. It's that good.

‟I want to love all of you” -Kaguya Shinomiya It's Love is War ! The funny show where they can't express their love for each others to not feel inferior. Of course, after 3 seasons you probably know the deal. And funny it was, some of the most hilarious moments happened in season 3 and it even became the highest rated anime on MAL for a moment, which is pretty epic for an anime that I really like. Love is War started as a episodic comedy manga, and even with that fact, the time that we dedicated ourselves to read/watch it made us appreciate the studentscouncil gang a little bit more every time (also the bunch of side characters that are useful to the story and development). At this point, when you know those characters that you love so much, thinking about going further than doing war for the funnie and go into the LOVE part, and oh boy did Kaguya-sama: Love is War - The First Kiss That Never Ends delivered this premise, as to absolutely enhance and hit the avid viewer with very tense and emotionally beautiful moments. This anime is a RomCom (Romantic Comedy) after all, so let's talk about the comedy first (because I fucking can). I did say that the romantic part of this series, often considered as the staple of his genre, was very deep this time, and that it did hit me and appreciate those characters even more, but don't you worry, the comedy is still there, and it bangs ! While it might not be as significant as the regular seasons, there was a lot of funny moments in this movie, and most of the jokes were hilarious, made me jiggle a ton (but not really anybody else in the room, are those people apathetic !?) and was spouted reasonably over the course of the 90 minutes, the balance for the comedy was perfectly fine, it stays on it's initial roots while sprouting something more serious. Now onto the big chunk, the golden part, it is obviously the romantic part. After the events from the last episode of season 3, our two main characters, Kaguya and Miyuki doesn't know what they should do afterwards if they want to further expand their romantic feelings towards each others (after all, they spent all of this time previously to not do that). I really liked how deep and psychological parts were executed, it's one of my favourites things in anime but did not expect them in Love is War, but when you see how big brain and how foreseeing they both are, it wasn't at all out of the realm of possibilities. Love, what IS love (baby don't hurt me), how to deal with responsibilities, what the future might holds, how you need to do crucial and definitive choices, how you try to be seen as perfect, how to expose your weaknesses, what true and genuine love feels like (hello Oregairu). Some part of this made me shiver, some part of this almost made me cry, but not out of laughter this time. This really encapsulates my opinion of the anime, and the best part of it. I don't wanna spoil you, I want you to experience it yourself. Some people might say that it is very unfortunate that this anime has way less focus on side characters, like Ishigami, Chika or Miko and the rest. I kinda do agree that they are all very cool and that it cannot hurt to have them, but having a whole-ass movie length episode of some sort about the 2 MC really puts on the foreground what's important, while the other side characters are just spices made to make the meal more enjoyable and bring out the fun and comedic parts, which in itself is completely fine. Even if your favourite character from this anime isn't either Kaguya or Miyuki, it will still show up and has some sort of impact, the balance of it all is fine and isn't a concern to have in my opinion. A-1 Pictures is known to do some pretty nice things generally (when it's not putting things on hold), it's such a massive studio making so many things, so you would expect the animation to be fine, even though it's just a romance, not a fighting anime, but as you saw with previous seasons, especially the third one, a romcom can in fact look fucking stunning and clean, and this anime follows it up very well, with some unexpected insanely clean and good looking parts. The color palette, the mastery of sunsets, night shots, the deadly and soulless crimson red eyes of Kaguya in the dark all makes it look stunning, especially on a big theatre screen. Funny thing is, A-1 Pictures did made another movie 2 months prior, the SAO progressive 2 movie, and I would argue that this looks better and got more polish and love than this sword fighting anime, but I digress. Sometimes, you don't really care about the sound in an anime, even I do sometimes. It's probably a mix of many reasons, but this time I do wanna talk and review the sound of this movie, because there are very good things to say about it. The start of any good anime is the Opening, so it would be logical that I talk about it first. Masayuki Suzuki is loved by this anime community, because of his unique take on anime songs (I mean, he only does Love is War Ops in this sphere of music), it always goes hard and each of his 4 Openings are banger, this one included. Love is Show (the name of the OP) is probably my second favourite, but in reality all of them are probably 10/10, so you'll be sure to enjoy the start of the movie because of it. The OST that you might have heard previously in other seasons are also present, this + the piano musics really makes an emphasis of the emotive and dramatical parts, a mix made to make you feel the moments even more. The insert songs also does that I mentioned previously, but probably better. The one near the end is REALLY good. The Ending is neat, it gives you times to think about what happened, how good it was, share your opinions about it with your friend (if you can do that, but I can say that my friend enjoyed it as much as I have) and what to write in a review if that's your type lol. This might have been a bit long, but I now feel satisfied with my duty, to share my hype about this movie, when I say it's fucking good, it is indeed fucking good. Hilarious, goes hard, looks stunning and with musics that makes you dance, I don't really associate A-1 Pictures with passion projects, but I feel that with this quality, it cannot be otherwise. The manga really is that good to make an adaptation that's such intricate and good/interesting to watch. I HIGHLY recommend you to watch it (even though it's probably too late for cinema showings, but you could wait for the BD release in a few months), it's the peak of Kaguya-sama : Love is War (maybe just so far, manga readers says it goes even harder and with how they left it at the end of the movie, there are many things that could be very (very) interesting to see) for me, if you have already watched 3 seasons, a movie couldn't hurt, except maybe your heart. It was hell of a ride, a very beautiful one. In the end, I just changed my favourites with the season 3 for the movie, because it did had something unique that wasn't in the other parts, while continuing on what makes this so good. I also did a total of 10 hours of travel by car to watch this movie, AT LEAST IT WAS WORTH IT FOR THAT.

Merchandise

Links may contain affiliate references

Studio

Producers

Themes