Kaguya-sama: Love Is War wouldn't be the same without its titular character, Kaguya Shinomiya. Her striking cold demeanor is a stark contrast to your typical bubbly, overly kawaii shoujo protagonist. She is incredibly intelligent, beautiful, and accomplished. On top of that, she's even based off of a princess from the moon from old Japanese literature. But how much has she changed in the past three seasons of the anime? The series showcases the overly dramatic cat-and-mouse game between the two protagonists, Miyuki Shirogane and Kaguya Shinomiya, who are persistent in forcing the other protagonist to admit their love for each other first.
Miyuki Shirogane and Kaguya Shinomiya are both the top student body representatives, and often the other representatives get roped into their shenanigans. Funimation has licensed the English dub, and the manga reached over 15 million copies sold in April of last year. The manga began in 2015 in Shueisha's Miracle Jump, but was transferred to Young Jump in 2016. The 26th volume was just released last month, on June 17. The third season also ended with an hour-long episode last month as well, and a movie has been recently announced. Although she has kept all the iconic traits that make her as recognizable as she has become, she has also grown into a much deeper and more intricate character than she was at the beginning of the series. This article will examine her traits when she was first introduced, to the character she has become in the third season, which is currently the most recent addition to the franchise.
Slowly Revealing Her Soft and Anxious Side
Kaguya is so well-known for her icy, emotionless state within the series that her peers have called her the Ice Princess. She's also competitive and at times aggressively competitive, arrogant, and closed off. Although she's always presented this way, and has been shown to be hiding away the pressure she feels from her prestigious and expectant family, she's also been slowly revealing her inner softness, anxiety, and social awkwardness.
Whereas in the first season she was presented as highly logical and focused on the facts, as the seasons continued she began to let her emotions rule her thoughts as well as the one place she lacks knowledge; social situations. In the first episode of season three, she had a panic attack after learning what read receipts were. She also daydreams more frequently about Miyuki as the seasons have gone by, and has even showcased a childish sense of potty humor and a hilarious lack of sexual knowledge. This pattern will only continue in the upcoming movie, in which the events have been confirmed to be a certain arc of the manga that showcases this pattern even more.
More Open About Her Feelings
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Although the audience is aware of both protagonists' feelings towards each other, as the entire plot of the show is both of them attempting to force the other to admit their feelings first, Kaguya has been more open in expressing her feelings toward Miyuki. Although she typically backpedals to keep her feelings under wraps, she is now open about her feelings with her maid Ai Hayasaka, who she even employs to spy on Miyuki or fish out information from him.
In the third season, Kaguya asks Ai Hayasaka to spy on Miyuki when he attends an event and even asks Ai to make sure he doesn't catch feelings for anyone else there. However, she also becomes incredibly anxious thinking about the possibility of Miyuki falling in love with Ai, so Kaguya ends up spying on them anyway. Both to the audience, and her dutiful and obedient maid, she has become incredibly open with her feelings towards the other protagonist of the series.
She's Become Less Sheltered
Throughout the series, the audience of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War has seen the penalties of being rich and privileged. She grew up rich, being the daughter of Gan'an Shinomiya, the head of Shinomiya Zaibatsu, a large conglomerate with over two trillion yen to its name. As a result, she has little experience of 'normal' life with the usual experiences of someone her age. As a result, she has little social skills and even less knowledge of anything related to teenagehood, unlike most of her peers.
She has very little experience or knowledge of anything sexual, and cannot stop herself from laughing at the word 'weiner', even when it was referring to a hot dog. She also doesn't know how social media works, or even texting, and all of her knowledge of romance comes from romantic manga and books she read growing up. However, throughout the series, we see her experience these things and learn from both her maid and her friends in the student council, slowly allowing herself to live a normal high school girl's life.
Kaguya-sama: Love Is War is streaming on Crunchyroll