Kaguya-sama: Love is War vol. 13

After much preparation, it’s time for the Shuchiin Academy Culture Festival!  There are haunted houses and maid cafes galore, and oh so much drama to go around.  That’s mainly because Kaguya and Miyuki have finally made up their minds about how they feel regarding each other.  Now they’re just looking for the right time and situation to make their confession.  Much of the focus here is on Kaguya as she tries to take advantage of the superstition that if you give the object of your affection a heart-shaped object at the festival, your love will be eternal.  Kaguya being Kaguya, she just can’t simply give Miyuki the heart-shaped locket she has.  She’ll be resorting to things like tea-brewing, takoyaki, and balloons in order to get what she wants.  Meanwhile, Ishigami manages to do just that (unwittingly), Chika tries to warn her little sister off from getting involved with Miyuki, and Miko gets much more involved than she’d like in the creation of a haunted house.

It’s all great stuff as usual, even without getting into side bits like the appearance of two of the Ramen Kings and the return of Chika the Love Detective.  Yet, amongst all this comedy, there’s an unmistakable undercurrent of drama running through this volume.  That’s because after building things up for the past twelve volumes, mangaka Aka Akasaka is finally ready to make good on resolving the central romantic conflict of this series.  So the stakes here feel a bit more real… in between bits like Kaguya being EXTREMELY PREPARED when it comes to getting Miyuki to eat the takoyaki she wants him to.  So, rather than work against the comedy, the drama winds up working as a spice to give it just a little more urgency than it would usually have.