Kaguya-sama: Love is War vol. 23

In case you’re wondering what the big event was in vol. 22, The Lonely Island are here to catch you up on it.  From Miyuki’s POV, I would assume…

Vol. 22 left off on kind of a big cliffhanger as it let us know that Kaguya was going to have to finally break the news about her relationship with Miyuki, and its major development, to Chika.  True to the pink-haired agent of chaos’ character, it goes quite well… until it doesn’t.  This leads us to a hastily-realized training sequence between Miyuki and Chika that appears to be more about putting a nice bow on this sequence than it does in trying to reach the previous comedic heights of these things.  It’s not “Ballin’” in other words.  We are promised future training sequences that will push Chika to new heights of despair later on, so I guess that’s something to look forward to.

The rest of the volume continues on with a shift in focus to the romantic complications between Miko and Ishigami.  While their relationship has some of the same “can’t admit their feelings” elements that drove the central romance of the series, there are some things that set it apart.  Ishigami’s current “rebound” status from his failed attempt to romance Tsubame, for one, and Miko’s turning out to be even more of a manipulative, neurotic drama queen than Kaguya.  This leads to things like Miko horrifying Chika as she abandons all morality in her pursuit of Ishigami, and teaming up with a surprising “Daddy” in order to learn more about the games that the boy likes.

These, and other, setups are well-executed and lead to some solid romantic comedy hijinks.  Maybe not quite as much laughs as in previous volumes either.  While I do think that the romantic drama generated here is also solid, it’s a little disappointing to see the family drama relating to the leads be put on the back burner here.  It’s all enough to make this volume a good entry in the series rather than a great one.