Name: Kaguya-sama: Love Is War -The First Kiss That Never Ends-
Genre: Animation, Comedy, Romance
Released: 2022-12-17
Duration: 96 min
Rating: 8
Cast: Makoto Furukawa, Aoi Koga, Konomi Kohara, Ryota Suzuki, Miyu Tomita

Kaguya-sama: Love Is War -The First Kiss That Never Ends-

Romance can be a little melancholy.

After pining for one another and plotting for so long, Kaguya Shinomiya and Miyuki Shirogane finally have their climactic first kiss. However, they struggle to define their relationship. After all, how much of their true selves have they really shown to one another?

AnimationComedyRomance

DirectorMamoru Hatakeyama

WritersYasuhiro Nakanishi, Aka Akasaka

StatusReleased

LanguageJapanese

Release DateDecember 17, 2022

Runtime1h 36m

Revenue$440,441

CinemaSerf

@Geronimo1967

February 25, 20237/10

First things first - what's with the ridiculously long title? Thereafter, though, this is quite a cleverly constructed teen romance that sees the student president "Shirogane" share a kiss with the adulatory "Kaguya" only for us to find that cementing that kiss into something more substantial proves quite a challenge. It seems that the young girl has multiple personalities vying for pre-eminance in her relationship with her (their?) beau. These characterisations vary from the young, lovestruck and naive to the young, cynical and suspicious. Poor old "Shirgane" has to deal with all three and is soon completely phased by the erratic, frequently quite funny, behaviour of the young woman who seems as likely to stab him between the eyes as to make love to him. On that last point, it is adult themed - and the writing reflects an honesty about teen adoration, but also about sex, lust and a dose of good, old fashioned, jealousy. It packs quite a lot of story into ninety minutes and raises quite a few smiles - of laughter and of appreciation (we've probably all been here, at some point, as we grew up and remember the intensity of that "first kiss") and is well worth a watch.