Kaguya-Sama: Love is War S1E9: “Long Title/Seriously Long-Ass Title/Holy Fuck Why Is This Episode Title So Long? (continuing even longer: the very longest)”

Chika shares the (rather overcomplicated) rules she's got in mind for this game. Before they can begin playing, Miyuki interrupts and points out some kind of suspicious things. For one thing, Chika can't usually remember what she was talking about thirty seconds ago, much less perform well in a game of memory; why would she choose a game she knows she'd be bad at? For another, why would she drop in that rule about cheating? Is she really afraid that's going to be an issue? And, even if she was, wouldn't it make more sense for someone caught cheating to just be out of the game?

And, bringing these questions all into sharper focus, the backs of those cards don't look quite as uniform as they should.

There's an extended sequence of Miyuki freaking out at Chika for her attempted cheating. I'm not really sure *why* she tried to set this whole thing up, considering that she's the one with the established visitation history. Anyway, this show's humor usually lands very well for me, but this bit is an exception. There are a couple of highlights though.

1. Otherguy claiming to be so disgusted by Chika's behaviour that he's going home right now, clearly trying any excuse to get out of a live recreation of the final act of "Society."

2. Chika claiming that it's only cheating if you get caught, only for the other two to immediately point out that she got caught before the damned game even started.

So, those were funny at least. Also, it does show that Miyuki has some cunning in addition to booksmarts, and it isn't just limited to his stupid gambits against Kaguya.

Anyway, they get a different deck and start playing, with Chika beginning at -5 points for her cheating attempt in accordance with her own rules. For some reason they don't call her out again when she blatantly moves the cards all around the table during her own turns, allowing her to shoot ahead of the other two despite her inferior memory. As Miyuki falls into last place (for...some...reason? I thought Otherguy was looking for ways to get out of this? Shouldn't he be throwing the game?), Chika rubs in the salt with this statement:

Kind of a baffling statement too. Kaguya having been sick often enough for a visiting Chika to establish patterns of behaviour, plus Kaguya getting sick from being out in the rain while Miyuki was out in it much longer without having any issues, definitely makes it seem like she's prone to this.

I'm becoming increasingly sure that Chika is trolling them on purpose. I might have to rethink my previous assessment of the characters and what they represent.

Otherguy wonders aloud if Kaguya got sick from waiting outside in the rain so long during yesterday's typhoon. Miyuki asks him what he means, and he explains that he saw her and her fucked up classmate-maid-thing lady standing outside waiting for someone after school. And that, when he looked again some time later, they were still there.

...ah, okay, I guess the show just didn't make it clear how much time was supposed to have passed there. I got the impression that Kaguya hadn't been waiting outside all that long before Hayasaka approached her. So, if she'd been out there a long time, and Miyuki had just ridden his bike from the school to the nearest train station in a hurry after getting the news, that would explain it. Okay, got it. It just wasn't clear at all in the scene itself.

Miyuki puts two and two together, and finally starts to have what may develop into an epiphany.

What if she actually does have a crush on him herself?

What if he thought of her as another human being facing similar pressures to those he's under, and so she's doing the same thing that he's doing?

What if none of this manipulation, politicking, and borderline gaslighting was necessary, and he could just ask her out and then after that there'd be no jockeying and armwrestling needed?

Well, maybe someday Miyuki will be able to get that far, but that day is not today. He decides he really, REALLY needs to win this Concentration game now so that he can approach Kaguya while she's weak and emotional and can be made to confess.

He came close there. He really did come close.

Well, anyway, with his new resolve he dedicates himself to the game and manages to turn things around and win.

It turns out that it wasn't a legitimate win, but also that legitimacy was never possible in this game. He paid attention to what Chika was doing when she mixed the cards up during her turns, because it seemed just a little too purposeful, and if it was purposeful then she must have had a way to avoid tripping over it herself. He realized that she was tilting some cards to point slightly toward other cards, not using the geometry of the cards themselves (that would be too obvious) but rather the corners of the decorative patterns on their backs.

He just sniped her own markers for himself, and essentially hijacked her cheating attempt.

...

Okay, how the hell did this guy not figure that that Kaguya fucked with his phone?

...

Anyway, Otherguy freaks out at Chika again. Miyuki is silently condemnatory.

Here's Chika getting caught for a second time, and being cute.

When pressed on what the hell is even up with her today, she breaks down and...okay, this scene just...

Some of the more self-contained jokes are still landing for me, but the impenetrability of the characters' actions and motivations undermines the scene as a whole. Why did Otherguy not get any pushback to his "three's a crowd" objection, if Chika and Miyuki both felt so strongly about this? Why didn't he just opt out himself on those grounds, letting the other two go? Why did Chika immediately jump to "let's play a game over who gets to go" and why did the other two both agree to it when they have strong motives to do one thing or the other and no incentive to follow Chika's lead?

I get that this is a comedy, but the setup for the joke in this scene just has too many weird premises that aren't, in themselves, funny. The characters making these inane decisions isn't the joke; it's just awkwardly railroading them into a scene where some (admittedly decent) jokes can happen.

Chika shamefacedly leaves the office, head hanging, yielding her visitation rights (though I wouldn't be surprised if she just goes to Kaguya's house independently in defiance of this) and bemoaning how her tricks always work on her sisters so she was sure they'd work on her classmates too. Otherguy rants bitterly at her retreating back about...well, I'm guessing this is alluding to an earlier episode where they had a console war or something lol.

Otherguy is one of those insufferable 4chan PC gamers, it appears.

Anyway, PC Master Race Guy excuses himself to go home and do some Reddit shitposting. Miyuki prepares to go visit Kaguya. Meanwhile, at Kaguya's house, Hayasaka is dealing with...whatever the hell this is:

Apparently, when Kaguya gets sick, she literally regresses into being mentally a five year old child.

This is going to be something, alright.

The music goes sort of European classical as Miyuki approaches Kayuga's house. I'm surprised they actually open the gates for him instead of taking one look and then shooting him for wearing such a cheap uniform where actual people can see.

He's never seen the house up close before. Just looked at pictures of it online. His face is kind of awed and terrified as he enters and sees just how ridiculously huge this place actually is. He's also instantly self-conscious about how cheap the drinks and snacks he brought are.

After crossing the (huge) lawn, he's met at the door of the house by Hayasaka. Or, rather, "Harthaka." Apparently "Hayasaka" is just how Kaguya pronounces her name, which sounds much less Japanese and much more...English, maybe? Something European at least...when spoken properly.

...

So, a western teenager moved to Japan to work as a maid while also still going to high school?

Oh my god she's a weeb. She's the worst fucking weeb on the planet.

...alternatively, her name actually is Hayasaka, and she's pretending to be a foreigner right now for whatever reason. That would be slightly less WTF, but I don't know if that makes it more likely.

...

When he sees her uniform (and colored contacts, and slightly padded chest), Miyuki barely suppresses a minor freakout. Seemingly because she's a maid. Either he's amazed that Kaguya has one, or he's just manifesting Japan's bizarre meido fixation. Not sure what the significance of the colored contacts is. Something to do with her being foreign, or else some intricacy of the national fetish that I'm not familiar with.

Anyway, he's intimidated enough that he tries to abandon his plans and just hand Harthaka the bag of documents that need to be relayed to Kaguya. Harthaka, seeing what's going on, turns away and whispers under her breath about how irritating it's going to be if he chickens out now and this stupid game between the two of them continues indefinitely. She ends up bodily pushing him into the house and toward Kaguya's room.

They enter her bedroom, to find the room turned upside down with everything littering the floor. Kayuga is rambunctiously digging around in the mess looking for fireworks, while also waving a pair of scissors around in her hand. Harthaka takes the scissors away and drags her back into bed, telling her she needs to rest and recover. This prompts Kayuga - still in a childish voice - to call her a meanie for not wanting to light fireworks with her.

Oh dear.

She's shocked to see Miyuki here, and for a moment it seems like this might snap her out of it. Then she panics at the thought of him moving into the house, because that would be too weird for her, and it's clear that no, she's still mentally a five year old. Because that's what colds do to her. Apparently.

Miyuki asks Harkatha what the fuck is he even looking at. Harkatha explains - in a harsh, clinical delivery with a harsh, clinical musical and visual backdrop - that Kaguya's brain is normally so hardworking that the instant something goes wrong with it, her personality splits completely into ego and id, with the former becoming dormant until her brain can reset. Which in this case will only happen once her fever goes down.

Harthaka describes this as "the beast within" taking over and suppressing all higher thought, restraint, and remorse. She doesn't have any comment on Kaguya's inner beast apparently being a five year old kid who's obsessed with fireworks.

Once Kaguya recovers from this fever dream state, the maid continues, she will have no recollection of anything that happened while she was in it. It's rather as if she were blackout drunk, in this respect. Anyway, Harkatha needs to get back to work now, since Kaguya has someone else to look after her for the moment. He'd better not try to take advantage of this situation, though; Kaguya is pretty much defenseless, and with these thick, soundproof walls no one would be able to hear if something went wrong. So, Miyuki really needs to please not do anything.

Miyuki says that he thinks he'd better leave. Harkatha says that no, Kaguya needs someone to watch over her right now, and Harkatha needs to do other work. The music gets slowly creepier and creepier as she makes her way back to the door and slowly closing it while reminding Miyuki that she's really trusting him.

Moved to Japan to be a maid while still in high school, and has some very troubling attitudes about sex and consent. Yeah, that confirms my interpretation, she's just the world's biggest weeb.

Okay then.

So, Miyuki is shut inside the room with Kaguya. Facing yet another popular fetish for at least a certain, disproportionately visible, segment of Japanese society.

...

I poked around online to see what people had to say about this sequence. I wasn't surprised, but I was disappointed.

...

Fortunately, Miyuki is not a perfectly typical anime fan, and does not do what one of those would in this situation. He just stands his ground, gets his wild thoughts and emotions in order, and then tries to decide if it's even worth attempting a conversation when she's like this. She can't even tell that the drinks he tries to offer her aren't fireworks (and is disappointed when he assures her that they're not). Still, with nothing less weird or off-putting to do, he tries to ask her about why she was waiting out in the rain until she got sick yesterday. Was she really hoping he would ask her for a ride? There's no music or whacky visual effects here, and Miyuki's voice is more even-keeled and mature than usual.

She replies that she isn't sure. That summary of events sounds right, but it also sounds wrong. Then she asks if he's angry at her, and when he asks why he'd be mad at her she just sort of clams up and gets vague. Clearly thinking back on the phone incident, and probably other stupid bullshit that she's pulled throughout the series until now. She also rambles semi-coherently about how "this is the first time" for her, presumably referring to her first time having a serious crush. She has no guidance for how to behave here, so she has no idea what she's doing, or if she's doing it right.

As she says this, we cut to the hallway outside, where Harkatha is listening through the distinctly not soundproof wall. So I guess that's what her angle was with this. Testing him, and possibly testing her too. Still a completely WTF thing to do, but on the scale of this scene's WTF-ness it's not too bad.

Also visible in this shot is the Shinomiya family motto written on the wall. Which. Um.

A little more on the nose than I expected, but same general vibe at least.

Harkatha being batshit insane makes sense now. I'm not sure who else would want to be a personal house servant for a family that has this shit written on the wall to remind themselves every day.

Back inside the room, Kayuga says that she still has enough self awareness to know that, right now, she's not feeling the pressures and repression that she normally does. So, she'd like to take advantage of that. She then grabs Miyuki and pulls him into her bed against his protests.

The ego and id speech comes back and lands hard. There's a reason Harkatha was lecturing him about that and putting him in mind of temptation versus self control.

She's also batshit insane, but I've been over that a few times now.

Miyuki undergoes multiple levels of psychological and emotional torment as he lays in bed beside Kaguya. She cuddles him. He sort of stiffly lets himself hug her back, but no further. Then, we cut to him waking up, presumably in his own bed.

...oh. Okay. So HE was the one having the fever dream this entire time. Alright, that's actually clever. I probably should have seen it coming-

I spoke too soon.

So yeah, no, that all actually happened. He fell asleep beside Kaguya, his sleep fitful, his dreams tormented by anxiety and sexual frustration. When she wakes up, she's snapped out of it, and finds him in her bed without explanation.

She chases him out of the house, which he flees in a wild, horrified, self-recriminating, horny panic. Afterward, Harkatha goes over the bed with a magnifying glass in search of bodily fluids, and finds only Kaguya's fever-sweat, allowing Kaguya to relax a bit.

End episode. The outro song is over a montage of Kaguya having a gloomy, lonely, miserable life cloistered by her family, with Harkatha standing over her like a grim-faced prison guard, intermixed with dreams of flying through the sky with Miyuki and their friends.


This episode was certainly a thing.

Kaguya turning into a kid when she gets sick is more or less in-line with Japanese comedy's usual "out there" ness. Everything surrounding it was...simultaneously more weird and less creepy than I expected.

It ended up being a bit of a window into Kaguya that makes her more sympathetic without trying to absolve her of any of her Kaguyaness. To a lesser extent, seeing that Miyuki is actually a relatively moral person when push comes to shove and things get real is also refreshing. It's pretty clear that his more unlikeable and spiteful aspects are a reaction to the classism he experiences, and when he's shown something other than that he lightens up considerably.

I don't know what Harkatha's deal is, but I'm also pretty sure I'm not SUPPOSED to be able to figure out what Harkatha's deal is. She's disturbing, but again, it's pretty clearly intentional.

It's kind of too bad that most of Chika's screentime in this episode is limited to the nonsensical card game. As per unanimous internet opinion, I found her to be one of the highlights of the pilot, and in this episode her presence felt kind of weirdly perfunctory. Like she needed to either have an actual role in the story, or to have her presence limited to a background gag or two.

One thing I'll definitely give this episode credit for is its effective use of misdirection. Not just in isolated cases like making it seem like Miyuki dreamed that whole bizarre visit sequence, but also in starting the episode off with another "how can I get him to ask me for ____" plotline, only to veer off into something much stranger - and yet also more heartfelt - for pretty much the entire later two thirds.

Given that one of my potential misgivings about this show when I saw the pilot was that it might not have much tonal or material range, this was a good second episode for me to have been given. It demonstrates that no, the show isn't JUST them over-dramatically trying to manipulate each other while Chika gets in the way. It can do a lot more than that, and it does have some progression and character advancement going on.

I feel like I should have more of a thesis to make about this episode, but...it's just too weird. I might be able to get more of an actual reading from it eventually, but I'll have to think about it for a lot longer. There's a bunch more Kaguya-Sama coming up in queue, so maybe I'll have more to say with additional context.