Kaguya-sama: Love Is War

In the senior high school division of Shuchiin Academy, student council president Miyuki Shirogane and vice president Kaguya Shinomiya appear to be a perfect match. Kaguya is the daughter of a wealthy conglomerate family, and Miyuki is the top student at the school and well known across the prefecture. Although they like each other, they are too proud to confess their love, as they believe whoever does so first would "lose" in their relationship. The story follows their many schemes to make the other one confess or at least show signs of affection. Halfway through the series, they manage to confess to each other. From there, focus shifts on how they advance their relationship and deal with remaining obstacles. The presence and complexity of several other characters notably increases over time as well. == Production ==

Conception Akasaka was writing the manga Instant Bullets for Weekly Young Jump and wanted to come up with another series. In an interview on Livedoor News, Akasaka said the original plot for Kaguya-sama was more of a fantasy and game of death, but his editor wanted something more mainstream and, at the time, Young Jump did not have a casual romcom series. It was Akasaka's first manga in the romcom genre. Character design The characters' names were derived from the The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (better known outside of Japan as The Tale of Princess Kaguya). Akasaka stated that he has long liked princess stories and that Kaguya-hime, the main character from the aforementioned , was one of the most famous princess stories. In developing the characters, he said that Kaguya and Miyuki initially have the same personality and thought process, like twins, which made their exposition to the reader easier to understand. He then developed more divergence between the two. Other characters were developed in the same manner, starting as shallow and template-like, but being filled with realistic feelings and drawn from the author's and his acquaintances' personal experience. He especially liked contrasting characters whose internal personalities differ from their external portrayal. Development and themes In developing a chapter or story, Akasaka would think about emotions first and then write about experiencing the emotions, such as what Kaguya would feel if she were jealous. He would then arrange the characters and events around that emotion. When he thinks of some emotion that he hasn't developed into a story yet, he writes it on a sticky note or notebook to be used later. When asked about the ending, he said he does not know whether he will go with the bad ending as with Kaguya-hime, but wouldn't mind if it did. He also considered giving each character a curtain call chapter like they do in the dating sims, eventually deciding to do this. == Media ==

Manga Aka Akasaka launched the series in the June issue of Shueisha's manga magazine Miracle Jump on May 19, 2015. The series' last chapter in Miracle Jump was published on January 19, 2016. The manga was then switched to the publisher's Weekly Young Jump magazine on March 24, 2016. A special chapter ran in the debut issue of Young Jump Gold on May 18, 2017. On April 23, 2020, a new manga series, Oshi no Ko, written by Akasaka and illustrated by Mengo Yokoyari, started its serialization in the same magazine, leading to two manga series created by Akasaka being serialized simultaneously. Kaguya would make a cameo in a special chapter of Oshi no Ko. The series finished on November 2, 2022. Shueisha has collected its 281 individual chapters in 28 individual volumes. The first volume was released on March 18, 2016, and the last on December 19, 2022. Viz Media announced during their panel at San Diego Comic-Con on July 20, 2017, that they had licensed the series for a North American release. The spin-off finished on June 25, 2020. Shueisha released four volumes between December 19, 2018, and July 17, 2020. A spin-off, written by G3 Ida and titled , was serialized in Weekly Young Jump from July 26, 2018, to November 2, 2022. Anime A 12-episode anime television series adaptation, produced by A-1 Pictures, aired in 2019. It was followed by a 12-episode second season, Kaguya-sama: Love Is War?, broadcast in 2020; an original video animation (OVA) episode released in 2021; and a 13-episode third season, Kaguya-sama: Love Is War – Ultra Romantic, broadcast in 2022. A follow-up film, Kaguya-sama: Love Is War – The First Kiss That Never Ends, also premiered in 2022. An anime television special, Kaguya-sama: Love Is War – The Stairway to Adulthood, premiered in 2025. An anime film featuring the original story by Aka Akasaka and serving as the story's conclusion, Kaguya-sama: Love Is War – The Final Chapter, was announced. Live-action film The live-action film adaptation premiered on September 6, 2019. Sho Hirano was announced for the role of Miyuki Shirogane, and Kanna Hashimoto was announced for the role of Kaguya Shinomiya. Hayato Kawai directed the film, Yūichi Tokunaga wrote the screenplay, and principal photography was conducted in March to April 2019. A sequel, Kaguya-sama Final: Love Is War was announced on January 6, 2021. It premiered in Japanese cinemas on August 20, 2021. Hirano, Hashimoto, Nana Asakawa, and Hayato Sano, actors of Kaguya Shinomiya, Miyuki Shirogane, Chika Fujiwara, and Yu Ishigami respectively, returned to reprise their roles. Novels Two spin-off novels written by Jūichirō Hitsujiyama have been released by Shueisha under their Jump J-Books imprint. The first novel, subtitled , was released on September 19, 2018. The second novel, subtitled , was released on November 17, 2023. == Reception ==

The manga won the third Next Manga Award in the comics division for manga published in print book format in 2017. In 2020, along with Aoashi, Kaguya-sama: Love Is War won the 65th Shogakukan Manga Award in the general category. On TV Asahi's Manga Sōsenkyo 2021 poll, in which 150,000 people voted for their top 100 manga series, Kaguya-sama: Love Is War ranked 50th. Kaguya-sama: Love Is War had over 6.5 million copies in circulation by April 2019; over 8.5 million copies by October 2019; over 9 million copies in circulation by December 2019; over 13 million copies in circulation by October 2020; over 15 million copies in circulation by April 2021; over 19 million copies in circulation by October 2022; and over 22 million copies in circulation by December 2022. It was the ninth-best-selling manga in 2019, with over 4 million copies sold. Rebecca Silverman of Anime News Network gave the first two volumes of the manga a positive review, calling it "one of the more unique rom-com premises out there". She noted that the second volume was better than the first, indicating development on the part of the author, and commenting that it boded well for the lastingness of the series. She was more ambivalent about the art, saying that it lacked polish and that faces in particular tended to suffer. == References ==