English Dub Review: Kaguya-sama: Love is War “Kaguya Wants to Know / Kaguya Wants to Give a Gift / Chika Fujiwara Wants to Confirm It”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The President’s birthday is fast approaching, and Kaguya is dying to know the perfect gift for him. While window shopping with Miyuki’s little sister Kei, Moehe, and Chika, she tries to find an opportunity to ask Kei about what gift would be best, but she gets a little overwhelmed by how similar to Miyuki his lil sis is!

Later on, she decides to make him a cake, but picks a gigantic monstrosity that’s more like a wedding dessert than a birthday treat. After holding a trial in the court of her mind, Kaguya decides to go ahead and give him the cake after everyone else leaves — but only a single slice. She gives him a fan, too, which sets up a game in which both try and get the other to confess.

Our Take:

The second season dub of Kaguya-sama: Love is War continues with an episode focused on Kaguya and her struggles to win against Miyuki while simultaneously being in love with him. It’s a mildly entertaining episode that has a few sweet moments of sentimentality baked into it too. Kaguya may win a few battles along the way, but in the end, neither she nor the president are truly victorious.

The opening skit which sees Kaguya window shopping with the three other girls was probably my least favorite of the episode. At first, Kaguya gets stuck with Moehe for a shopping partner. She’s a rather creepy girl who likes to talk about defiling and devouring those she admires, so Kaguya is grateful when she and Kei escape outside the store to a bench to chat. But instead of discovering the best birthday gift, she just discovers how similar the President and his little sister are, which leads to her being kind of creepily protective of Kei. Not a very strong start, but it was interesting to see the show outside the school setting.

Throughout the rest of the episode, Kaguya enacts her birthday plans for Miyuki. After brainstorming with the delightfully deadpan Hayasaki, she decides on making a cake. Her helper can’t help but laugh, saying she misses the days when Kaguya wasn’t an idiot. Kaguya sticks with her plan, but the words finally get to her and she realizes it is a weird gift due to its large size. She holds court in her mind, which started off like a lame rehash of her angel/devil scene, but got better the longer it went on.

The dub cast continues to be pretty solid. The main cast all sound at home in their roles already. The only minor complaint is that the narrator gets a bit too interruptive at times. In the original Japanese version, apparently, he was much more neutral and even in tone. For the dub, the narrator sounds more like a reality TV host, fluctuating between extremes every other scene.

Overall, the second episode of the second season of Kaguya-sama does a fine job building up steam as we start the season. It’s not quite up to the levels of praise it received in the first season, but hopefully it finds more sure footing soon. And I’m excited to see more truly blissful bits like when Kaguya and Miyuki are both overjoyed after the gifting of the birthday fan.