Kaguya-sama: Love is War (2020)

[かぐや様は告らせたい ～天才たちの恋愛頭脳戦～]

Volume 19

Author/Artist: Aka Akasaka
Publisher: Young Jump Comics

Synopsis:
With Hayasaka being targeted by Shinomiya's brother, Shirogane offers his help.

Story/Characters:
I've commented before about my interest in the relationship between Shirogane and Hayasaka and here it really blossoms. It's not a romantic thing, but there's this great bond of trust that transcends her betrayal of Shinomiya. It almost becomes something of a spy thriller after that and we learn more about Hayasaka's posse, who have more depth to them than we the readers or even Hayasaka herself would imagine. We get some nice flashbacks to Shinomiya and Hayasaka's past as Shinomiya tries to meet up with Hayasaka. Speaking of character depth, there's more going on with Unyou that I wonder if we'll ever explore in the future.

Once the dust has settled on the Hayasaka arc, we got back to Tokyo where Ishigami and Iino are at it again and Fujiwara arranges a word game to try to get them to get along. The girls' dirty minds get them in trouble. Next, we have Shinomiya confront Osaragi for taking the file on Ishigami, leading to real-life shipping wars. Shirogane shows us the way when it comes to shipping wars. Following that, Shirogane tries to approach Iino and he finds himself lured into another one of her hobbies. Finally, we have Papa Shirogane decide to kick off his Youtube career, much to his children's concern, and we weave it into Tsubame-sempai's romantic woes (as she'd taken advice from Papa Shirogane before when he was doing his fortuneteller schtick).

Art:
We get some really nice camera work in several scenes. I particularly liked Shirogane's conversation with Hayasaka. As always, Akasaka is excellent with facial expressions. There's an intriguing art shift for Papa Shirogane's potential avatar which shows Akasaka can draw more detailed characters quite well.

Other:
We get a character profile for Unyou (who is apparently second to Kaguya in terms of good members of the Shinomiya family if that can be believed) and a one-page bonus where Kei tries to discourage the simps on her dad's channel from throwing money at her.

Conclusion:
I was looking forward to this and I wasn't disappointed. The Hayasaka arc really delivered and we start to build up steam tackling the Ishigami-Tsubame-Iino love triangle. You can probably guess my recommendation at this point. As always, this one belongs in your collection.

Rating:
Own It