We continue Kaguya and Shirogane’s contest to one up each other and force a confession of love.
The three parts this time are Kaguya Wants to Trade / Chika Wants to Go Somewhere / Miyuki Wants to Hide His Ignorance.
Part 1. ‘Kaguya wants to Trade’ revolves around Shirogane getting a new cellphone. After a ton of outside influence from Kaguya, who just wants to exchange contact info with him. Of course, this becomes a battle of wits between the two of them as neither is willing to approach the other for their contact info first.
I mean, Chika just comes straight out and grabs his contact info and becomes friends with him on, what I can only assume is a discount facebook. As his profile picture, he posts a cute but embarrassing picture of himself as a child to try to lure Kaguya into asking for his information.
The entire time she’s stressing out about how much she wants to see it before he pulls it down. I can’t help but ask myself, why not just ask Chika to show you? She already has his contact info. She’s already seen and looking at the photo. She’s your best friend, she would be totally willing to help you out in a pinch.
Instead, we go with the complicated ‘fake tears’ act and sob and dramatically express how you are feeling left out and Shirogane totally just falls for it and shows her the picture. Then Chika encourages them to exchange contacts only to reach the true punchline…
Kaguya’s phone is ancient and only supports calls and not applications. She’s had it since she was a child, is attached to it and doesn’t want a new one. Despite being more then rich enough to have the latest model…what a nerd.
Part 2: ‘Chika wants to go somewhere’ brings up the idea of summer vacation and of course, summer romance for a romantic summer get away you obviously go to the beach! Or is it the mountains? That is the question posed in this part. At first, Kaguya wants to go to the beach and allure Shirogane with her bathing suit and Shirogane wants to have the camping experience and bond with Kaguya under the stars. Until certain issues start to come up. First and foremost, the mountains have bugs and Shirogane can’t stand bugs. So he switches to beach.
Kaguya realizes that she’s, um, compared to Chika rather, flat. She decides that the mountains are clearly better then the beach. I feel you girl, I feel you on almost a spiritual level.
So it comes to an absolute stalemate between them and they ask Chika. She decides on the mountains but for really, really strange and creepy reasons and oh god is she okay? Thus, the student councils plans for a summer trip never fully form. Because Chika is horrifying.
The final part: ‘Miyuki wants to hide his ignorance’ is nearly physically painful to watch. It’s by far the cingest thing this series has had to offer so far. As another male student comes to Shirogane for dating advice he has to try to hide the fact that he is a absolute virgin with no love experience. So he just keeps BSing and saying extremely cringy and probably wrong things, Kaguya ends up observing this and she is almost as pained as you are as a viewer.
The other student says he thought Shirogane was a master because him and Kaguya were dating. Shirogane denies the fact they’re dating and when asked what he thinks of her, he starts going off on a bunch of negative things before noticing she’s listening and saying a bunch of great things about her. Somehow his advice to the male student works and Kaguya is immensely happy and on cloud nine about all of the things he said.
So at the end, it’s a win for him.
I think my favorite part here was part 2. I was highly amused by both of their images of summer romance and all of the different ways they tried to dissuade one another’s ideas. Chika’s absurd suggestions and creepy streak are actually really funny and make her a more interesting character then the ‘cute, ditzy, innocent best friend’ that we’ve seen her as so far. Part 1 was good, and part 3 was awkward and cringy. Hopefully we’ll avoid more like that in the future.
I also know I talked a bit about the opening in the last episode, but i’ve noticed all around this show has a very nice soundtrack. Both the opening and the ending are wonderful, though the opening is stuck in my head just thinking about it now. I haven’t paid much attention to the background music, but I don’t think i’ve felt like any of the music felt out of place yet. So that’s a good sign. I’ll have to pay more attention to that in the future.
overall another episode of solid comedy gold. I am generally curious about a few characters who show up in the opening and hope we’ll be meeting them soon.