The anime Kaguya-sama: Love is War is a twisted romantic comedy in which two student council members who each like each other feel that they can’t be the first to admit it because it would give the person who was confessed to power over the person who did the confessing.
So they spend the course of the series challenging each other to games and challenges in an attempt to get the other person to admit their feelings first. The anime series is based on a manga of the same name, and while they mostly follow the same plot, the two do have different ways of telling the story. Here are five things in the anime that are the same as in the manga and five things that the anime changed.
10 Kept The Same: Major Plot Points
The overall story of the series, which involves the aforementioned challenges and games set by each of the protagonists, is the same in both the anime and the manga.
The games and tricks which they play on each other don’t differ too much either, and the characters end up in the same places in the plot in the anime as they do in the manga, showing that it’s ultimately leading to the same story conclusion.
9 Changed: The Chronology
While the things that happen in the anime are for the most part the same things that happen in the manga, the order of the story isn’t the same. Chapters are taken from wildly different parts of the manga to make up one episode.
For example, episode one tells the stories of chapters one, twelve, and five. Because of the episodic nature of the story and the fact that it’s mostly gags based on the challenges they set for each other, it doesn’t affect the understanding of the series, but it is definitely a different take than the manga.
8 Kept The Same: Lots Of Jokes
This is a romantic comedy at its heart, even if it’s a somewhat weird one. So one thing the anime made sure to do was to keep in as many jokes from the manga as possible, along with adding some new ones.
There are lots of visual gags that are almost exactly the same as how they appear in the manga, and the anime series really stays true to the comedic spirit of the manga.
7 Changed: Left Out Chapters
Because of the way the series works, with its focus on the individual games and challenges that are involved in each of the episodes, and likely due to time restraints because anime series only have so many episodes to work with, not every chapter is represented in the anime.
Less important chapters, often the ones that focus solely on jokes and have little bearing on the plot, were left out of the anime so that the focus remains on the characters figuring out their relationship.
6 Kept The Same: Narration
Fans are divided on whether the narrator was necessary in the anime, but in this way, the series stayed true to the manga. Both the manga series and the anime feature a disembodied narrator that explains what’s happening and why it’s important.
It might seem less necessary to have a narrator in the anime, since there’s so much more information given in each episode than can be in a manga chapter, but he also provides the viewers with regular jokes and comedic cut-ins that add to the hilarity of the scenes.
5 Changed: Missed Character Moments
Because the anime has less space than a manga to really dive into all of the relationships and characters, there are definitely some things from the manga that didn’t make it into the series.
The most egregious of these losses was the fact that supporting characters don’t have as much screen time, so viewers aren’t able to get to know them as well as in the manga, and they don’t have the same kinds of story arcs they might have in the manga.
4 Kept The Same: Character Designs
It’s not often the case, but sometimes, manga art just doesn’t translate very well to animation; while it might work as a static image on a page, it might not look as good in motion, so animators might choose to adjust the look to make it work better as an animated show.
But Kaguya-sama doesn’t have this problem, and the anime remains faithful to the look of the manga, particularly with the character designs. There are even scenes where it’s clear they made sure to exactly match the facial expressions and reactions of the characters as they look in the manga.
3 Changed: More Innuendo
It’s not as easy to get away with things on TV as it is in a book. The anime has definitely toned down some of the more suggestive things in the manga.
While the manga really leans into innuendo and doesn’t shy away from dirty jokes, the anime is a lot more tempered, not spending quite as much time on sexual gags as the manga does.
2 Kept The Same: True To The Scenes
It would be very easy to adjust the way that scenes in the anime happen, but for the most part, this isn’t the case in Kaguya-sama.
The anime has paid close attention to making sure that the series is as true to the manga as possible, keeping the dialogue and pacing of the scenes the same and making sure that the jokes land in the same hilarious way.
1 Changed: Emphasis On Important Scenes
On the other hand, however, the anime’s focus on the main characters and the cutting of less necessary characters and scenes has also meant that, in general, the scenes that are more important and which lead to character development or changes in status quo have more room.
This emphasis really allows the series to focus on these moments and to give them the gravitas that they deserve, making sure that the viewers know that these are important moments between the characters.