The following contains spoilers for Episode 1 of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War - Ultra Romantic, “Miko Iino Wants to Be Soothed / Kaguya Doesn’t Realize / Chika Fujiwara Wants to Battle,” now streaming onCrunchyrollandFunimation.
Anime fans have been beyond excited to see the return ofKaguya-sama: Love Is War, so much so thatsome fans even paid to see it in a theater. The series is so popular that it even got a full Weiß Schwarz set, but it would have been a severe disappointment if the first episode ofUltra Romanticfell flat. Thankfully, it has all the elements of what makes an episode of this anime such a laugh riot.The episode begins after completely glossing over the massive pink explosion of madness that ended its previous season and jumping into the story to great comedic effect. Yuu is interacting with Miko alone in the student council room. Yuu notices that Miko doesn’t have her headphones plugged into her phone all the way and starts hearing the extremely weird things she seems to enjoy listening to while studying. Everything from loud camel noises to hot men sayings words of encouragement.
Related:Kaguya-Sama: Who’s Set to Win This Game of Love & War?
He tries his best to help Miko so no one else will hear, yelling loudly when Chika enters the room and even making up a fake problem to get the advice of the two girls as he doesn’t want Miko to end up horribly embarrassed. He gets desperate enough to slightly unplug his own headphones and play overly cheerful silly music in hopes that it will get her to check her own to not suffer the same embarrassing fate. Sadly, in the end, the day’s battle result is that both of them lose as Miko starts playing the boys praising her again none the wiser.
The episode thenreturns to the main romantic duoof Kaguya and Miyuki, going back to a plot point from the previous season where Kaguya finally got herself a smartphone. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know about the feature when texting that allows people to know when their messages are read. This makes it so that Miyuki is able to intuit that she has been staring at his messages to her the entire time. He uses this as a moment to strike and try to catch just how much she’s into him.
Luckily, despite her failure to actually explain the function to Miyuki several times, Ai is able to save the day by coming up with a clever explanation for the situation. She gets Kaguya to text explaining how extremely rich people pay to have their messages screened before reading them, explaining why it seemed like his messages had been read so quickly but not responded to. While this is completely a lie, Miyuki falls for it as he doesn’t know what is normal in upper-crust life.
In the end, the battle result is that Yuu, Miko, and Chika lose as none of their texts get responded to. Thankfully, it seems that Kaguya has learned her lesson well and will learn about texting etiquette for future interactions.
The final story of the episode is amassive battle of strength with Chikasuggesting the entire group have a massive arm wrestling tournament. She is determined that she is far stronger than Yuu and wants to prove just how strong girls can be compared to boys through the impromptu competition. Of course, Miyuki and Kaguya quickly agree to compete as it might give them an opportunity to hold hands without being scrutinized.
The first round ends quickly with Yuu quickly learning that Kaguya has impressive arm strength from all of the traditional archery she participates in with her school club. Chika looks like she might have a serious chance against Miyuki, but it turns out that her grip is actually cheating, and she is immediately disqualified before she has a chance to really compete.
When the two final competitors reach the table, an epic battle commences. Or at least it looks that way. Both of them areso thoroughly enjoyingholding hands that neither of them wants to lose, forcing the match to go on for an extreme amount of time. It only ends once Kaguya realizes her hand is sweating and is far too embarrassed to continue, using all of her strength to quickly end the match so that she can dry her hand off.
Chika suggests that everyone calls her the “muscle queen” now which she absolutely hates, but everyone starts chanting it to celebrate her victory. In the end, she is declared the winner in the battle result. After the credits, Yuu is shown celebrating his own victory as he had arm-wrestled Chika for third place, apparently beating her so thoroughly she feels like her arm is broken.
The show is already off to a fantastic start in its third season, and it’s no wonder it was one of themost anticipated anime of the Spring 2022 season. The over-the-top action for everyday moments and the epic battle of wits to come out on top in romance is as witty, clever, and hilarious as it has ever been. The first episode ofUltra Romanticsets the bar high for the rest of the season.
More:Kaguya-sama: Love Is War: Things We Hope To See In Season 3
