Aka Akasaka’s Kaguya-sama: Love Is War began on 19 May 2015 and ended on 2 November 2022 at chapter 281, collected in 28 volumes. Miyuki Shirogane, president of the student council at the elite Shuchiin Academy, and Kaguya Shinomiya, his vice-president, are in love and have both decided that whoever confesses first has lost.
Early chapters package two or three short battles of wits each. Whether to share a lunch, how to hand over a cinema ticket, and other small situations get elaborate psychological narration laid over them. Then the secretary Chika Fujiwara wrecks the format from inside, and as the treasurer Yu Ishigami and the later arrival Miko Iino get histories of their own, the book widens into a story about the whole council.
In the later volumes Kaguya’s family situation and the relationship itself finally begin to move, and the series pushes the emotion without lowering the joke density. Complete at 28 volumes, with animated and live-action adaptations.
