This recap contains spoilers for Kaguya-sama: Love Is War! Season 2, Episode 8
Kaguya-sama: Love Is War‘s second season continues to chug along. The eighth episode is another traditional one in the show’s usual comedic vein. It’s a real gem, and all three segments are great. The first, “Miko Iino Wants To Control Herself”, is another that greatly elevates a pretty incidental chapter in the manga into a laugh riot. How? Well good old-fashioned comedic timing is a big part of it, but also with one of the oldest tricks in the comedy anime playbook; face gags.
Breakin’ The Law
“Wants To Control Herself” opens with Miko Iino again being frustrated by what she sees as the flagrant rule-breaking of her fellow student council members. “Wants To Control Herself” is important for another reason, too. This is the first segment where Miko is fully integrated into the core cast. She tries to chew out Ishigami for playing on some kind of Nintendo Switch analogue at school, and reprimands Kaguya for “indecency”. (That’d be the misunderstanding from last episode.)
Chika, being the force of chaos she is, seizes on this. She first challenges Miko to “not get mad for an hour”. (This being what “Wants To Control Herself” takes its name from.) Then she explains how to effectively reprimand people, via a pair of very good shots.
This isn’t “Wants To Control Herself”‘s only source of humor (there’s a running sendup of Mario Kart throughout the whole segment), but a lot of it does come down to just Really Good Faces. Face gags are generally relegated to kids’ TV here in the anglosphere, so it’s fun to see a show lean into them so heavily. There’s also some great character humor. Chika tries to get Miko to break school rules of her own volition. She encourages her to take silly pictures with her phone, and we get a handy diagram showing what you can and cannot do with one at Shuchiin Academy.

Dog Filter
Chika then tries to get pictures of everyone making “weird faces”. Only to be frustrated when Kaguya and Miko don’t really know how to do that. She compares them to “magazine models who are afraid to be anything but cute”, and the shot itself does let you see what she means.
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“Wants To Control Herself”‘s final act is Kaguya making a truly “weird face” (which it holds out on letting us see for a minute) and then showing it to Miyuki. The president promptly reacts with utter bafflement. Kaguya then returns to the “horror movie visual effects” vortex the show likes to put her in when she’s mortified.
“Miko Iino Wants To Control Herself” thus concludes. Chika having once again flummoxed her entire friend group without even particularly trying to.
Warehouse
As good as the first segment is. The second, “Kaguya Doesn’t Scare Easily”, might be even better. It begins with, well, quite the fakeout.
Then, we promptly cut back to three hours earlier. “Doesn’t Scare Easily” turns out to be based around one of the oldest well-worn setups in anime romcom history. Two characters who like each other but haven’t confessed find themselves stuck in a place they can’t get out of. This is a trope so old that it’s one of those that is now more frequently parodied than played straight, and indeed Love Is War! puts its own spin on things here. For one, “Doesn’t Scare Easily”‘s first gag is this classic bit of fate-tempting.

The real twist on the formula though is that neither Kaguya nor Miyuki actually believe they’re really trapped. Both, in classic fashion, assume the other has engineered the situation in order to try to get the other to confess. (The actual cause, we eventually learn, is a random root that got stuck in the door.) “Doesn’t Scare Easily” gets most of its mileage out of this setup, and the almost-kiss depicted up there is the logical endpoint. Between the two events, there’s lots of the two scheming. Continuing the video game theme, there’s also a frankly inexplicable cutaway gag that homages a specific area in Dark Souls 2. (Huntsman’s Copse, if you’re curious.)

There is some genuinely romantic buildup here, but, this is not a “tentpole episode” where forward progress is made. Miko accidentally squashes said buildup when she waltzes in from outside. (In one of the series’ weaker running gags, she also misunderstands the situation here again. This is not the last time we’ll be encountering this particular shtick.)
Lovesick
The final segment of this episode, “Kaguya Wants To Be Examined”, opens with a brief spell of dead seriousness. Miyuki notices a lint in Kaguya’s hair and pulls it out, and the heiress suddenly collapses, prompting the student council to call an ambulance. At the hospital, we’re introduced to a very fun minor character, Dr. Shozo Tanuma. Tanuma is an absurdly stone-faced cardiologist (one of the best in the world, we’re told), and is also Kaguya’s personal physician. The show even shifts its art style to accommodate his introduction, suddenly looking like a serious drama anime from the mid-2000s.
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Tanuma, naturally, is the one to see Kaguya. We get a little more of Kaguya’s backstory sprinkled in here, with Chika back at the student council room commenting that she’s worried because Kaguya’s mother passed away from heart disease, and Dr. Tanuma remembering Kaguya as a girl who looked like “she had nothing to look forward to”. By and large though, “Wants To Be Examined” is another comedy segment. Kaguya’s diagnosis turns out to be something much, much less serious than a heart problem. Tanuma plainly declares that there’s nothing physically wrong with her at all. The only thing she has is a case of teenage lovesickness.
Tsundere
Kaguya is less than amused by one of the world’s most renowned doctors near-literally diagnosing her with tsundere. (One of the nurses even calls the archetype out by name.) Spare a thought here also for Hayasaka, who has to watch as her mistress’ dignity is eroded by the wonders of modern medicine.
Dr. Tanuma even tries to sympathize with Kaguya, recalling that he, too, was once a lovestruck youth. (We again get the Serious Anime Drama art style here for this brief flashback.)
“Wants To Be Examined” concludes happily, with Kaguya returning to the student council room safe and sound. Where, of course, she is promptly hugged by a worried-sick Miyuki, causing her to nearly collapse again.
Three great segments of three fairly different styles but all working in the show’s broad comedy palette. I’m fondest of “Miiko Ino Wants To Control Herself”, but all three are great. This is Love Is War! on cruise control, perhaps, but an excellent episode all the same.
Until next time, Love Is War! fans.
Catch up on our Kaguya-sama recaps here!
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