Shin Furukawa & Konomi Kohara -- My Nonfiction

 

It's been well over a year since Season 3 of "Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai"（かぐや様は告らせたい...Kaguya-sama: Love is War）, aka "Ultra Romantic"（ウルトラロマンティック）, came and went with the most anticipated kiss in recent anime history finally happening in Episode 13. To preface my feelings on "Ultra Romantic" as a whole, I have to say that as much as I know about that sophomore jinx when it comes to everything in pop culture from a movie franchise's second entry to a professional baseball player's second year in the big leagues, I think that I may have experienced the same thing when it comes to the third seasons in anime franchises. 

The third TV season of "Uchuusenkan Yamato"（宇宙戦艦ヤマト）in 1981 seemed like one too many trips to the well, and even with the third season of "Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka?"（ご注文はうさぎですか？...Is The Order A Rabbit?）in 2020 titled "Bloom", the end result didn't quite strike me as nearly as impressive as the first two seasons although I liked it well enough. And I'm also rather torn on "Ultra Romantic". I didn't really make my feelings clear on Season 3 of "Kaguya-sama" in the articles on the main opening and ending themes when I wrote them up last year, but generally speaking, it was again the situation where I wasn't quite as satisfied with "Ultra Romantic" as I was with the first two seasons. Maybe it was the case that Miyuki and Kaguya were no longer battling each other's wits so much and were simply heading into that collision course of love. I did make my peace with Masayuki Suzuki's（鈴木雅之）"GIRI GIRI" and the ending of Airi Suzuki's（鈴木愛理）,"Heart wa Oteage"（ハートはお手上げ）was further enhanced by that amazing ending credit sequence which looked like something out of "Evangelion" and "Starship Troopers". Usually, I wasn't really a big fan of the ending themes.

My opinion on "Ultra Romantic" is probably a minority one and that's fine. Glad that most other people were very happy with the series. However, I think that we can all agree that Episode 5 where the rap battle took place will go down as one of the highlights for the entire anime franchise. And I have to admit that a lot of the characters had their personalities deepened because of it and other developments in the season. But Student Council Secretary Chika Fujiwara played by Konomi Kohara（小原好美）got launched into the stratosphere. I first saw her as the innocent representative of we viewers in Season 1 who was witnessing the machinations happening between Miyuki and Kaguya and by Season 3, she's become a political schemer who has been openly disdainful of the council president and can rap with the best of them. Her "audition" of sorts in front of Miyuki had jaws (including mine) dropping.

But then, a few minutes later, the viewers get even more slammed into the ground when Miyuki goes on his musical rap tirade against Hayasaka. The animation and the performance were just hilarious and incredible at the same time. I would have loved to have been in the recording studio when Kohara and Shin Furukawa（古川慎）, Miyuki's seiyuu, pulled this off. It was tough love intervention for Miyuki, Hayasaka and Kaguya done in a new unexpected way.

Finally, the showmanship floored viewers once more through a special end credits sequence for Episode 5 as Miyuki and Chika, and a couple of the other student council members, obviously kept up with their hip-hop studies and moves to create "My Nonfiction". Once again, jaws were crashing through the floor due to the song along with the bump-up in the animation budget. The lyrics were provided by rapper and radio personality Akkogorilla（あっこゴリラ）with music by Akkogorilla and music producer/trackmaker Parkgolf.

Mic drop!🎤