I’m a few days late to do this, but several days ago was the birthday of one of my favorite characters of all time, Kaguya Shinomiya. I wanted to do an appreciation thread for her so here it is. (Not spoiler free, do not read if you haven’t caught up to the manga)

For me, Kaguya Shinomiya is one of the best if not the best romantic comedy protagonist for several reasons. To start, Kaguya’s personality is incredibly fleshed out. She is intelligent, clever, talented, elegant, strong, passionate, romantic, caring, reliable, and more.

However, she can also be naive, ignorant, arrogant, egotistical, prideful, insensitive, manipulative, cold, selfish, and more. My point is Kaguya has many personality traits that are good, bad, and even neutral that define her multifaceted complex personality.

Her personality is literally and figuratively complex. She has multiple sides to her with her normal, ice, idiotic, and her child self. However, these aren’t multiple personalities rather they’re more like different sides of her personality that is being shown.

What makes these literal showing of her different sides interesting is that they are consistent with her character. Even if we don’t see Ice or Idiotic Kaguya art being shown, they are consistent personality traits that are ingrained in her characterization.

Let’s talk about conflicts, Kaguya has many various conflicts throughout the story both minor and major. For minor conflicts, there are external conflicts like Kaguya wanting to eat weiner but not wanting to say it outloud to inner conflicts like the Kaguya court.

For major conflicts, there are external conflicts such as Kaguya needing to deal with her family and internal conflicts such as Kaguya dealing with her own anxiety, self hatred, pride, and overall flaws.

Essentially Kaguya as a character struggles a lot with both minor and major things that makes her character engaging and endearing for me. Which leads me to another aspect that I love about Kaguya which is her constant character progression throughout the series.

From the start to where we are now in Kaguya-sama, Kaguya as a person constantly grows as a person. Whether it's her emotional maturity, knowledge, flaws, and more, Kaguya consistently grows as a person and character the more the series goes on.

What I love about her character progression is the slow pace of it. She doesn’t make 180 personality changes or anything, but every chapter she experiences something new and her character progression is gradual.

Seeing Kaguya grow from being a prideful, naive, and immature person to where she is now has me loving her progression.

Of course, her character progression isn’t over and is still ongoing. she still has insecurities, flaws, and struggles that she has to overcome. Her character arc isn’t over, and I look forward to seeing where it goes.

Can we talk about Kaguya’s character design for a bit? I think her character design is fantastic. It's simplistic yet memorable. Kaguya’s design is flexible in that it captures her intelligence and elegance while showing her cold calculating side and her dumb romantic side.

One of the most memorable things about Kaguya’s character design is just how expressive Aka gets with it. I think Kaguya easily has some of the most expressive expressions I've ever seen a character make from being scary to embarrassed to arrogant to loving and more.

Another aspect that I love about Kaguya is her backstory specifically. I love how the backstory contextualizes so much of her characterization. How Kaguya grew up and how that has majorly impacted her personality, behavior, and mindset is amazing.

Kaguya-sama is all about relationships, there’s no better character that shows that then Kaguya herself. Kaguya has some of the best character dynamics and relationships I've seen in animanga in general.

The most obvious example is Kaguya’s relationship with Miyuki. Their relationship makes up the core of the story, and their relationship deserves a thread all on its own.

However, a relationship I especially love is Kaguya and Ishigami. They have to have one of the best friendship developments I have seen. Ishigami first started out being fearful of Kaguya but that slowly developed into something more throughout the series.

Now Kaguya and Ishigami are like family. Ishigami has grown so much and partially because of Kaguya’s constant support. While Kaguya shows so much love and care for Ishigami as if he was the brother she wishes she could have had. I just love their relationship so much.

This isn’t even mentioning Kaguya’s relationship and dynamics with Hayasaka, Kashiwagi, Chika, maki and more. Kaguya’s relationships are just amazing in how they develop and characterize her as well as showing chemistry with other characters.

Kaguya-sama is a relatable series for me, and Kaguya herself is one of the reasons why. I can just relate to Kaguya’s fears, anxieties, and ideologies regarding love and romance that gives me a sort of attachment to her character.

Of course, Kaguya-sama is also a comedy so it's important that the characters are funny and well… of course I find Kaguya herself hilarious. I couldn’t count the amount of time I laughed because of her. Easily one of the funniest characters for me.

Kaguya is such an important character to the overall story and theme of Kaguya-sama (Obviously considering the namesake), and she is the heart of the story alongside Miyuki.

I love Kaguya as a character so much, and she is such an important character to me. She is a brilliant protagonist in a series that I deeply love. I know this is late, but happy birthday to Kaguya Shinomiya!