Chika vs. Kaguya - What's in a Waifu

Kaguya sama love is war a charming energetic emotionally-charged romantic comedy capable of pivoting between pitch perfect pitch black humour and sappy heartwarming romance on a dime and that was just the first season season two has amplified all of these traits with even more subtly crafted sakuga even more convoluted mind games even more adorable Kaguya blushes and even more chica noises almost every otaku out there can agree that this show is of the light and that this season in particular is particularly delightful perhaps even anime of the year material it's one of a few bright spots and an otherwise bleak season beset by delays and cancellations however even within this rare consensus there is still division and discord all stemming from a single seemingly innocuous question that anime fans can't help but ask no matter how many times we see it end in bloodshed yeah the show's good and all but who do you think is best girl if you were to ask the student council members that question they'd all have very different answers Shiro Ghani would agonize trying to find a way to say it's Kaguya without actually saying it's Kaguya while Kaguya would immediately point to his younger sister kay you ishigami would do his best to avoid answering out of fear for his own safety only to end up digging himself a much deeper hole in the process and chica Fujiwara would say chika Fujiwara chica likes to think of herself as a bubbly energetic ray of sunshine brightening the day of everyone she passes by her friends see her more as an erratically aimed death ray setting their carefully laid plans alight whenever she randomly comes near them the truth lies somewhere in the middle but I can see where chicas coming from sure she can be petulant self-indulgent temperamental immature and incapable of reading the subtle Machiavellian atmosphere of the student council room but she's also like really cute and she's always there for her friends when it really matters she may have made some disapproving noises upon witnessing the creature known as Miyuki sure Organa is pathetic display on the volleyball court and what noises they were but after that she actually stuck around for him spending every second of her own free time for over a week helping that creature evolve into something resembling a real human being and she does it again multiple times despite knowing the hell she's about to put herself through that's just the kind of person chica is she'll never turn her back on a friend in need unless you like offer her a bit of food to do it or just stroke her ego a little there are a lot of words you could use to describe chica consistent isn't one of them but that unpredictable impulsivity does make her a very fun character to watch doubly so in this new season where a liberal application of sakuga has turned her into a full-blown Looney tune that said despite her often outlandish behavior chica is probably the only member of the student council with a modicum of common sense even with her total lack of romantic experience love detective chica gives the best romantic advice out of anybody else in the room by simple virtue of not being a complete dumbass about it Kodaka Kono's little tail - noggin you are those that I need an eye disco actually chica can be pretty damn smart when she wants to be not only is she a polyglot and a prodigious pianist she's even better at manipulating people than the show's protagonists given the right motivation that is she's honest to a fault most of the time she'll only lie when she's being playful but when she does play she plays for [ __ ] heaps she's not great at cheating she always seems to get caught but when it comes to bluffing she is second to none during the band word game for instance she immediately zeroes in on kaguya's biggest gripe with her her inability to read a room then reframes it as something she's deeply insecure about in order to play to her friends strong sense of kindness and guilt and she goes all-in on the deception in a way that prompts the overly serious President to declare his intent to win thereby causing him to lose - in a show about psychological warfare that is the only psychological scheme I've ever seen go off without a hitch chica could absolutely play mind games with the best or maybe I should say worst of them but she doesn't out of principle except when it would be really really funny as much as the student council are her beloved friends they're also her main source of entertainment and chica really likes to be entertained fun is just about the only thing you can count on her to take seriously there are many fundamental contradictions the chicas character because she is a fundamentally chaotic person also a deeply egotistical one just not in the same obvious way as the prideful president and vice president she does genuinely love her friends but it really seems like her main motivation for being nice and putting them first is the self-satisfaction of feeling like she's the great person she thinks she is she is still genuinely helpful but her help often comes with an air of passive-aggressive condescension still that's better than aggressive aggression chicas normally calm and sweet but when she gets angry she gets really angry and God help any ishigami who happened to be nearby when that happens even when she isn't straight-up violent she can be particularly brutal with that honesty I mentioned as a person yes she's not the best but that doesn't necessarily disqualify her from being the best waifu in fact if you've seen my analysis of the best worst girls of kono Suba you'll know that these kinds of deep character flaws can even work in a wife who's favored and that's exactly what I think is happening here even at her most awful chica tends to be adorably awful like a toddler her one consistent trait is her innocent cuteness but even there we find a contradiction because you see chica is a bit of a frico despite generally not getting the more nuanced points of many conversations chica immediately picks up any innuendo her friends put down no matter how subtle it may be often having to explain it afterwards to the genuinely pure and naive Kaguya she clearly thinks about this a lot even though she's a nice girl from a respectable political family who wouldn't ever and in the manga when she sits down to indulge in some saucy shoujo with Kaguya we get a brief and tantalizing glimpse at what's really going on under that ribbon that leaves little doubt as to where her priorities live chicas obsession with love is probably at least in part a socially acceptable expression of this ravenous thirst but she needn't bother with the cover story because her sisters put her relative lack of shame - shame college-age toyomi Fujiwara [ __ ] and she wants everyone to know it and as for the younger male ha she's like 12 political scandals waiting to happen all at once looking at them it's kind of a miracle that chicas as normal as she is and weird as this may sound I think normal is kinda the best word to describe her when she's first introduced chica seems like a quirky cheerful impossibly adorable mo a blob with big anime titty I'll be at a very fun take on that tired archetype then they dropped that specially D and like how could anyone see that and not instantly conclude that she's a superior to D being the best girl to end all best girls we're only human but the thing is so is chica she's a human who's pretty good at acting cute but only because she likes others to see her that way she's got some weird-ass hobbies and interests but then who doesn't she can be absolutely brilliant when she applies herself and she's a friend you can really count on when you really need her but when you don't she'll put herself first in a heartbeat and maybe [ __ ] with you just for the entertainment value chica seems strange and incomprehensible because we mainly see her through the eyes of Kaguya and shiro ghana two deeply messed-up individuals obsessed with each other and their own perfect self images chica doesn't care about being perfect she just wants to be happy she's a normal flawed complex girl but a fundamentally good and likable one where it really counts with big anime tittie also like many of the all-time great waifu's chica is an anarchist I think all that makes for a very strong argument to let her keep her default best girl status but I wouldn't count Kaguya out just yet before we move on to her though let me quickly tell you about today's sponsor expressvpn say hypothetically that you're trying to get your secret crush to pay more attention to you you go check out their blog to find out what manga they're into then you grab the latest volume of their favorite series so it can casually fall out of your backpack the next time they're around but wait their blog logged your IP address and now you've just dropped evidence of your interest in front of them were you trying to start a 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competitors to see for yourself why expressvpn is widely regarded as the best VPN on the market and find out how you can get three months of service free head to expressvpn comm slash basement today if chica is a deceptively simple character then Kaguya is a deceptively complicated one we spend a lot of the series inside her head getting wrapped up in her conflicting desires and convoluted schemes before you get to know chica it's easy to identify what her initial appeal is supposed to be she's sold as a Genki girl pure dare a dare a Caguas a lot harder to initially pigeonhole given the way she schemes and obsesses and her cold predatory glare it's tempting to peg her as he and array but that doesn't quite line up she certainly goes to excessive some might say crazy lengths in pursuit of her crush but that's more a product of her upbringing than any deep-seated instability the shinomiya fortune was built on exploitation the rejection of love it's literally their family motto her dad raised her from afar having his servant spy on and manipulate her so it's only natural that she'd do the same to the guy she's obsessed with her most obviously yandere ish trait besides that obsession is the way she covers the cold calculating intent of her inner monologue but the key distinction is that cold emotionless calculation is also a mask an internal one that she uses to protect herself from the emotional effects of her family's control and neglect the so called ice queen Kaguya is an intellectual construct built from the twisted morals and ethics she was raised on in Kavya's internal courtroom she sits behind the super egos bench and that's fundamentally the opposite of a yandere characters like you know gasai and himiko toga are defined by a tempestuous Sid screaming [ __ ] marry kill as it inevitably overtakes a fraying superego built on suffocating Japanese social norms norms that are almost completely alien to the sheltered rich Kaguya Kaguya Sid is a sweet caring good-natured [ __ ] who just wants the President to smile and wear cat ears sometimes and also cuddle up real close and give her smooches and maybe do some other stuff once she's able to actually think about it without breaking down laughing with a cold aggressive mask over a warm caring core Kaguya better fits the template of a tsundere than he and RA but she's not exactly a conventional tsundere either we do see her have emotional outbursts but only because we're privy to her internal narration rarely if ever do they actually break through the surface cog he is far too elegant and composed to hit the president or call him Baba baka when she's flustered or to lash out at him or chika when a misunderstanding riles up her jealousy that's not how she know Mia's processed their anger instead when she's mad she files that feeling away for later smiles a little too sweetly and then if nothing is done to resolve it by the end of the conversation begins using her wealth and connections to meticulously destroy the fool who dared to cross her luckily for them shiragami is too nice to hurt her without making it up to her chicas too chaotic to stay mad at for long and ishigami knows his place but I'm drifting away from the point which is that Kaguya like the real chica is far too complicated to neatly fit your standard dare a template all of the show's characters are out of necessity without those layers of depth to explore its brand of psychological comedy would get old fast unfortunately that leaves me in a slightly tricky spot as a waifu ologist the dare a taxonomy is the foundation of this entire field of research without those easy points of generalised reference expressing what makes a waifu appealing requires fully understanding her character and if I was good at that I wouldn't be working in stem but it's inescapable here because it's exactly that slow process of getting to know Kaguya that makes her such a phenomenal waifu and makes the initially easy best girl question so difficult to answer the further you get into the anime and especially the manga my first impression of Kaguya was that she kind of sucked early on she comes off as cold and condescending needlessly distrusting and hostile the antics that ensue as a result of this are immensely entertaining but they don't give her much innate character appeal beyond looking cute when her composure breaks down it was only once I realized that she sees herself much the same way I did and that she doesn't particularly like it that I really started to warm up to her and second-guess my waifu rankings for a long time I thought that Caguas ego was running the show but her ego is barely developed in her head it's literally depicted as a child she worries about appearances so much because that's what's expected of her as a shinomiya the family's identity has always taken precedence over her own what really drives Kaguya is a very straightforward need for affection kindness and validation and in the moments where she actually gets what she wants especially when it's from the man she's too scared to admit she loves oh my gosh she's so [ __ ] cute you guys sorry I wish I could be more analytical about it but there's these moments where her internal screaming over the president completely overwhelms the logical part of her brain and seeing that does pretty much the exact same thing to mine her feelings cost her the decisive self-confidence that's won her so much success in academics sports and every other field but that happens to all of us when we're out of our element and when we care about something enough to fear losing it to a bad decision which happens to be the exact state of mind furthest from kaga is element the only advice her family ever gave her on how to love someone is don't what's really brilliant about Kaguya as a character is the fact that her cold detached manipulative persona and the meek gentle compassionate shadow hiding behind it are both born from the exact same source cog he is strict arguably abusive upbringing built on a selfish and misanthropic view of humanity was meant to accelerate her growth into the kind of ruthless adult who could command the shinomiya family and it did teach her how to act that way but it also sheltered her from the negative life experiences that would lead someone to become that jaded deep down intellectually kavya understands that people can be awful and that there's good reason to guard herself from others but in terms of emotional experience she's felt far more kindness than cruelty in the small amount of time she's spent outside her own household and the president's kindness in particular has touched the sheltered naive innocent deep inside her who values kindness and compassion above all else and pines for true love the most exquisite mo a gap mo a is born from surprising deviations and a wife who's expected behavior the bigger the gap between expectation and reality the more profound the effect and Caguas mo a is built on the greatest gap imaginable the one between the character of the wealthy and basic inborn human kindness it is genuinely heartwarming to see how pure simple love Kaguya out of her shell and gradually coaxes her to become a better more honest and trusting person very very gradually still the weight is so worth it both through the first season of the anime and Kaguya is larger arc through the manga so far as layers upon layers of deception and self-deception are stripped away eventually all that's left is a pure delicate smile that must be protected at all costs the very essence of moe a packaged up in a character complex and interesting enough to make that seemingly unrealistic ideal feel grounded and believable it also feels special because it's a rarely seen side of her when kavya does typical cute anime girl things it just it's a lot harder than anime or manga that have their waifu start there it's the difference between enjoying a sweet dessert at the end of a hearty meal and binging a whole tub of ice cream by itself and in one way or another that's true of all the series wife is not just chica and Kaguya but also Kay eno subha may ishigami Kashiwagi maki and of course i hayasaka I was actually planning to talk about her in this video as well as the only person in the world who can call kavya on her [ __ ] and the direct inverse of the bubbly shameless chica hayasaka makes a great compliment to the both of them but when I actually started analyzing their characters I found my hands were way too full to add another white food to the mix there is a shocking amount of depth the nuanced Takagi osama's character writing which means that all of its waifu's are top-tier in their own way were they alone in almost any other anime both chika and Kaguya could claim the best girl crown with little contest but against each other and the rest of the cast it's almost impossible to say who deserves it more so I won't for now instead I'll leave it to all of you with the poll that just popped up in the top right corner of the video don't worry we'll be giving the other candidates their due in due time after I've made those he rocket videos I promised you guys back in the fall and I'll be drawing my own conclusions based on rigorous scientific analysis eventually right now I'm just curious to know where you guys are at on thorny contentious issue on that note this video was a much more complex undertaking to write than previous Watson waifu's on account of how much more complex these waifu's are so I'd like to hear your thoughts in the comments as to how it stacks up the previous videos in this series and while you're down there if you haven't already please consider clicking the subscribe button and joining the now millions strong army of basement dwellers I'm Geoff thew professional [ __ ] signing out from my mother's basement [Music]

Channel: Mother's Basement

Views: 641,206

Keywords: Mother's Basement, Anime, Anime Analysis, what's in a waifu, chika fujiwara, kaguya sama, waifu review, kaguya-sama wa kokurasetai: tensai-tachi no renai zunousen, kaguya shinomiya, chika fujiwara dance, kaguya sama love is war opening, chika fujiwara noise, chika fujiwara hitting ishigami, kaguya sama funny moments, kaguya-sama: love is war, shirogane x kaguya, kaguya wants to be confessed to, cute moments, how cute, best girl, Ishigami, hayasaka ai, funny anime

Id: VZl1G7JRf0k

Length: 21min 24sec (1284 seconds)

Published: Tue May 19 2020