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Kaguya Sama: Love is War Season 2 Episode 5, Has Shirogane Won Already?

Kaguya Sama Love is War season 2 has entered the student council re-election arc. The introduction of Miko Iino last week as Miyuki Shirogane’s main contender upped the ante of the race to be the student council president. The polar opposite character traits of the two contenders has already added some spice and vigour to the contest. 

We were expecting that Kaguya Shinomiya will face off with Miko Iino sooner or later and try to impose herself on her junior. That’s exactly what happened in Kaguya Sama Love is War Season 2 Episode 5. However, it is Miko Iino who comes out as the winner of the encounter, much to our surprise. Despite all that, we are all but sure that it is Shirogane who is going to win the Student council elections. Why? Let’s recollect some points from the previous two episodes to support our assumption.

Before we start, we have to give a shoutout to Shirogane’s new look in the episode, all thanks to the time he now gets to sleep and set his hairstyle. Even so, we are with Kaguya and love Shirogane’s sleep deprived and stingy eyes more.

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The stingy eyes that Kaguya loves

Kaguya Sama Season 2 Episode 5, has Shirogane won the elections already?

In Kaguya Sama: Love is War Season 2 Episode 4, we got a glimpse of Miko Iino’s flyers that she was distributing to the students. Look no further than Miko’s campaign promise to know why Shirogane has an upper hand in the upcoming elections. Here’s the message that she was proudly distributing through her flyers.

Campaign Promise:

I, Miko Iiino, pledge to enforce the following rules to maintain a wholesome and healthy student body and to make Shuchiin a better place.


Boys: Shaved heads; Girls: Pigtails or braids –

Skirt length must be four inches below the knee. Useless accessories will be prohibited.

No cell phones at school.

Your belongings will be inspected once a week.
Students of the opposite sex will be prohibited from getting closer than 20 inches of each other.

If this were the flyer regarding a coronavirus pandemic, at least the last line would have been justified. For high school students, there’s no way they are going to find this acceptable.

In the subbed version, the content on hey flyer was not translated. This means that fans who only watched the anime completely missed understanding what type of a character Miko is. This also explains why Ishigami remained unfazed even after Miko gave that lengthy speech about ideals to Shirogane.  

Now let’s take a look at Shirogane’s campaign promise, which Chika Fujiwara had created unbeknownst to him (and Aniplex failed to translate this too!!)

Miyuki Shirogane’s 3 Steps as President


We are with the students
The door to the student council room is always open. Please come talk to us at any time. We want to create an environment where we are together with the student body.


For a better school life
Our student council puts the needs of the students first. We believe that what is important is not being bound by rules, but being able to express your freedom and grow as people.


Reformation we can only do in a second term
For the first time in ten years, we are running for election for two consecutive years. Utilizing the experience gained from last year, we promise here to declare a fundamental reform for all students at Shuchi’in High.

There are no points for guessing which promise will be endearing to the highschool students (Chika has her career path set, she will be a politician). They are definitely going to be turned off by Miko’s flyer and would end up choosing Shirogane as their president. However, the problem here is that Miko does not realise her mistake, and she is throwing her weight behind her campaign promises. Being the daughter of a Supreme court Judge, ideals and strong morals have been instilled into her from a very young age. However, there is no way she could win a high school student council election by sprouting these ideals.

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Miko Iino refuses to give up one her ideals

It also speaks volumes about the type of person she really is, by the book and serious to a fault. Her ideals and attitude were on display again as she turned down Kaguya’s sweet offer of helping her being the student council president next year if she withdrew from the current race ( from a neutral point of view, the offer was damn good). 

Though Kaguya was taken aback and scared by the kind of ideals that Miko spewed at her (also totally thrown off balance, thanks to all the comparisons that Miko made between Kaguya and Miyuki), making an enemy out of her certainly does not bode well for Miko.

While her talks about  making Suchi’in High School great again might be justified, the way which she chooses to do it and the kind of changes she envisions for the school are certainly something which won’t be accepted by the students. That said, considering how Kaguya Sama: Love is War has taken time to develop the character arcs of even the side characters we are sure that the reason why Miko acts like this will be revealed soon to us. That will definitely help us connect more with her.

But then, the funniest part is that the straight as an arrow Miko Iino has chosen none other than the queen of chaos Chika Fujiwara as her vice president. This is probably what scared Kaguya the most about Miko. Well, while we have made our views clear, we shall wait for the elections and the verdicts that will come out in the coming episodes to see if we got it right. 

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Chika is the human incarnate of chaos

Also, an interaction between Ishigami and Miko is much needed, just for the laughs.

Note: We sincerely thank the Kaguya Sama episode discussion forums in Reddit (this and this) for putting out the english translations of the campaign promises and helping us understand the episodes better!

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