Two student council officers at Japan's most prestigious academy are hopelessly in love and far too proud to say so. Convinced that confessing first means losing, they turn an ordinary school year into a campaign of psychological warfare — and gradually stop being able to pretend it's only a game.
Plus 1 optional extra.
5 titles · 43 episodes · ~17.5 hours
Release order is the right order here. The three TV seasons run continuously, the 2022 film picks up directly from the third, and the 2025 special comes after that — though the special skips a large stretch of the manga, which is worth knowing before you start it. Everything is on Crunchyroll except the OVA.
Twelve episodes that set up the premise and the cast. Each episode is built from short self-contained bits, so it reads as a gag comedy at first — the longer arcs come later. On Crunchyroll with an English dub.
Continues the same school year and gives the supporting cast, especially Ishigami, room to become more than comic relief. Watch straight after season one.
Thirteen episodes, and the point where the series stops holding back. The comedy stays, but the romance is played straight and the final stretch is the payoff the first two seasons were building toward.
A 100-minute theatrical film from December 2022, picking up immediately after Ultra Romantic. Crunchyroll splits it into four episodes, which is why it can look like a bonus release rather than the main story. English dub added in September 2023.
⚠ Do not skip this. It is a direct continuation of season three, not a side story.
A two-episode television special broadcast on 31 December 2025 and simulcast on Crunchyroll the same day. It looks back on the school years from a point long after graduation. The English dub arrived in August 2026.
⚠ This special jumps over a large amount of manga that was never animated. Characters and relationships are treated as established that anime-only viewers have never seen. It is worth watching, but the gaps are in the special itself, not in your memory.
Three short comedy pieces: two 'Kaguya-sama Darkness' segments that never made it into the collected manga, and an adaptation of chapter 96. Released in Japan on a DVD bundled with the limited edition of manga volume 22.
⚠ No confirmed English streaming or home release. The Japanese disc was a made-to-order limited run.
This is one of the rare franchises where you can simply watch things in the order they came out. The three TV seasons are continuous, and the tone shifts as they go: the first two are built from short comedic segments, while Ultra Romantic lets the romance carry real weight without giving up the jokes.
The First Kiss That Never Ends is where people get tripped up. It was a 100-minute theatrical film in Japan, but Crunchyroll carries it as four episodes, so it looks like a minor side release when it is actually the direct continuation of season three. Do not skip it.
Stairway to Adulthood, the two-episode special from the end of 2025, needs a warning rather than a recommendation. It is set well after graduation and frames the story as Kaguya looking back — which means it jumps over a substantial run of manga that was never animated. Characters appear who mean nothing to an anime-only viewer, and situations are treated as established when you have never seen them established. It is still worth watching, but go in knowing that the gap is real and not something you missed.
The OVA at the end is a bonus disc that came with the twenty-second manga volume in Japan. It is three short comedy pieces with no bearing on the plot, and there is no confirmed English release, so treat it as a completist item rather than part of the run.
Kaguya-sama: Love is War has 4 seasons and 1 other entry in the main run — 43 episodes altogether.
| Title | Type | Episodes | Aired |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kaguya-sama: Love is War | TV Series | 12 episodes | January 2019 |
| Kaguya-sama: Love is War? | TV Series | 12 episodes | April 2020 |
| Kaguya-sama: Love is War -Ultra Romantic- | TV Series | 13 episodes | April 2022 |
| Kaguya-sama: Love is War -The First Kiss That Never Ends- | TV Series | 4 episodes | April 2023 |
| Kaguya-sama: Love Is War -Stairway to Adulthood- | Special | 2 episodes | December 2025 |
| Title | Type | Episodes | Aired |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Tensaitachi no Renai Zunousen OVA | OVA | 1 episode | May 2021 |
5 titles · 43 episodes · ~17.5 hours
Where each part of the anime lines up with the source, so you know where to pick up reading.
Only spin-offs that tie into the main story are listed here — anthologies, fan books and the like are left out.
The manga picks up at chapter 152, which opens volume 16. Note that the anime skipped a number of chapters along the way, so volume 16 is where the story continues rather than where you have read up to. Stairway to Adulthood jumps far past this point, so start at volume 16 regardless of whether you have watched it.
Start with the first season from 2019 and follow release order: season two, then Ultra Romantic, then the film The First Kiss That Never Ends, then the Stairway to Adulthood special. Nothing needs rearranging — this is one of the rare franchises where the obvious order is also the right one.
All three seasons, the film, and the Stairway to Adulthood special are on Crunchyroll. The only exception is the OVA, which was a bonus DVD bundled with a limited edition of the manga in Japan and has no confirmed English release.
Yes, for everything that streams. The three seasons are dubbed, the film's dub arrived in September 2023, and the Stairway to Adulthood dub followed in August 2026. If you start a season and find only subtitles, check that you are not on a region-restricted catalogue.
Both, depending on where you watch it. It ran as a 100-minute film in Japanese theatres in December 2022, and Crunchyroll carries the same material split into four episodes. The split is why people mistake it for a bonus release — it is the direct continuation of season three.
Because you did, and not by any fault of yours. The special is set years after graduation and skips over a substantial run of manga the anime never adapted. Characters turn up and relationships are treated as settled with no on-screen explanation. Watch it, but expect the gap.
After the film, pick up at chapter 152. That is where the animated story stops and the manga carries straight on. If you have also watched Stairway to Adulthood, still start at 152 — the special covers only fragments of what comes after, and reading from there fills in everything it skipped.
Yes. Aka Akasaka's manga ended in November 2022 at 281 chapters across 28 volumes, so there is a complete ending waiting if you want it.
Not a fourth season, but a final film is in production. It was announced on 31 December 2025, immediately after Stairway to Adulthood aired, and Aka Akasaka is writing an entirely new story for it rather than adapting existing chapters. No release date has been announced.
43 episodes: 12 for season one, 12 for season two, 13 for Ultra Romantic, 4 for the film as Crunchyroll splits it, and 2 for Stairway to Adulthood. That comes to roughly 17 and a half hours, with the optional OVA on top.
