Characters / Kaguya-sama: Love Is War - Miyuki Shirogane

Kaguya-sama: Love Is War Main Character Index
High School Student Council (Kaguya Shinomiya | Miyuki Shirogane | Chika Fujiwara | Yu Ishigami | Miko Iino)
Second-Years | Family Members

Character sub-page for Miyuki Shirogane.

Miyuki Shirogane

Voiced by: Makoto Furukawa (Japanese), Aaron Dismuke (English seasons 1-2, season 3 blu-ray redub), Clifford Chapin (English season 3), Enzo Fortuny (Latin American Spanish), Rodolfo Novaes (Brazilian Portuguese)
Played by: Sho Hirano (live-action movie)

Debut: Chapter 1 (Manga), Episode 1 (Anime)

The president of the Shuchi'in Student Council. Despite being of common birth, he is held in high regard as a "genius among geniuses" with unparalleled wisdom and intellect, and holding the top scores throughout the entire country. He is engaged in a long Battle of Wits with Kaguya to make the other confess their love.

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A-F

• Above the Influence:
  • Hayasaka tries to tempt him into doing things to Kaguya when he comes to visit, pointing out that she wouldn't remember any of it due to her fever, the two of them would be left alone for three hours, and that the walls are soundproof. He manages to avoid giving in to temptation, though he says that it took every ounce of his willpower. Perhaps more importantly given the nature of their relationship, however, is that he also resisted the temptation to ask how she really felt about him or about any of her weaknesses. Humorously, Kaguya found it insulting that he pretty much left her alone while in his care.
  • Even when they tried to have their first time, Shirogane stopped himself when he realized something was bothering Kaguya, not wanting to continue if she was uneasy about it. They only resume when Kaguya gives her consent and kisses him.
• Accidental Truth: In chapter 6, Tsubasa mentions to Shirogane that the girls in his class made fun of him for not having a girlfriend. Shirogane then mentions that the girls probably all really liked him, and spouts out several hidden meanings behind their jeers and that they secretly all like him. It's all bullshit he made up on the spot to seem like an experienced ladies-man, but one of the girls he brings up says "That's hilarious" at Tsubasa, with the hidden meaning being "(I'm so glad he's free)". This particular girl turned out to be none other than Maki Shijo, who did secretly like Tsubasa. She can be seen later that chapter when Tsubasa asks Kashiwagi out, and she's devastated.
• The Ace: Considered to be this along with Kaguya, and he genuinely is accomplished in a wide variety of fields. It's all the more impressive because later chapters make it clear that he has little to no natural talent - his accomplishments are solely the result of his Determinator nature.
• Achievements in Ignorance:
  • He's able to No-Sell Betsy's attempts to Break Him By Talking due to the simple fact that he doesn't speak French.
  • In chapter 56, he doesn't notice any of Kaguya's attempts to make him squirm due to his excitement over watching the moon, which causes her to squirm instead.
• Adaptational Skill: Inverted. In the manga, he starts learning how to speak French after suffering from the embarrassment of being the only one at the exchange party who couldn't. The anime skipped over the chapter showing this, so he presumably never did so.
• Affectionate Nickname: Even after his first term ended and he stopped running for president after graduating, nearly everyone still refers to him as president either as a habit or a sort of nickname. Even his girlfriend, Kaguya, still refers to him as president.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: He is willing to beg Ishigami not to leave the student council in the latter's introductory chapter, saying they'd go broke without him.
  • The same can be applied to Fujiwara, at times, begging her to train him to become really good at an activity that normal people shouldn't have an issue with. Fujiwara's personality means that she is almost always unable to refuse or leave him alone when he's struggling.
• Always Someone Better:
  • He's this academically to Kaguya. What makes it even more poignant is that academics is the only subject that Kaguya uses 100% of her abilities on.
  • For him, there's Maki's twin brother Mikado, who was the only one to defeat him on the last national mock exams.
  • A Played for Laughs version happens when Ishigami wants to brag after getting a decent number of Valentine's Day chocolates in Chapter 195, only to see Shirogane has a pile of chocolates.
• Animal Motifs:
  • Dogs, as befitting the Female Feline, Male Mutt dynamic he has with Kaguya. He has a tireless work ethic and is kind to all those he comes across.
  • His Suckiness Is Painful moments are usually compared to sea cucumbers.
  • He has an affinity for penguins, as he has a penguin plushie and often visits the penguin exhibit at the local aquarium.
• Animals Hate Him: The Abe family's pet cat can't stand him, most likely because of his doglike demeanor.
• Armor-Piercing Question: After watching Iino silently watch Ishigami and Tsubame have fun together, he asks her point-blank if she loves him. Despite trying to deny otherwise, her tears afterward make her true feelings clear.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Shirogane boasts that he has the top scores in the entire country, passed very high-level tests, is a certified hazardous material engineer...and is an appraiser of chickens. Even the illustrations show this, with various professional certificates drawn along a cartoon-style chicken.
• Ascended Extra: Ootomo no Miyuki (his counterpart in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) was just one of Kaguya-hime's five suitors. Here, he is her only love interest and the deuteragonist.
• Batman Gambit: In order to make sure that Fujiwara wouldn't interfere with his plan to confess to Kaguya, he makes up a whole Phantom Thief plot with meaningless clues left behind, knowing that her love of riddles would keep her distracted until she solved it. He also placed Iino in charge of the food stalls at the event for the same reason, well aware of her incredibly large appetite.
• Beautiful All Along: Played with. Shirogane is already a fairly handsome young man, but most of the students find him intimidating due to his Exhausted Eye Bags giving him a constant Death Glare. When he finally gets a good night's sleep after his term as president is over, the rest of the students suddenly find him a lot easier to approach, but Kaguya ends up less attracted to him due to him no longer conforming to her fetish, seeing as she associates his eyes to how he often looks at her and his true self as a hard worker. In fact, when Shirogane shows up sporting the heaviest eye bags he ever had at that point, Kaguya looked just one trigger away from squirting herself.
• Becoming the Mask: Invoked. As he tells Hayasaka in chapter 108, he does pretend to be good at things he's actually bad at, but he's still working hard to make that ideal version of himself a reality.
• Beneath the Mask: Shirogane likes to put up the front that he's an intelligent, stoic, and all-around perfect person but as the series has shown he's actually quite awkward, shy, and unskilled beneath it all. Chapter 147 shows that he hides a huge inferiority complex because of his mother's abandonment. Even his current popularity has only furthered his complex as he feels everyone around him only likes the ideal version of himself he presents instead of who he really is.
• Berserk Button:
  • He can't help but get riled up whenever he imagines Kaguya saying "how cute" to him in a condescending way. Ends up becoming a Verbal Weakness when she actually says it for real (in a completely genuine manner).
  • Calling him lazy annoys him as well, which makes sense considering how much of a hard worker he is.
  • Chapter 264 reveals that calling him "Miyuki-chan" was by far his biggest Berserk Button. This is because "Miyuki" is usually a female name (although the kanji used in his makes it a masculine one) and kids in elementary school always attached a feminine "-chan" to it whenever they wanted to make fun of him—that is until he put a hard stop to it by beating the crap out of anyone who called like that. Not even his sister Kei, who usually has no trouble hurling insults at him, dares to push this particular button since the day she saw her normally calm brother flip out and beat another kid until he was kicking him on the ground. In the present day, he doesn't have much of a problem if a close-enough friend or his girlfriend calls him "Miyuki-chan", except when Fujiwara does it because he knows she's just making fun of him.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Non-action example; Kaguya learns the hard way that flirting with Shirogane in the middle of his work is a big mistake as he returned the favor threefold in Chapter 175.
• Big Brother Instinct: Chapter 83 reveals that he's overprotective about Kei due to their mom leaving. Kei finds this annoying and rants to her friends about how bossy he is, telling her not to wear anything too revealing and such.
• Bigotry Exception: Invoked. Shirogane and Fujiwara state that in spite of his excellence as president and his academic acumen, at the moment elections occur, there's always a portion of the student body at Shuchi'in who resents him for being part of the lower class.
• The Blind Leading the Blind: A series of chapters has Shirogane giving relationship advice to Tsubasa despite him not having any previous experience.
• Blind Without 'Em: Shirogane's character profile in the first volume mentions how his glare is partially the result of him being nearsighted. It isn't until Chapter 237 that he and the audience find out just how myopic he is, and Hayasaka spends most of the chapter trying to convince him to either start wearing glasses or contacts. He settled on contacts.
• Blunt "Yes": In Chapter 182, after Hayasaka tells him about spying on Kaguya and having lied to him since they first met. Despite this, he is still willing to help her.
  Hayasaka: Have I let you down?
  Shirogane: Of course you have. To be honest, I'm really angry.
• Book Smart: He is not a multi-talented genius like his Love Interest, Kaguya, but he makes up for his lack of prestige with his academic achievements, earning the best grades among the entire student body during exams, and is consistently placed as the top-scorer in the national mock exams—save for one time where he got beaten by Mikado Shijo. However, the series later acknowledges that he's probably not naturally that intelligent (being likely less bright than his younger sister Kei), and when he allows himself to slack off a little after getting together with Kaguya, his ranking drops to the 12th place.
• Boyfriend Bluff: Downplayed in Chapter 93. While he isn't claiming to be her boyfriend (given that it's happening at a mixer), he helps Hayasaka get away from a rather pushy guy by pretending to take her to get a drink.
• Broken Ace: On the outside, he seems to be an unflappable genius in every field, but in truth, he's hilariously incompetent at sports, rapping, dancing, languages, and just about any other skill (other than playing all sorts of children's skill toys) not related to academics. And most of the time he's thrust into complicated situations, he survives by winging it while seeming calm. Deep down inside he is highly insecure and stressed out over his responsibilities and having to maintain his image.
• Brown Note: His rapping is enough to knock out Fujiwara and Hayasaka.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Or rather, will not. The entire premise revolves around Kaguya and Shirogane forcing the other to be the one to confess. His reasoning being that someone of Kaguya's high class and talents would not be interested in someone who is not that talented and figuring the only way to get together with Kaguya is for her to confess her feelings first.
• Cerebus Retcon: His obsession with studying becomes a lot more depressing after it's revealed that his mother abandoned him when he didn't excel in his studies.
• Character Development:
  • Shirogane always tried his hardest to keep up a good appearance and not show any weaknesses because his mother abandoned him and believed Kaguya would not like the real him. But starting a relationship with Kaguya and the aid of Fujiwara allows him to relax a bit to the point his grade drops a little by his own admission. This leads to him opening up about his weaknesses as the series goes on, letting his classroom know that he isn't good at balloon animals' artwork and does not mind their pity. During a batting cage outing, Shirogane, while hesitant, shows his friends that he isn't the best at batting, but tried to pay no mind to light teasing.
  • After finding his own group of guy friends, Shirogane finally admits he has no experience with women, Kaguya notwithstanding.
  • Even though it was Hell for Fujiwara, Shirogane begins to learn basic things much quicker and less painfully by taking what Fujiwara taught him to good use. He is able to pick up ballroom dancing and baseball batting form faster than it would take three days to volleyball when he started.
• The Chessmaster: While he is a master at playing Xanatos Speed Chess, Shirogane is perfectly capable of setting up intricate plans ahead of time. He just rarely does because he can't really compete with Kaguya in that regard. That said, he manipulates the entire cast for weeks in the lead up to and during the culture festival all to pull off the perfect Grand Romantic Gesture for Kaguya and executes it flawlessly.
• Chick Magnet: Shirogane is very popular with girls. Sadly the girls he attracts are rather unstable (most notably, Kaguya, Karen, and Moeha).
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: Despite his Single-Target Sexuality to Kaguya, he has yet to realize that Karen and Moeha also have a thing for him. Chapter 194 has Iino revealing that he has a few admirers who would've been happy to give him Valentines chocolates, but they gave up after seeing him with Kaguya.
• Complexity Addiction: The entire premise of his relationship with Kaguya (and the reason why they are so good for each other) is because they both are covertly trying to force each other to confess their feelings first, when everybody, including the both of them, can tell they are a good couple. Even the tiniest gestures like sharing an umbrella need to be a twelve-step scheme between the two of them, which all turns out to be for naught when people like Fujiwara break their plans by offering her own spare umbrella.
• Composite Character: Shirogane is seemingly based on Otomo no Miyuki and some traits of the Emperor (minus Mikado) from The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Like Otomo no Miyuki, he longs for the heart of Kaguya and has a fear of water. But unlike his story counterpart, Shirogane manages to overcome the “dragon trial” and win Kaguya's heart.
  • Regarding the Emperor, Shirogane faces the storyline where Kaguya had to be taken back to her home by her family. But unlike the Emperor, who rejected Kaguya-Hime's gift of immortality, Shirogane took the gift of one billion yen to fund his mission to save Kaguya and, unlike the other two, succeeded.
• The Confidant: He acts as one to Tsubasa, encouraging him to court Kashiwagi and later giving relationship advice. Once Tsubasa no longer needs any advice, Maki comes to the student council and cries her heart out to Shirogane and Ishigami.
• Coordinated Clothes: After becoming a couple with Kaguya, he got himself and her a special crescent moon necklace for her birthday to "share their time together."
• Cosmic Motifs: Shirogane is a follower of astrology and dreamed of becoming an astronomer when he was younger, so he tends to have a close association with stars and uses them as profile pictures. This also ties into his relationship with the moon-themed Kaguya, since the moon is always accompanied by stars.
• Counting Sheep: Parodied in Chapter 143 where the sheep turn into coffins. ^note "Hitsuji" means sheep and "Hitsugi" means coffin in Japanese.
• Covert Pervert: Shirogane shows quite an interest in "nude pictures with visible pubic hairs". One time, he also almost flubbed and revealed to Kaguya that he would like to see her wearing black underwear. Not to mention his desire for wet hair, especially on Kaguya. After having their first time, it hinted that Shirogane invites Kaguya over when his family are out.
• Crazy Jealous Guy:
  • He thought about using his presidential powers to prevent Kaguya from receiving a love confession from another boy, especially when she suggests she might actually accept it. There are also moments where he is jealous of Ishigami spending time with Kaguya and being treated differently. However, he never acted out on these impulses unless severely provoked, unlike Kaguya, who regularly did so for even minor slights.
  • While he has better control of his jealousy than his girlfriend, Shirogane still hates the idea of other guys looking at Kaguya with lust. Even sharing Kaguya with Fujiwara and Kei seems out of the question for him (granted, he only has a few months left before moving, and Kei was getting in between the two the whole night on purpose.)
• Crippling Overspecialization: If he wants to be able to compete in anything with Kaguya, he has to put all his efforts into just one field rather than her well-rounded portfolio. Doing that, he manages to score just a hair better than her on tests, but at the cost of being completely hopeless at anything else. Fujiwara helps him hide his shortcomings, which are numerous.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: An inversion. Shirogane is extremely intelligent and certainly doesn't lack physical ability. However, when he fails at something (IE-volleyball, singing, traditional Japanese folk dancing) he does so in ways that defy logic and leave Fujiwara traumatized.
• Cruel to Be Kind: He insults Iino's policies while she's frozen with stage fright during the 68th Student Council Elections, getting her worked up enough to focus on something other than the crowd and get her points across.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: Gender inverted and only for sport. He's so bad at sports that when trying to serve a volleyball he hits himself in the back of the head causing his face to hit the volleyball.
• Death Glare: Most students in Shuchi'in won't talk back to Shirogane because a combination of nearsightedness and Exhausted Eye Bags gives him this expression by default. He is very self-conscious about this, even if Kaguya finds it a point of attraction.
• Determinator: When he sets his mind to it, he'll stop at nothing to succeed. Case in point; at the start of his freshman year he was at the very bottom of the social food chain and only got into Shuchi'in because he was on the wait list after nearly failing the entrance exams. Jump forward to the following year's culture festival, he's the two-time Student Council President, the number one-ranked student in his class, and has gotten one of the most popular girls in the school hopelessly in love with him.
• Distracted by the Sexy: He suspended all student council activities before the second-semester exams because being in the same room as Kaguya made it difficult for him to focus on studying.
• Ditzy Genius: He's amazing at thinking logically and studying, yet he's also completely inept when it comes to singing and sports.
• Dogged Nice Guy: This was his initial approach back when he first fell in love with Kaguya, to little success. He only started to catch her attention when Momo suggested that he pretend to be more confident, eventually leading to the Duel of Seduction seen at the beginning of the series.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Shirogane is a Supreme Chef in his own right, but during a cooking contest between him, Ishigami, and Kaguya, he wins because Fujiwara can tell that the dish he made was created by someone who didn't have much money, so she takes pity on him and lets him win. He is not happy about this at all.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: He hears from Hayasaka that Kaguya is back in Ice Queen Mode because she's trying to be more honest and show him her weaknesses and bad sides on top of her good side in an effort to make their relationship more honest. When it's suggested that he needs to do the same and stop working himself to death, he instead doubles down on his unhealthy lifestyle, brushing off Kaguya's opinion because he feels she doesn't understand what it's like to be a normal person. This is exactly the attitude that alienated Kaguya from her peers years ago, and he only realizes this when Kaguya herself told him to his face.
• The Dreaded: For Fujiwara every time he wants to learn something in secret. Fujiwara absolutely dreads each instance for two reasons: first, Shirogane is a grating and needy student who is equally terrible at handling constructive criticism; and second, he is so awfully bad at first that Fujiwara cannot bear not to help him. On top of that, because they do it in secret, she cannot reap the merits she deserves for his accomplishments, and even worse, third parties always think that it's effortless from him when in reality, he received massive heaps of help from Fujiwara.
• Dreadful Musician: He's aware he's bad at singing, but not of how terrible it is. He thinks he's only a little tone-deaf, but in actuality, his singing is enough to make Fujiwara scream for help. But as bad as his singing is, his rapping is even worse. How bad? Upon hearing it the first time, Kei called Fujiwara and begged her to choke the life out of her brother, while Hayasaka was left so traumatized she couldn't do anything but give a Thousand-Yard Stare while shivering. He luckily improved with the help of Fujiwara.
• Dudley Do-Right Stops to Help: In the debate with Iino, Shirogane is already at a massive advantage, and when Iino's turn to give a speech comes, she's frozen with stage fright due to the hostile crowd. This would have been the final nail in her coffin, but Shirogane gets on stage and insults her policies. Iino snaps out of her Heroic BSoD and debates with Shirogane, doing well enough that she almost wins the election. The more pragmatic Kaguya is rather annoyed with Shirogane, having hoped that Iino would have "self-destructed" without his intervention. However, she also loves that part of him as evidenced by the hearts in her eyes.
• Dumbass Has a Point: The fact that he forces himself to be the perfect student under the belief that Kaguya wouldn't love him otherwise is presented as being unhealthy, but he's right. While Kaguya may have fallen in love with his true personality, she didn't even acknowledge his presence until after he starts following Momo's advice to act more confident than he actually is.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: If Chapter 276 isn't a dream, Shirogane grew up to restart his father's company and manages to marry Kaguya, with her adopting his last name.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Most characters usually refer to him simply as "President". After his term as president ends, it's revealed that Ishigami and Fujiwara are both on a First-Name Basis with him, though Kaguya can't bring herself to call him anything other than "President" (in fact, the main reason why she asks him to run for a second term is so she has an excuse to avoid calling him by name). The final chapter still has everyone calling him this despite him having already left for Stanford several months prior (something that Iino expresses minor annoyance over since she's the current president). This is averted in the English translation, where everyone is instead on a Last-Name Basis with him.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: His hair is significantly messier in the present compared to flashbacks. It's bedhead that he doesn't have the time to fix in the morning since he gets so little sleep due to his increased workload.
• Face of a Thug: Downplayed. His Exhausted Eye Bags give him a constant Death Glare and most of the students find him intimidating, but pretty much everyone already knows that he's a Nice Guy. When his first term as Student Council President ends, he's allowed to get more sleep, giving him wider, brighter eyes that make him more approachable... except Kaguya, who actually finds him less attractive without his sharp gaze.
• A Father to His Men: Or rather, to his fellow student council members. In chapter 20, the council successfully prepares a banquet meeting with Shuchi'in's sister school in Paris. Afterward, Shirogane insists to the school principal that they are given more than just three days in advance, so he can avoid placing such a burden on his fellow council members.
• Fetish:
  • He has a thing for seeing women (specifically Kaguya) with wet hair since it reminds him of the moment he fell in love with her (rescuing the Mass Media club president from drowning).
  • When Hayasaka tests out different disguises/identities with him, she points out that he gets more flustered and aroused by scenarios that fulfill his control fantasies than overtly sexual or suggestive ones. Specifically maid and cat ears.
• First Friend: He's the first person to befriend Mikado when he transfers into Shuchi'in (in spite of all the hatred he had festered towards him before they met).
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble: The realist. He's the most grounded and well-balanced member of the council overall.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Eclectic: exhibits both extroverted and introverted traits, is kind and gentle yet confident and ambitious, and has good leader qualities.
• The Friends Who Never Hang:
  • When Shirogane realizes he hasn't really developed a relationship with Iino due to the many misunderstandings early on souring her good image of him, as well as his fear that she would hate him like she does Ishigami, he works to avert this. This begins to change, if a little, when Iino revealed she knew about him dating Kaguya and the two talk at times about their love life.
  • He and Kashiwagi have been classmates for at least two years and there is a fair amount of overlap between their friend groups (Kaguya, Tsubasa, Maki), yet the number of times the two of them have directly interacted can be counted on one hand. Unsurprisingly, she isn't among the group that comes to see him off at the airport when he leaves for Stanford.
• Friend to All Children: Implied. He's never actually shown interacting with any children during the course of the series, though the fact that he wants nine kids of his own implies that he enjoys being with them. One recurring A.U. in the Official Doujin also shows him to be quite adept as a kindergarten teacher.
• Frozen Face: He is very good at hiding his emotions behind a stoic face.

G-R

• Gender-Blender Name: Miyuki is normally a girl's name. However, the kanji used is masculine. He's a bit sensitive about being teased for it, or even having a feminine honorific attached to it.
• Generation Xerox: As Papa Shirogane describes, his first encounter with his wife was very similar to his son's, both aiming for women with higher standards and pushing themselves to the limit to win their love. This paints Shirogane's vigorous studying efforts and attempts to look perfect in front of Kaguya in a different light, as he is probably well aware of the circumstances that befell his parents.
• Gentleman and a Scholar: Parodied. His fellow students consider him an expert in a variety of subjects, unbeknownst that he's only good at studying. What he is indeed is a tremendously lucky master of winging it with a poker face, so whatever counsel he dispenses sounds like an expert opinion. However, he is truly a gentleman, which is one of his many virtues.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: He does this twice for Ishigami, as shown in Chapters 89 and 90. Flashbacks show Shirogane was the one that motivated Ishigami to come back to high school, by telling him that his efforts weren't in vain, that he was in the right, and that the apology he is supposed to write should be a Shut Up, Hannibal!. Shirogane also gets Ishigami out of his slump again during the sports festival after Otomo appeared.
• Giftedly Bad: He is disgustingly bad at just about everything that isn't related to studying. The first time we see him trying to spike a volleyball he hits the back of his own head causing his face to smack onto the ball instead. When he sings, he traumatizes Fujiwara and himself.
• Grade Skipper: He was accepted into Stanford a year early, which ends up putting significant pressure on both him and Kaguya to finally confess.
• Guile Hero: He's very cunning and intelligent, and is always prepared.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Admittedly, his blonde hair is only the result of artistic license, but it does match his kindhearted nature.
• Happily Married: According to Oshi no Ko and Chapter 276's Flash Forward, sometime in the near future, Shirogane and Kaguya get married with the latter adopting his surname. And based on what's shown, they seem to be happy together.
• Hard Work Hardly Works: Averted or subverted, depending on how one looks at it. In Shirogane's own estimation, he has zero natural talent, and the only reason he holds the #1 spot in academics is because of the constant effort put into studying. It's been shown that he's from below average to downright atrocious when it comes to some mundane activities, including ones that any other individual wouldn't have had trouble performing reasonably well at without prior training (aside from, weirdly enough, playing with children's skill toys). It also takes a tremendous amount of work, along with a skilled instructor, to bring his skills in those areas to about normal level. On the other hand, he is quick-witted and can come up with plans on the spot, holds multiple national certifications in different fields, manages to keep in balance his domestic routine, three part-time jobs and rather demanding studying sessions at the same time, eventually gets accepted into extremely selective Stanford University (at an accelerated rate at that), and most importantly, always succeeds exponentially in self-improvement (becoming average at something may not sound extraordinary, but when you start below figurative "zero", it's a whole other story). All of that suggests he might be a very special human being.
• Heavy Sleeper: To compensate for how little sleep he gets on weekdays, he completely shuts down on weekends. This is problematic when he's in a deep slumber as Kaguya comes to visit.
• Heroic RRoD:He ends up collapsing in Chapter 145 after going five days getting even less sleep than usual on top of the additional stress of Kaguya (Ice)'s constant mixed messages. Fortunately, it just takes a single night of proper rest to get him back to normal.
• Here We Go Again!: After everyone graduated, a new love is war game has set, with Shirogane wanting to be a big-time success to the Shinomiya family before proposing to Kaguya with the latter wanting him to propose as soon as possible.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He is a very sweet and selfless person in spite of his menacing looks and proud attitude.
  • He loves freestyle rap, but predictably, he's awful at it. At first anyway.
  • In spite of his normally piss-poor hand-eye coordination, he's actually fantastic at juggling (thanks to his grandmother), and playing with tops, kendama (Japanese cup and ball toy), and yo-yos.
  • During a psychology test, Shirogane revealed he would like to one day have nine kids.
  • He's very knowledgeable about stars as he wanted to be an astronomer when he was younger before settling on reviving his father’s dead company.
• High-Pressure Emotion:
  • Steam starts coming off of his head when he reads through the calendar of a stationary set that Kaguya gave him for Christmas and sees that it's filled with notes for all the days that she wants to spend with him now that they've had their Relationship Upgrade.
  • Parodied at the end of season 3 in the anime. While there isn't any steam coming off of him, a shot of a boiling tea kettle is shown when he's trying to process Kaguya french kissing him.
• High-School Sweethearts: Taking into acount what Oshi no Ko and Chapter 276 show, Shirogane and Kaguya remained together even after high school and eventually got married.
• Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Hilariously enough, his singing voice landed a Non-Lethal K.O. on Fujiwara and Hayasaka (under her identity as female Herthaka), with the latter even comparing it to the guts of a sea cucumber. This was later subverted after taking singing and later rapping lessons from Fujiwara.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: Downplayed, but like any guy his age, Shirogane is very interested but controls himself for the public. When he begins to date Kaguya, he keeps the relationship slow, but when Chapter 216 occurs, Shirogane states that he would like to have his first time. Around Chapter 220, when doing the deed, Shirogane did manage to control himself when he realized Kaguya wasn't feeling comfortable. Comes Chapter 236, the two could not help but get in each other's bed the moment Kei left them alone.
• Humble Hero: Subverted and Played for Laughs.
  • Whenever the exam results are out and he gets first again, beating Kaguya, he tries to play it off modestly (and so does Kaguya), but when alone he is actually shadowboxing out of happiness.
  • When he's shown to have a commanding lead in the student council elections, he advises Fujiwara and Ishigami not to take the polls too seriously and to stay vigilant...while he mentally cheers about how he's got it in the bag and wonders how it's possible for one man to be so popular.
  • During the Kyoto class trip, he notices Hayasaka's Quiet Cry for Help and resolves to help her, but his attempt to do so ends up making it worse, as Kaguya's brother manages to track them down. When Kaguya later thanks him in Chapter 187 for helping Hayasaka, he tells her to Think Nothing of It, with the narrator saying that it really was "absolutely nothing". The way he says it makes it look like he is just humble about it when it really is just him making a Blasé Boast and going along with what Kaguya thinks.
• Hypocrite: Despite disagreeing with Hayasaka's belief that people cannot be loved for who they truly are, he believes that Kaguya only loves the persona he put up and wouldn't love the "real him". Played With in that he's well aware of the hypocrisy and believes in struggling to become his ideal self.
• Imagine Spot: A Running Gag of the series is Shirogane envisioning Kaguya looking down upon him with a sarcastic smile and muttering "How Cute." The one time she did make the face, she was actually being sincere, but was attempting to maintain a stoic expression in place of a wide smile, resulting in the aforementioned sarcastic smile. And the only time she said those exact words, they were entirely genuine and she was delirious from a fever.
• Impossibly Tacky Clothes:
  • We see that Shirogane's fashion sense is just as bad as everything else when Kei gets a look at his wardrobe outside of his school uniform. Kei directly compares his clothes to a middle school student due to how edgy and ridiculous it looks. Shirogane's justification is that his clothes are from middle school and he hasn't bought clothes since moving to high school to save money.
  • The narrator has lampshaded several times that while Shirogane graduated from middle school, his fashion sense didn't.
• Indy Ploy: In contrast to Kaguya (who can use her vast wealth to plan for every eventuality), Shirogane often has to rely on his quick wit and comes up with plans on the spot in their Battle of Wits. That said, his Grand Romantic Gesture shows that he's perfectly capable of long term planning if given sufficient time.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: He works as hard as he does as the student council president and the top student in his grade to hide his insecurity over his commoner heritage next to all the richer students. Chapter 147 reveals that his mother leaving the family was the start of all this. Shirogane could feel his mother's interest was slipping with each failure until she finally left with Kei (who did well on her exams). To this day, he always hangs on to the hope that if he did well, she would return.
  Shirogane's Father: So he's the student council president... he seems ill-suited to the role. It looks like he's desperately trying to hide the chinks in his armor.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: Played With; Shirogane's eyes are a bright shade of blue, and his unhealthy sleep schedule leaves him with a borderline-permanent Death Glare with Exhausted Eye Bags to match. However, he is not entirely innocent given his fetishes and pervert habits, and is flat-out revealed to have a Porn Stash. Despite all this, he is genuinely benevolent at his core, and both Kaguya and Moeha find his eyes to be one of his most alluring features.
• Insecure Love Interest: He feels inferior to Kaguya, but wants to stand beside her as an equal. He studies desperately so that he can outdo her in at least one field but is very worried that she'll beat him one day. It's also the very reason he wants to have her confess to him: if he confesses and she ends up rejecting him, he feels that he'll never end up closing the already wide gap between them. His self-esteem was already shot because of his mother abandoning him thus he feels that no one can love him for who he truly is. He only grows out of this after talking with Kaguya and the rest of his friends.
• Interclass Friendship: Any friendship he has with the rest of the Student Council is this by default since he's one of the few working-class students attending a school for the wealthy and famous. Downplayed since his family was used to be wealthy, but had fallen onto hard times from the actions of the Shinomiya Group, leaving Papa Shirogane's company bankrupt and having a crippling debt to pay off. Furthermore, this trope might not apply to him much longer once he goes off to study Business Management at Stanford University, and aiming to take back his father's company.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: He has a couple of unmanly habits for a Japanese boy, such as constantly looking up his horoscopes and being concerned about his physical appearance. Chapter 62 shows he is quite good at sketching and the narrator even states he's in touch with his emotions.
• I Read It for the Articles: Shirogane's excuse in 83.5 for why he's going through a porno magazine on the street.
• Jerkass to One: Mikado is the one person that Shirogane is actually capable of feeling hatred towards due to him being the only person to ever best him in the nation mock exams. This only lasts until they actually meet each other, and their similarities lead the two to become fast friends.
• Journey of Reclamation: While it isn't revealed until very late in the series, pretty much all of his academic plans were shaped by a desire to reclaim his father's pharmaceutical company that was bought out by Kaguya's eldest brother when he was a child. Prior to this point, he had actually been planning on an entirely different career path in astronomy.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Loves cats. Kaguya being cat-like herself may have something to do with it. Ironically, the one cat that is seen interacting with him doesn't seem to like him back.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Because of being the student council president and carrying an aura of manliness, the students all think he's quite the hit with ladies. When Tsubasa asks him for romantic advice, he's forced to bluff his way out of it since he has no romantic experience.
• The Leader: Of the student council. He relies on a combination of charisma and sheer effort to lead by example, inspiring the other student council members to be better people.
• Long-Distance Relationship: He and Kaguya basically have this forced upon them when Kaguya's family makes her withdraw her application to Stanford. They make do with video chatting and her regularly flying over on the weekends to visit him until she can join him at the start of the following school year.
• Love Makes You Dumb: Played for laughs. Although he's a master of keeping his composure regarding Kaguya, when he asks her to come with him to Stanford and she French-kisses him, neither he nor Kaguya can think straight out of shock.
• Lying by Omission: Shirogane states a fact about his love life, which implies a false reality, that the narration calls him out on:
  Shirogane: I've never been turned down in my life!
  Narration: Not a lie, since he's never confessed his love to anyone.
• Messy Hair: His fringe isn't a deliberate choice on his part, it's bed head that he never has the chance to straighten out due to having to rush to school in the morning. Notably, in flashbacks to before he had an increased workload as Student Council President (and the one chapter where he got a good night's sleep), his hair is much neater.
• Missing Mom: His mother ran off about seven years before the story began.
• Mistaken for Gay: Fujiwara is under the impression that there's something romantic going on between him and Hayasaka's butler disguise.
• Morality Pet: Kaguya holds him in the highest regard, and she contains most of her ill-intended side so that she doesn't alienate him. By Shirogane's example, Kaguya has learned that she cannot possibly continue treating her peers as inferior if she expects to be at his side, and she is forever thankful to him for forcing her to bring out the very best of herself where there was only a resentful, unfeeling husk before he showed up.
• Must Have Caffeine: Due to his heavy workload, he drinks a lot of coffee, even keeping his own coffee beans in the student council office. Just a sip of decaf coffee and he falls asleep instantly.
• Never Had a Birthday Party: Downplayed. He mentions during a flashback in Chapter 51 that he hasn't celebrated his birthday in years due to his family's poverty.
• Nice Guy: According to chapter 32, he's incapable of needlessly acting cold to people. He might have quite the pride, even to the point of being slightly arrogant at times, but otherwise, he's genuinely kind-hearted and friendly, cares for the student council, and will do anything to help students who come for help. He's also a lot more honest with himself than Kaguya and thus more willing to throw his pride away to do what he knows is the right thing. Despite his narrow-mindedness - e.g. his considerable difficulty seeing his own faults, much to Fujiwara's chagrin (who always ends up helping him), and correcting them, too, with him ultimately always willing, and always grateful towards her - he's very selfless, virtuous and kind. The fact that he is this to his very core is the main reason Kaguya fell for him in the first place, and continues to grow more in love with him the more he shows kindness.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Played With during the school trip to Kyoto. His efforts to help Hayasaka ended up amounting to nothing, if not making things harder for her and Kaguya. However, he managed to prove to Hayasaka that people were willing to help her without expecting any form of compensation, including him, Fujiwara, and her friends from school, which likely had an important positive effect on her bleak worldview.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy:
  • Invoked. Despite Fujiwara's presence in the student council, which elicits considerable resentment in Kaguya due to Fujiwara's personability, good looks, and nice figure, it's shown that Shirogane has eyes only for Kaguya.
  • Chapter 175 is all about Kaguya trying to get his attention. While her first attempts are more mundane, she eventually sits on his lap, then embraces him, and then kisses his cheek. It does disturb his focus, but he only reciprocates once he's done with work.
  • Ironically averted in earlier chapters, where he suspended all council activities before the exam because being in the same room as Kaguya made concentrating on his studies difficult.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Downplayed. While he doesn't pretend to be stupid, he did feign surprise regarding Ishigami's crush on Tsubame in Chapter 127. In actuality, he had already factored it into his plot to keep everyone out of the way of his Grand Romantic Gensture to Kaguya weeks prior (though he hadn't planned on Ishigami's accidental confession).
• Oblivious to Love: While Shirogane is well aware of his popularity among his female classmates, he never finds out that Moeha has a Precocious Crush on him.
• Official Couple: While the exact moment of their Relationship Upgrade is somewhat hazy (there are arguments to be made for Chapters 136, 151, and 160), he and Kaguya are firmly a couple by the time they get back from winter break in their junior year.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Has one after the elections when he sees the small difference in votes between Iino and himself, realizing he almost sabotaged his own re-election.
  • In Chapter 98 when Maki complains about the fool that taught Tsubasa the Kabedon and how she wants to tear him to pieces, all Shirogane can do is keep silent as he shakes in fear.
• One Head Taller: He's roughly a head taller than Kaguya.
• Oxymoronic Being: Invoked and played for laughs. As he is extremely popular, yet completely inexperienced in love, Shirogane is described as a combination of both:
  (Narrator): Yes, this man was an aberration, possessing both virginity and bottomless self-confidence! A MONSTER VIRGIN!!
• Penny Among Diamonds: He's working class and attending a school for the powerful and wealthy.
• The Perfectionist: He is obsessed with maintaining his perfect student council president image. He takes studying very seriously, and any shortcomings he may have (of which there are a lot) are painstakingly rooted out and overcome. Part of this effort is motivated by his desire to stand as Kaguya's equal and prove that he's good enough for her. The rest is because he was abandoned by his mother as a child when he didn't meet her insanely high standards. While he still maintains some aspects of this attitude by the end of the story, his experience with his friends and getting together with Kaguya has made him more willing to slack a bit, if only for his own sanity.
• Perpetual Frowner: Due to his lack of sleep, nearsightedness, and caffeine dependence, Shirogane always sports intimidating Tsurime Eyes. Should he get a good night's sleep, they turn into Tareme Eyes, making him seem considerably more accessible. However, Kaguya likes him better when he has a glare and bags under his eyes.
• Phrase Catcher: His failure to do things (like his singing or when he brews coffee) usually gets compared to a sea cucumber.
• Piss-Take Rap: Whenever Shirogane attempts to rap, it doesn't end well for those who listen to it. Hell, it's probably so bad that the viewers can't even hear the lyrics. Luckily, Fujiwara helped him to improve, and did so in Chapter 108 (Episode 29 in the anime).
• Porn Stash: Kei reveals that Shirogane has several porn sites bookmarked on his phone, which she uses as leverage to keep him away from Kaguya.
• The Power of Love: Shirogane was originally a nobody, just some poor kid who was lucky enough to be accepted into a prestigious high school because he was on the waitlist. Then he fell in love with Kaguya... Jump forward a year and a half, he's the most popular guy in school, the two-time elected Student Council President, the second highest scoring student in the entire country, and set to graduate a year early so he can attend Stanford University.
• Precocious Crush: Downplayed. During a question about the characters' first loves in a Q&A, the author mentions how he had to feel for a female tutor (specified post-series to be Fujiwara's older sister Toyomi), though the author specifies that it wasn't serious enough to qualify as a crush.
• Promoted to Love Interest: Shirogane is based on one of the five suitors who failed to court Princess Kaguya in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. Here, he's Kaguya's only love interest, having taken the role from the emperor.
• Promoted to Parent: Played with. Because of their mother's abandonment and their father's immaturity and job instability, Shirogane had to take a more significant role at home as the person who brings in cash and who "mothers" Kei. Just as so, he receives the blunt force of Kei's teenage angst and rebellion all on his own.
• Put on a Bus: Subverted when he leaves for Stanford in Chapter 267. While he might no longer be physically present in the story, the fact that video chatting software is so ubiquitous in the modern day means that he's still part of the plot. Unfortunately, Kaguya is so hell-bent on maintaining contact with him during this time that she always calls him during class time, which wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for the seventeen-hour time difference between Japan and California. As a result, Shirogane is always woken up well past midnight and left sleep-deprived due to her constant calls.
• Raging Stiffie: He gets one when Fujiwara presses against him in the Doujin spin-off.
• Real Men Cook: He's been in charge of preparing meals for his family for a long time, and it's good enough that Fujiwara specifically asks for him to prepare her a bento early in the series. When he leaves for Stanford, his father and little sister are stuck eating take out because neither of them know how to cook.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: When two students ask him for help in raising funds on school grounds, he points out the administrative obstacles required to get through. Yet he still decides to help them as best he can, due to seeing their determination and seriousness about it.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: With quite a few, actually.
  • He's the blue to Kaguya's red, befitting their eye colors; Shirogane is generally reactive in his plans regarding Kaguya, tolerant and relaxed towards other students, and can more easily maintain his composure despite his daily stresses. This is a stark contrast to Kaguya, who in addition to being more proactive in their war of love is more vindictive, stringent, and aggressive towards others while having a less effective poker face.
  • Again the blue, though this time to Iino; Shirogane is flexible and generally accepting of other students' viewpoints, and rarely shows any aggression, while Iino is so stubborn and naive that she rarely considers any opinions other than her own, and will regularly attack others either by shouting or through physical means.
  • With Mikado, however, he is the red to the blue; Mikado didn't place academics at the top of his list of priorities and is generally more content with living out his life. Shirogane, however, is so obsessed with his studies that he rarely focuses on anything else, and the top of the academic rankings dominates his life to the point that almost everything he does is centered around that goal.
  • With Ishigami, Hayasaka, Maki, and Fujiwara, he ends up as both at different points.
    • He's typically the red to Ishigami's blue; Shirogane tends to obsess over his academic responsibilities, while Ishigami's past experiences made him so unmotivated that he didn't bother with them until Kaguya prompted him. This dynamic is flipped with their interactions with other couples; Shirogane is generally accepting and supportive of any he comes across, while Ishigami's default reaction is to mock and snark at them.
    • He's also mainly the red to Fujiwara's blue, as academics dominate his life whereas Fujiwara's is motivated by fun. However, with their desires, this turns on it's head, as Shirogane's overwhelming kindness and amicable nature is a stark contrast to Fujiwara's openly selfish and occasionally unpleasant demeanor.
    • Usually, Shirogane's the red to Hayasaka's blue; he's desperate to maintain his standing with Kaguya and is frantic about it, whereas that concern is non-existent for Hayasaka, and she can (mostly) maintain her composure. This ends up inverting towards the end of the story, as Shirogane becomes much calmer and at ease while Hayasaka has become more lax and slightly childish from leaving Kaguya's side as her aide.
    • Shirogane is typically the calm blue to the constantly aggressive and loud Maki, but it's flipped on its head when it comes to Kaguya; while maintaining a relationship with her is at the top of Shirogane's priorities, it doesn't rank as high on Maki's list.
• Room Full of Crazy: Shirogane's study room, while not having stuff written directly on the walls, is covered with "motivational" pieces of paper with things like "everything else is meaningless", "fuck sleep", and "carelessness is the enemy" written on them taped to the walls. Everyone else including his family who sees the room finds it incredibly disturbing, but hilariously, Shirogane himself believes this is completely normal.

S-Y

• Samaritan Relationship Starter: He initially fell in love with Kaguya after seeing her rescue the Mass Media club president from drowning in the beginning of their freshman year because he admired her decisiveness in a situation when everyone else (including him) was frozen with indecision.
• School Uniforms are the New Black: Shirogane wears his uniform even on his days off because it's actually the nicest and most expensive set of clothes he owns due to his family's poverty. Kaguya has lampshaded this, and it isn't until Chapter 119 that he's actually shown wearing casual clothing outside of the house (his sister went and bought him a new outfit because she didn't want him embarrassing her at her culture festival).
• Secret-Keeper: He is the only person outside of the Shinomiya household who is aware of Hayasaka's status as Kaguya's valet.
• Security Blanket: He sleeps while embracing a penguin plushie, which in turn causes him to have a daily bedhead that he seldom has time to fix. This happens to cause the signature look on his bangs.
• Selective Obliviousness: Pretends not to realize that Kashiwagi and Tsubasa's relationship is obviously sexual in nature.
• Self-Serving Memory: Inverted with how he acted during the Fireworks Arc. For Kaguya, it was one of the most romantic moments of her life. For him?
  Narrator: He regretted it so badly he wished he could die!
• Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: The catalyst for Kaguya falling in love with him was realizing that he was exactly as nice and selfless as he presented himself. It's also what kicked off her eventual defrosting.
• Shipper on Deck: Despite initially wanting no part in the shipping war between Iino and Tsubame, when he realizes just how much anguish Iino was in watching Ishigami fall in love with someone else, he takes her side.
• Single Guy Seeks Most Popular Girl: Shirogane, a working-class student and an outsider amongst the Shuchi'in students falls for Kaguya (the popular girl from the Shinomiya group) since the start of his freshman year. His constant scoring first place in tests and getting elected as the Student Council President twice were all done in hopes of being able to stand on an equal footing with her. While Kaguya only took notice of his perfect side, she began falling more and more in love with his true self as the days went by.
• Single-Target Sexuality: He only has eyes for Kaguya and no one else (the only other girl he calls cute is Maki, and that's solely because of her similarities to Kaguya). In fact, when he and Ishigami found a porn magazine lying in the street one day, he was disinterested in the contents until Ishigami told him that one of the girls featured there resembled Kaguya.
• So Proud of You:
  • Beyond his romantic intentions towards her, Shirogane considers Kaguya one of the very best people he's ever met and derives a significant amount of pride from the mere fact that she's his partner and his friend.
  • He drives Fujiwara into Tears of Joy when she saw her efforts to teach him to sing bearing fruit.
• Student Council President: At least of their second year at Shuchi'in. He takes the job so seriously that he refused to take his gakuran and aiguillette off until the end of his term because he wanted to do his job with pride and respect.
• Suckiness Is Painful: His singing approaches Brown Note levels and has been compared to having sea cucumber guts shoved in your ears (by both Hayasaka and Fujiwara). That's not even getting into his rapping, which caused Fujiwara to collapse and start foaming at the mouth.
• Sucks at Dancing:
  • His attempt at the Soran dance was so atrocious that Fujiwara compared it to someone being painfully exorcised to the beat of a drum.
  • Subverted when it comes to ballroom dancing. While he starts off bad at it, it isn't to the "dear god, make it stop" level as all the other things Fujiwara's trained him at and all his experience from their past training sessions causes him to pick it up very quickly.
• Super Drowning Skills: It's mentioned in chapter 7 that he's such a bad swimmer that he could drown in his own bathtub. This ties into his namesake in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, who nearly drowned at sea. It also turns out to be a vital plot point, since Kaguya never would have rescued Shizuku from drowning if he had been able to act first.
• Supreme Chef: Cooking is one of the few skills that Shirogane is good at (although Fujiwara assumes that it's because he probably has years of practice). Fujiwara has nothing but praise for his cooking after she eats some of his lunch in Chapter 5, and she is brought to tears when she eats his fried rice in Chapter 96... but not because it tasted better than Ishigami's rice actually, but rather because he made a dish just as good with cheaper ingredients and she takes pity on his financial situation. He was far from pleased with Fujiwara's reasoning.
• Take a Third Option: Chapter 189 has him being confronted by Kaguya and Fujiwara if he ships Ishigami with Tsubame or Iino. What does Shirogane do? He runs away, not wanting to choose. After seeing the looks of misery on Kaguya and Iino's faces, however, he ends up supporting Iino.
• Teen Genius: Reportedly has the second-highest test scores in all of Japan, and is certified in many professional fields. However, his profile in Volume 1 notes that calling him a natural genius wouldn't be proper due to his intellect being a result of obsessive studying rather than inherent talent.
• Terrible Artist: Subverted. Art is one of the few subjects besides studying that he isn't horrible at. But he's mediocre at it initially.
• There Is Only One Bed: Invoked. Due to his family's monetary constraints, he shares a room and a bed with his sister that is separated by a curtain. After they move to a new apartment, the siblings finally get their own bedrooms, though they are next to each other and the walls are thin enough for Kei to overhear what Shirogane is up to.
• Took a Level in Kindness: As the series goes on, we start to see more and more of Shirogane's personality and less of his ego. As such he comes off as much kinder and relatable compared to how he was at the start of the series.
• Triple Shifter: Shirogane rarely has time to sleep due to having to attend school, study hard enough to keep his position as the number 1 student, do all his duties as Student Council President, and work multiple part-time jobs to support his family. As a result, he has permanent Exhausted Eye Bags and relies on a constant supply of coffee to keep himself from passing out.
• Tsundere:
  • He is just as unwilling to be honest with his feelings of love towards Kaguya as she is towards him, though he is a bit less blatant about it. He has also said the classical "It's not like I like her or something!" tsundere line at some point.
  • He is initially harsh towards Mikado when they first meet, only to start blushing in embarrassment and drop his hostility the instant he says that he admires him.
• Uncatty Resemblance: While they aren't his pet, it's noted that he looks rather similar to Fujiwara's dog Pes.
• Unexpected Virgin: The narration refers to him as a "Monster Virgin". He doesn't tell anyone for fear of Virgin-Shaming. This is no longer the case as of Chapter 220.
• The Un-Favourite: His mother was a relentless Education Mama who ended up favoring Kei due to her doing better on exams, even taking her with her when she abandoned their father. He does not appear to have any form of resentment for his sister, though it is clear he has a very low opinion of his mother, which Kei also shares.
• Unknown Rival: Subverted. Shirogane assumes he's this to Mikado, the one student to beat him in their first mock exams that haven't bothered to take another since. In reality, Mikado only tried hard on the one exam so that his parents would approve of him playing soccer, and admires Shirogane as the better student because he's able to get great scores on every exam he takes. Because of this, the two become friends.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: While he appears gracious about placing above Kaguya in exams, he privately gloats about in the bathroom.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He's the one who convinced Tsubasa Tanuma to ask Nagisa Kashiwagi out. This has left Maki Shijo, who loved him, distressed over her unrequited love for the entire story.
• Urban Legend Love Life: Shirogane has quite the reputation despite having only shown interest in a single person over the course of his life.
  • Tsubasa initially comes to him for love advice for this very reason. The We Want To Talk About Kaguya Spin-Off shows this came to happen due to a series of Out-of-Context Eavesdropping. First, he overheard Karen and Erika talking about how the student council will give you love advice if you ask for it. Then he saw Fujiwara returning a lunchbox to Shirogane as she thanked him for making her lunch. Then he learns about the rumors treating Kaguya and Shirogane as the Official Couple of the school. Finally, he overhears Those Two Guys who hang out with Shirogane talking about how he "already moved onto another one" and how "he never stays with one for long" — they're talking about how Shirogane keeps changing part-time jobs, but Tsubasa assumes he plays the field. Heck, even Shirogane's bad advice to Tsubasa about asking Kashiwagi out with a Wall Pin of Love ended up working out perfectly, which likely only further cemented his image of Shirogane as a love expert.
  • Speaking of We Want To Talk About Kaguya, Despite shipping him mainly with Kaguya, Karen Kino thinks Shirogane is a Launcher of a Thousand Ships and believes the entire student council is his private harem. Yes, that includes Ishigami.
  • During the mixer party in the karaoke place, everybody in there saw him just grabbing the most attractive girl in there — Hayasaka in her "Haysaka" disguise — by the wrist, who silently followed into an empty booth. And that's after hearing from the girl herself how heartbroken she was after he rejected her a while ago.
  • Further reinforced during the school trip to Kyoto, where the guys in class 2-B and the girls in class 2-A get the mistaken idea he's casually going out with Hayasaka and Kaguya after he wandered off with one and then the other, respectively, on consecutive days.
• Villain of Another Story: It's lampshaded in Chapter 65 that Shirogane sounds like the condescending, amoral tyrant to Iino's idealistic, determined underdog. In any other setting, that would be true, but unfortunately this one has no need of a rebel like Iino.
• Virgin-Shaming: Shirogane is scared that he'll lose the respect of the school if they find out he doesn't have any experience. He finally had the guts to tell Tsubasa and Mikado the truth, which they completely understood and didn't judge him.
• Warts and All: After experiencing Kaguya's cold side, Shigorane exclaimed that while he was confused and worried about why she was acting cold, Shigorane would still love her no matter what mood she was in, as he fell in love with the person whose ability was to show kindness without having to act kind. Later chapters would show that the feeling is mutual, though Kaguya had to tell it to his face after he dove back into old habits.
• Weirdness Magnet: It was stated early on that the girls that he attracts are mentally unstable. Considering the three girls that are attracted to him are Kaguya, Karen and Moeha, this is pretty accurate.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: The reason that he constantly pushes himself in academics is because he secretly hopes that his mother will come back for him if he becomes the smart child that she always wanted.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: Kaguya and Moeha list his piercing gaze as one of his most attractive physical features (the other being his nose). When Shirogane finally gets a good night's rest, the student body finds his proper eyes to be very attractive as well bar Ishigami and Fujiwara, who find it creepy, and Kaguya, for the above reason.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Played for Laughs in Chapter 176. Shirogane's attempt at a Motivational Lie to cheer up Ishigami, who is practicing volleyball, backfires and gets him a scolding from Fujiwara, who was standing next to him, because he tried to make himself look better than he really was, and conveniently left out that he had her help.
• What You Are in the Dark: Hayasaka leaves him alone with a feverish Kaguya making it very clear that no one will interrupt them no matter what he does and that Kaguya won't remember any of this tomorrow. He could molest her and get away with it, but of course never really considers it. He could also take advantage of her impaired mental state to 'cheat' in their game of wits by asking her highly personal questions that she would never answer if she was coherent. The only thing he asks is if it's his fault that she's sick^note Technically yes, but only because of her own actions, though she isn't capable of explaining this and touching her lips with one finger even after she drags him into bed herself and falls asleep due to how tired he was.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Shirogane is extremely terrified of insects, enough to prefer going to the beach instead of the mountains (which is significant since he cannot swim). Of course, Chapter 15 has him dealing with a cockroach, accidentally groping Kaguya in the process.
• Worf Had the Flu: His grades dropped significantly to the 12th place in the final test for his second year. While Kashiwagi and Kaguya (initially) thought of this as a case of him losing his interest in her, it's actually a combination of him relaxing his studies a little bit (taking Kaguya's words in Chapter 151 to heart) while preparing for his entrance to Stanford and taking Ishigami's duties as the treasurer.
• Workaholic: Kaguya states he actually enjoys work. The extras show that he spends so much time studying and working that no one knows when he has time to sleep. It got to a point to that when Kaguya tries to flirt with him, Shirogane focuses on his work and ignores her attempts before flirting back to her.
• Worth It: He is physically and mentally exhausted by studying to outdo Kaguya in tests, but he also feels immensely satisfied every time he succeeds. This isn't just his pride: Scoring higher than Kaguya on an exam is what made her notice him for the first time, which was his goal. Keeping ahead of her is how he considers himself to be worthy of her.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: As opposed to Kaguya who can use her affluence to craft intricate plans, Shirogane most often relies on his quick wit to create opportunities to attract Kaguya, and is adept at improvising should his schemes go awry. This pays off for him big time in Chapter 249, as when Seiryu arrives to deliver 10 million yen given to him by Kaguya, he manipulates him into paying him one billion instead, which he immediately puts to use.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Shirogane received this from both Dr. Tanuma and Kaguya.
  • Dr. Tanuma and his nurse comfort Shirogane after he opens up about why he works so hard to keep a perfect image and tells him that he’s fine the way he is, but he needs to take breaks or otherwise it might damage him.
  • Kaguya, after learning about his past from Papa Shirogane and overhearing Dr. Tanuma, assures Shirogane that she loves him whether he's at his weakest or strongest. She also admits that she feels afraid at times too and the chance for them to take breaks together.
• You Are Worth Hell: Fulfilling his claim back in Chapter 56, Shirogane spends the majority of the final arc fending off against the Shinomiya's family and rescuing Kaguya. At the end of Chapter 261, Shirogane vows that he doesn't care if it takes hundreds of years or if she is moved somewhere far away, he will make sure they are together again. He makes good on his words and succeeds in rescuing Kaguya, even if he had help from his friends.
• You Were Trying Too Hard: He always has the most success in getting Kaguya to fall for him when he's more focused on something else, best seen during the stargazing chapter.

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