Ah, the Isekai. The concept of an average person being reincarnated in another world can be pretty fun, but it seems to sell well in Japan since there are a ton of anime and manga with this concept! And with every popular genre comes a parody of said genre. Konosuba is that parody, and it's pretty darn hilarious.
Konosuba starts out like your standard isekai, a shut-in named Kazuma dies and meets a goddess named Aqua who gives him the chance to travel to an RPG-like world and defeat a Demon King. The twist? Kazuma decides to bring Aqua along with him, and that's only the beginning of this show's subversive plot decisions. The main cast is composed of idiots who constantly belittle each other, no one in the "harem" actually seems to like each other, the characters have to perform manual labor and fetch quests to level up, and the amount of plot armor involved is pretty much zero. So yeah, this show doesn't take its premise seriously, and it results in a lot of great jokes. The writing is funny and the humor is great because it's mostly based on playing off tropes and character interactions, and it makes the anime entertaining even if the story is incredibly basic and pretty much forgotten outside of the first and last episodes. The structure of most of the episodes are also fairly disjointed feeling like more of a sketch comedy, so the anime's quality generally depends on how strong the humor is. Thankfully, as I mentioned before, the humor's pretty great.
But the real highlight about Konosuba is the cast of characters. I already mentioned this, this show's main cast aren't quite the best people. Kazuma is a jerk who insults everyone (especially Aqua) and suffers from having no strengths at all, Aqua is an idiot and a spoiled brat, Megumin is an overdramatic chuunibyou who put all of her stats into an explosion spell, and Darkness is masochistic... like really masochistic... and she has bad aim. But despite their flaws, these characters are incredibly entertaining and oddly lovable, still managing to be an absolute joy to watch whether it's interacting with the world around them or with each other. As much as they bicker and insult each other, there's also a surprisingly wholesome friendship that develops between the main cast. I already mentioned how this show parodies the concept of a harem (one of my least favorite anime tropes by the way), but it also has the unintended consequence of being oddly sweet to watch them just be friends, reluctant friends, but friends nonetheless. The side characters are also pretty enjoyable too, especially the absolutely adorable lich Wiz.
The presentation is also pretty great. The animation isn't necessarily the most fluid or detailed, but it makes up for it in sheer execution. The characters are expressive, the comedic timing of the animation is great, and the visuals are clean and colorful. My only gripe is with the fanservice, but that's more of a me thing. The voice acting is amazing, in both dubs. They both have star-studded casts who fit the roles pretty well. The JP dub has Rie Takahashi's iconic performance as Megumin and Ai Kayano (Menma) as Darkness. Meanwhile, the EN dub has Erica Mendez (Retsuko, Arle, Ryuko) as Megumin, Faye Mata (Astolfo, Petra) as Aqua, Patrick Seitz's (Dio, Scorpion) hysterical performance as Verdia, and one of my favorite voice actors, Cristina Vee (Shantae, Ladybug, Mio, Homura) who absolutely killed it as Darkness. The EN dub is my preferred choice, though, because it has this sort of abridged series vibe that makes the comedy hit that much harder, but they're both really good! The background music is also really good too, it's lighthearted and charming, feeling right out of a Nintendo game like Zelda or a JRPG like Dragon Quest. It gives me a lot of good vibes and is another instance of anime having great background music (seriously, I should write a blogpost about this).
Update: Okay, so after writing this review, I found out that the composer of Konosuba was actually a video game composer that made the music for the first few Monster Hunter games. Well, I guess that explains things then!
While most of the season's episodes are pretty funny, these are the highlights:
Explosion Magic For This Formidable Enemy: The first episode after the main cast was finished being established marked a solid jump in quality. The concept of this episode is one of my favorites. Megumin explodes a dullahan's house over and over again causing him to try to angrily storm the village until the cast annoys him into leaving. It's just as funny as it sounds, made even better by Seitz's amazing performance as Verdia.
A Conclusion To This Worthless Fight: Yay, more dullahan bullying! This episode had a lot of funny moments that utilized the whole cast, but the real highlight was actually Verdia himself, whose constant frustration with the group was just so funny. It was also great to see Aqua actually do something goddess-y for once, even if she flooded the town as a result.
Final Flame For This Over-The-Top Fortress: Despite this anime's general lack of plot, I feel like this finale is climactic and satisfying enough, using pretty much the entire cast in this big final battle against the Destroyer that the season had been subtly building up in the background. Add in some cute character moments, plenty of fun humor, some sweet payoffs, Wiz joining the team, and a goofy cliffhanger and you get probably the best episode of the season.
Overall, Konosuba is a hilarious isekai parody with great characters, top-notch voice acting, great comedic timing, and a charming presentation, even if its story isn't anything amazing.
4/5 Stars
