Note: This will cover the whole franchise up until now, I don’t find much to say for each entry as a whole.
Somehow, KonoSuba stormed the world 8 YEARS AGO through some gifs and shorts as the most hilarious anime ever, and obviously that ended up attracting some haters later on. Personally I think of it as “haha funny” the anime, I don’t remember enjoying the first season much, but every major entry afterwards always got some smiles and chuckles out of me, and for me, that’s all I ask for when watching comedies.
The plot is the typical of a light novel isekai, otaku/geek/neet guy dies, gets transported to a medieval fantasy type of world that conveniently for him functions like an RPG, meets lots of girls which he forms a party and/or friendships with, and battles against a Demon Lord and his army.
The difference is its comical, almost parody kind of a approach to it, the protagonist is the opposite to the shy and kind white knights of the genre that are around since the 2010s, he is a pervert and lives off everyone at his first chance, and doesn’t mind throwing hands at women if he feels the situation calls for. He is a 90s protagonist in an era full of main characters that belong 20 or 30 years in the future. And the best part is how, unlike other worse protagonists in that regard like Rubeus or Meliodas, he always catches shit for that and has to pay for all the shit he does in one way or another, nobody sees Kazuma as a white knight in a shiny armor because he isn’t.
Not that he doesn’t has his good points, as he is also not overpowered and always has to come out with some ridiculous plan and improvise on the fly while making use of the abilities of his much more powerful female companions to get stuff done. Expectedly, things rarely goes their way and he has to do more and different stuff in the middle of the situation they try to fix, usually causing a lot of trouble that does get punished.
The same thing applies to his party, the female characters, which, yeah, are a big part of the reason why the anime is popular in the first place. They are cute and fit a stereotype but also become memorable for being reverse parodies of the roles they are supposed to fit.
-Aqua the goddess and archpriest/mage of the party, probably the most powerful creature in the whole world with a vast amount of different useful spells, and yet instead of the wise and more experienced character, is the dumbest and often useless because of bad compatibility against their enemies, plus she is lazy, an alcoholic, childish, and always waste money.
-Megumin is another wizard with tremendous destructive power in the party and instead of a wise an experienced old man or woman, is a little chuunibyou girl (despite actually having powers) and only focuses on one single spell to master it, that lets her show off in front of everyone and be remembered by them because of that, she becomes completely useless after just one cast of her only spell.
-Lalatina Dustiness Ford, nicknamed Darkness for reasons I can’t pretend I care to remember, a noble knight/paladin that, even though she shows her etiquette in front of other nobles, in reality is everything but classy, she is clumsy and possibly the biggest pervert in the whole show, with masochistic tendencies. She is also the tank of the party and even though she is referred by others as muscular, her design doesn’t reflect that one bit, she looks like just another girl. Plus she is a terrible fighter and that is part of the joke, she is the tank but a terrible fighter and masochistic, you see.
So basically the whole gimmick of the main characters, and by extension the whole show, is that the gang that is supposed to be the promise and hope to save the world from the big bad that threatens everyone, are just a bunch of idiots that constantly fuck up even when they do achieve something, and bounce off each other and thus become lovable for the audience, but would be very irritating to actually have nearby.
Same thing applies to the rest of the characters, the secondary characters friends of the main cast are good at almost everything and lovable, but are otherwise dumb and terrible at very specific things and thus always mess up.
The enemies, generals of the demon army, are there just because they have to but more often than not mean no harm, that’s why they either become friends with the main party after they are defeated, in a fighting shounen-like fashion, or only get on the offense after the good guys attacked them first. Thus once again, the problems happen because of the heroes fucking up.
The extension of the joke is how the world works mostly differently from Kazuma’s expectations of the fantasy worlds and otaku stereotypes he is used to. Typically weak enemies can be very hard to deal with, the strongest creatures attract lots of enemies they are weak against, no one has the personality he expects them to, everyone constantly messes up, and hell, even the most normal person in the world, YunYun, is always lonely because she is normal and not an idiot like everyone else.
And that’s the joke, the show is called something like “Bless this Wonderful World” and yet is nothing like the dreamlike idealized world of the protagonist, but not in an edgy attempt of a dark subversion of the typical fantasy story, but in a comical way.
For those that don’t tolerate lewd stuff, the show is full of ecchi because of the perverted characters, but is often very tame, especially for coming out these days, and said content is usually present because of the protagonist, who always gets shit as a consequence.
The show is not a harem at least in the beginning; no girl really likes Kazuma at first because of how much of a pervert and a dick he can be. And even then, from what I understand, his characterization and the lewd content are far tamer than in the original light novel. I’m actually thankful for that, as those bits are the thing I like the least from this franchise.
Now for the entries in specific:
-The first season is more of an introduction phase as expected, whole episodes are dedicated to introduce the main characters, but there are clear pacing issues as enemies and future friends (Wiz) and secondary characters (YunYun) are introduced out of screen for the sake of rushing through the first major fight, they even needed to reintroduce YunYun properly on a later entry. And even then, there are a bunch of minor missions that could have been omitted in order to introduce those characters properly. Another issue could be the abuse of running gags, such as Aqua getting traumatized for being eaten by frogs on three out of ten episodes.
-The first ova gets a bad rating from me, as it is only an episode of Kazuma being a jerk towards his party and female friends, meaning, it’s just the worst bits of the franchise.
-The second season suffers from having to properly reintroduce the characters that appeared out of nowhere in the first season, and it’s a bit more pervy than the previous one, but it also has a more clear linear plot, beginning right from the end of the first, and can also become a bit more serious and action oriented in its final moments.
-The second ova is about Kazuma wanting to show off and unknowingly being ridiculed by the girls, in my mind is a superior payback for what he did in the first.
-The movie is the best entry in the franchise in my opinion, it can be a bit annoying for its sexual content around Megumin; some will probably be bothered by how it makes light of Kazuma almost being raped; and it is undeniably a bit transphobic, plus the movie takes itself a bit more seriously by prolonging the final fight compared to the original novel. Despite that, it is the one with the most and more linear plot, it is the only one that feels self-contained, and is the most focused on characterization as it fleshes out Megumin and the beginning of the romantic aspect of her and Kazuma. Plus Sylvia is probably the most likeable antagonist in the whole franchise, you feel that she is the victim of a whole village of delusional weirdos attacking her just because instead of the main villain. Plus she cares for her allies and subordinates and is a Disney princess wanting love on the inside, that got played around by Kazuma in a way.
-I suspect because of the movie and while the third season was being produced, a spin off prequel about Megumin came out, and most didn’t like it as much as the main series. Although still a comedy, it had a much lower energy than the main show, the other chuunibyou characters didn’t add the same dynamic bouncing off her as the main cast does, and there are contradictions with the main series. Megumin more like acts as a chuunibyou instead of being one, and she and YunYun are together almost all the time, while in the main series it seemed like they didn’t see each other for a long time. Plus her backdrop was already shown in the movie. Personally I liked it like the rest and didn’t find it bad, but it is the second worst entry just over the first ova.
-The third season that just finished is a middle point between the spin off and the previous seasons of the core series, in my eyes. Unlike the previous ones, it didn’t have any weird timeskips and although primarily a comedy, it had a lot more of a serious and romantic feel to it, and with three girls canonically in love with Kazuma, the series can now be labeled as a harem. Not only that but the content of this season is just not as fun, it’s about Kazuma getting over his trauma, getting involved with the nobles while stealing stuff from them, and then having to rescue Darkness from an arranged marriage, again. Despite the plot progression feeling a lot slower than in the previous seasons, I can’t deny the more linear plot in this season, and the focus on Darkness, while also building events throughout its whole duration, and even over events from previous entries. It is still weird how this season got the longest duration and content, while the others were cut a bit short affecting their narrative a bit.
Visually the franchise has been passed around three studios by now but it keeps the tendency of sacrificing a polished artwork for the sake of deformity, along with suffering from jerky motions, but it’s ok because it’s not the result of cheap production of techniques, it’s done for the sake of comedy. The backgrounds are typical but well done and the special effects are usually good, and even better during the action scenes, besides the occasional crude CGI. The character designs are simple and follow a clear single color pattern around them (green, black, primary colors, etc.), but effective. The first season was fine, the second was a bit better, the movie was the most polished, the third was a bit worse and close to the spin off (made by the same studio) but still ok, and the spin off was the worst because it had the lowest energy and care just like everything else in it.
In terms of audio, the sound effects can range from just fine to spectacular, and the music, including the openings, is just your typical fantasy stuff, but it fits. The endings are always relaxing jpop songs sung by the seiyuus of the three main girls and they are cute and always good to listen to. Too bad that actually getting to listen to them is a bitch because of how protected they are by copyright, good luck in trying to find them on Youtube before they are deleted, and don’t even think of listening to them on Spotify. The voice acting is…peculiar, it’s about characters yelling like it’s usually the case with anime comedies, but because of the tone of the characters and the way they talk over others, it can be pretty funny and effective and not irritating, in short it’s well done for a comical voice acting in anime.
In conclusion, it’s an ok franchise as long as you don’t mind a bit of lewdness or stuff making fun of some serious stuff, and it’s extra better if you got sick and tired of the typical escapist self-insert isekai adventures that are more present than ever. But yeah, neither plot nor characters are nothing special, the pacing feels either too fast or too slow, there is no real substance or credibility of any kind in it, only one entry feels self-contained, and on later entries it has become a more typical than how it began as. I don’t think it has a rewatch value nor is that memorable, but I consider it a passable and mostly harmless time killer to chuckle a bit once a week once in a while before moving to something else.
