Konosuba S1E1: The Self Proclaimed Goddess and Reincarnation In Another World Exclamation Mark (blind)
- Location
- Patriarchova
This anime review was commissioned by @Suzu. She's only asked for the first episode, but since I need a new project after JoJo, well...let's see what this is like. I have no idea what this show is about, how well or poorly regarded it is, what genre it's in, or whether Suzu tossed it my way because she thinks I'll like it or because she wants to see my head explode. Probably the latter. Anyway, I've literally never heard of this show before, so this is as blind as a Let's Watch can possibly be.
In we go.
...
We see a nighttime sportsball field, and then an animu computer nerd in his bedroom with two giant monitors turned up bright enough to ensure complete loss of vision by the age of 40. His internal monologue informs us that he rarely goes out at night, but he needs to be early to get the limited first edition of some nerd thing, so a-camping he must go.
After a five hour round trip bus ride and who knows how much time waiting in line, he has the nerd thing in hand and is on his way back home from the bus stop. The camera does an odd thing, randomly cutting to close ups of plants, tadpoles swimming in a nearby ditch, etc as he goes about this. It's very prettily drawn and animated; I wonder what it's foreshadowing. Well, hopefully no frogs will be punched in this anime.
As he makes his way home while cowering from that mortal enemy of his people, the sun, a girl from his high school passes by with her nose in her smart phone. It kind of says something about how low my expectations for anime have been set that I'm relieved he doesn't tag along drooling behind her. Just as he's passing on by, he sees a truck coming up the road while she absentmindedly crosses it, eyes still glued to her screen. She doesn't hear his warning, so he does the only thing he can think to; drops his nerd prize, and dashes up to push her out of the way.
His final thought is musing about how out of character for himself this action was.
Well, I can't say how correct that self-assessment of his is, due to having seen so little of the kid. Maybe he was selfish and cowardly up until now, maybe he wasn't. Regardless, he saved this girl's life at the cost of his own almost without thinking, and that kind of has to say something about who and what he is.
We're only one minute into the show, so I'm not completely surprised when he finds himself sitting on a chair in what I imagine is the afterlife. There's a table with a book on it, and another empty chair by that table, so I imagine someone is going to come by to judge his soul momentarily. Let's see just what kind of wacky Christian-Shinto hybridization we're about to get!
Unsurprisingly, when his judge arrives, it turns out to be a mild mannered blue-haired woman with a weird cloth/energy/something effect hovering around her and a penchant for getting the camera stuck in her microskirt. Guess this is still an anime after all.
She informs him that he is, in fact, dead. His first question is whether or not his sacrifice was worth it; did he succeed at pushing the other kid out from in front of the truck before getting hit himself. When the microskirted psychopomp assures him that he did, his relief is palpable.
I can understand that. Imagine if you sacrificed yourself to save someone you barely even knew, and then it turned out that you didn't even succeed and your remaining time on earth was traded in for nothing, not even virtue to be its own reward at least in effect. On the other hand, learning that there is, in fact, an afterlife would mean that "death" doesn't actually exist, but that's sort of an overwhelming concept to get your mind around and the kid was literally just hit by a truck.
She also names him as Satou Kazuma. Cool, we have a name.
On the downside, apparently his sacrifice actually was in vain after all, because that vehicle would have stopped before it hit the girl even without him pushing her out of the way. But. Wait.
He pushed her out of the way. It sure looked like he was standing in exactly the same spot that she before he pushed her when the vehicle did, in fact, hit him. So...the driver was prevented from slowing down by him jumping in front? Somehow?
And...wait, he actually points out a totally different contradiction himself. It was a TRUCK he pushed her out from in front of, not a tractor. Okay, what the heck is even going on here?
...oh god.
According to Micropomp, the truck actually shot by right past himself and the girl without hitting either of them. A second later, a tractor came out of nowhere and screeched to a halt inches away from him after he pushed her out of its path. He died from shock when he felt the wake of the truck wash over him.
That. Wow. That got such a cringelaugh out of me. Well played, show.
Micropomp can't help herself, and starts laughing hysterically. She's been judging souls for a very long time, but this is the most inane death she's ever run across. Kazuma is understandably less amused than she is. She even makes a point of telling him that the doctors AND HIS OWN FAMILY laughed at his ridiculous death.
Fucking hell, this lady...
Anyway, she finally finishes laughing and says that she's now done "venting her stress." Is she a pillarwoman or something? A little small for that, but who knows. As he growls and steams, she introduces herself as Aqua, the psychompomp of those who die young. She then offers him two choices; either he can be reincarnated, or he can move on to a heaven...where he can, and I quote, "carry on like an old man." She then goes on to insist that the non-physical existence that awaits in heaven actually sucks and he shouldn't go there if he knows what's good for him, while squishing her boobs out at him and riding up her microskirt enough to let the camera all but bury itself between her cheeks.
I'm starting to get a gnostic vibe. Is this bitch an archon? I suspect that this bitch may in fact be an archon.
Except...then she tells him that reincarnation is also going to kind of suck, having to go through birth and infancy again. Instead, if he's willing, she'll offer him a third option: there's another world that's being invaded by demons that are slaughtering its human population, and since none of them are even remotely willing to be reincarnated onto such a shitshow planet the population is plummeting twice as fast. So, the powers that be are offering to send the dead from other worlds to that planet and letting them manifest in fully mature young adult bodies with all their memories intact.
The speech ends with the dramatic spotlight just kind of fizzling out and Kazuma continuing to stare blankly at her until she gets back into a normal person position and tries to save as much dignity as possibly by switching back to a conversational tone. In order to assure that he can actually make a difference against the invaders instead of just instantly getting killed again, she's letting him incarnate with a divine boon of his choosing. Any one piece of equipment of perfect quality, or any one skill that he'll have complete mastery of. Kazuma proves himself sharper than most by asking her if he'll automatically know the language of this world he's being sent to, and she...has to check her notes.
After which she confirms that as an added benefit his cognition will be hyperstimulated when he first arrives, so that he can learn the local languages and life skills quickly. Though there's a small chance that this surge of divine energy might annihilate his soul permanently. When he asks her for more information about that, she denies that she ever said it and won't let him turn the subject back.
Never mind, Aqua isn't an archon. She's GLaDOS.
She keeps demeaning and teasing him on the one hand and encouraging him to pick a glorious boon to build a heroic legacy with on the other, until he finally decides he has just had it with this and says the one thing that's guaranteed to wipe that fucking smirk off her face; the one thing he wants to bring into the demon infested world with him is her.
Another angel immediately shows up to take over Aqua's job while she's away, telling her that the supplicant's choice is valid within the framework of the offered contract, and that Aqua is therefore obligated to comply. Aqua completely loses her shit as she screams, begs, and rages against this fate. The newcomer calmly assures her that everything will be fine without her, and that they'll send someone to recover her in the event that the demon king is defeated and the purpose of the boons no longer extant.
The other angel seems awfully happy about this. I can't say I blame her. She and the rest of her coworkers are probably throwing a party the instant Aqua is gone. Kazuma gloats and lets out a truly epic supervillain laugh (seriously, his VA really went the extra mile here) as he's sent to the demon invasion world with her dragged along with him.
Then, they manifest in their destination. Once again, with odd camera zoom-ins on some nicely animated water with sunlight gleaming off of it. A caption informs us that the archaic village that they've found themselves in is literally called "The Town of Beginning Adventurers."
...
This was probably a hilarious parody of isekai when it first came out in 2016. Just two and a half years later, and its literally indistinguishable from the real thing.
I fucking hate humans.
...
Holy shit, the town actually has a real name as well, I just couldn't see it at first because of some questionable sub placement. Axel.
So, conceivably Axel could have just been a normal town without any name besides that one until the rain of confused Japanese teenagers started showing up, at which point it earned the longer title. This actually has MORE care and attention paid to it than some modern isekai that are meant to be taken unironically.
Anyway, Kazuma is excited to start a new and hopefully more meaningful life in this primitive world. From the degree of cleverness and self-aware humor the show has demonstrated up until now I was half expecting him to be sad about losing his family, but then I remembered that they literally laughed at his death (I suppose Aqua could have been making that up, but the fact that he believed her indicates that his relationship with his family wasn't exactly great either way). Aqua is not excited.
A very weird thing happens when she briefly tries to strangle him. The video pauses for a moment, there's an eight bit sound effect, and the caption "pause: press start button" appears. There's some kind of videogame joke going on here, obviously, but I don't quite get it. It's immediately followed by another videogame joke that I do get, when Kazuma says they should find an adventurer's guild or something to get the lay of the land, and Aqua looks stunned and asks how a shut-in otaku like him could have learned how to handle situations like this. Indicating that she has no idea that this world they've been sent to is coincidentally near identical to earth's fantasy RPG's.
...
Once again. Brilliant satire just a few years ago. Today, indistinguishable from the thing that it's lampooning.
...
They go off in search of such a guild, which she has no supernatural ability that could help them locate. The camera keeps creeping up under her microskirt, which strikes me as just your usual juvenile anime titillation rather than any sort of irony, oh well. They eventually find their way to the very grandiose murderhobo guildhall (turns out that this town is actually more of a small city), where a burly man with a familiar voice (I need to check the VA: I'm pretty sure I've heard him in multiple other things) helps them to the admissions desk. Aqua seems to be gaining a lot more respect for Kazuma due to his virtual experiences making him so adept at navigating this world, and asks him why such a smart guy turned out to be such a worthless NEET in his last life.
Kazuma points out that he was, in fact, in education at his time of death, and that she should shut the fuck up.
It turns out they need money to register for guild membership, though, and Aqua doesn't have any power to create or find it. In fact, so far she hasn't seemed to have much in the way of powers whatsoever. Kazuma begins to realize that he might have dicked himself over as a side effect of dicking her over; instead of one person with a useful skill or item, it's just two people with no useful skills or items.
They mope off to a tavern that they can't even buy anything at. Aqua goes back into her default bitch mode now that one of his gamer assumptions turned out to not hold up (I guess this world is only coincidentally 99% identical to an MMORPG rather than 100% as it appeared until now), and they go back to arguing about whether or not he meets the definition of NEET. Finally, she tells him that she'll try and get them some money her own way, walks over to an elderly priest sitting in the corner, and tells him that as the goddess Aqua she must be obeyed by the faithful, which means giving her whatever cash the guy has on him.
This actually goes much, much better than I'd have expected it to. The priest doesn't believe that she actually is the goddess Aqua herself, but he apparently has heard of her, and is dedicated to another goddess who is considered subordinate to her. Since he's impressed by the quality of her Aqua cosplay, he gives her a few coins and just chides her not to take her performance to the point of sacrilege.
I started typing about how disappointingly illogical it would be, within the satirical framework that the show seems to be setting up, for the natives of this world to somehow have accurate knowledge about the actual multiversal gods when the natives of Earth do not. I also wondered for a moment if there was a problem with the sub, because Aqua seems to only be a "goddess" by technicality at best and certainly not someone who would have divine underlings. But then it hit me.
This world has been having awkward young Japanese boys isekai'd into it for some time, and some if not all of them were probably sent here by Aqua with their memories of interacting with her intact. So, it would be the most logical thing in the world for the natives, after hearing remarkably similar stories from all these newly arrived heroes, to begin worshiping the entity who sent them here and massively overestimate her power and importance.
Maybe I'm putting too much thought into this. But based on the kind of humor the show has been doing so far, and the cleverness of the writing, it would definitely fit. Especially if that means that the people will eventually be faced with the fact that their goddess of heroism who's been sending magically empowered people to defend them from the demons is actually just a bottom-rung divine pencil pusher and also kind of a stupid jerk. I hope it'll be something along these lines.
And, well. Aqua's reaction to a mortal actually thinking of her as something that should be worshiped definitely suggests that it's not something she's used to.
They come back to the adventurers' guild just as its closing up, and the camera zooms in on the registrar lady's ass as Kazuma approaches her. Once again, I'm not sure if the cheesecake is trying to be ironic or not, but if so I don't think it succeeds, as there's nothing subversive about it or even anything to distinguish it from the usual anime foreveralone bait. Anyway, she issues each of them an adventurer membership card that displays their level, experience, and stats in a manner identical to a videogame HUD. Again, it's kind of sad that there's literally no way to successfully parody modern isekai. She runs them through a hand scanner device that somehow determines what character class you can start as, and apparently Kazuma's high intelligence, decisiveness, and luck but relative lack of physical ability makes him more useful as a merchant or something than as an adventurer.
You know, in Kazuma's place I think I'd be pretty okay with that. If this world actually is under threat by a devil king (though to be fair, there's been basically no indications of this since they arrived. Everything seems very relaxed, prosperous, and well ordered, and there's certainly no sign of a war. I suppose Axle could be on the opposite side of the planet from the place the demons are invading from or something), then logistics are going to be pretty damned important. An arms merchant or quartermaster could make easily as much of a difference as the spiky yellow haired guy with the oversized heart-shaped greatsword who shoots lightning out of his dick. But, Kazuma really had his hopes up for being a dashing adventurer like in one of his Japanese animes MMO's, so, he resolves to level out of this NPC class as soon as possible.
Aqua's stats are the opposite; she's low intelligence (no shit) and very low luck (surprising, given the encounter with the priest. The only misfortune she's suffered so far was entirely of her own making), but the rest of her stats are astronomical. I guess being a goddess or angel or whatever she is does have SOME innate benefits. She chooses to be a priestess, probably because it's the closest option to "goddess," but according to the lady these are DnD style clerics who are mostly good for healing and support.
Aqua did mention that she had a minor healing ability of her own, I believe, back when she was getting tossed out of heaven after Kazuma. But choosing to develop and focus on helping other people when she has other options feels a bit out of character for Aqua. Dunno. At any rate, everyone in the entire guild cheers for her, because it's always such a hard time finding someone who will play healer.
Kazuma isn't thrilled about her, of all people, getting what he wanted for himself.
I begin to wonder if the lady mixed their stats up. So far, it's consistently been Kazuma with the awful luck. That impression doesn't diminish as the following montage - with heroic, inspiring music playing over it - shows Kazuma comically struggling with manual labor around the city. And also with having to sleep in a stable due to not having money.
It's not clear if this is the only "merchant" work available, or if he's just doing this by choice to put some points into strength. Also, it looks like they're working to reinforce the city walls, which is the first visual indication of a war we've seen so far. I guess this supports my earlier suspicions; the enemy is on the move, but still a long way off, and so the locals aren't panicking yet but they're building up their defenses.
We do see Kazuma's determination and decisiveness in action, though. He isn't deterred by hardship or difficulty, or even by humiliation when he fails to measure up to his coworkers. As the montage continues, this...well, despite the obvious and deliberate silliness, it actually manages to be legitimately heartwarming and inspiring as well. Kazuma and Aqua get used to each other, and start drinking milk together every morning to boost their bones. We see them start to be able to afford better food as they get better at their new jobs, and import blankets and so forth into their stable to turn it into a little apartment (instead of just renting an apartment, because lol). There's also some rather baffling stuff, like Aqua painting walls instead of, erm, healing people, and also some repeated shots of her puking out a fountain of rainbows after getting drunk in a Gravity Falls gnome kind of way. After a few weeks, they both get swole, and also seemingly cool with each other.
The episode ends with them deciding that there are too many isekai'd heroes in this region, which means no monsters to kill, which means no leveling up. Okay, that explains why Aqua hasn't been doing healing work instead of construction. I guess you can still get swole the old fashioned way in this world without having to kill things for xp, which is nice. Anyway, they leave Axel with whatever money they've raised to go try and level up so they can kill the devil king so that Aqua can go home and Kazuma can do...idk whatever I guess, he'll get a wish supposedly.
So, thoughts.
The first half of the episode was definitely stronger than the second, with the seemingly serious and poignant start leading into the hilariously subverted "hit by a truck" isekai plot device and then the solid gold that was the afterlife scene with Aqua. Once they actually got to MMOworld, the jokes continued to be funny, but they also got less biting and subversive for the most part (Aqua not realizing that earth video games are impossibly similar to this actual parallel world was an exception). It also felt off to me that Kazuma and Aqua got over their initial antagonism basically offscreen, during that montage sequence. It feels like we missed out on something there.
I guess my biggest concern about Konosuba is that it could easily just turn into an unironic example of the thing it's supposed to be parodying. With most of the really subversive jokes about the isekai genre kind of done already, the show might just be a pretty bog standard (if better written and much more beautifully animated than usual) isekai except with lots of meta jokes. I'm not sure that this will happen, of course. And even if it does, I don't think that it would become a bad show, per se. But it seems likely, and even if that doesn't make it bad it would still make it less interesting at least for me. Reading a Shield Hero liveblog while doing this really opens my eyes to how damned hard it is to effectively parody this genre in the first place. So, perhaps I should just be impressed that Konosuba has done as well as it has up to this point.
Anyway, I have several more commissioned reviews on the way. I'll give the next episode or two of Konosuba a watch just to assess it for myself, but from what I've heard from patrons since first writing this review it sounds like it might not be meaty enough to provide material for a longrunning LW. The next item on the agenda might be more promising in this regard.
In we go.
...
We see a nighttime sportsball field, and then an animu computer nerd in his bedroom with two giant monitors turned up bright enough to ensure complete loss of vision by the age of 40. His internal monologue informs us that he rarely goes out at night, but he needs to be early to get the limited first edition of some nerd thing, so a-camping he must go.
After a five hour round trip bus ride and who knows how much time waiting in line, he has the nerd thing in hand and is on his way back home from the bus stop. The camera does an odd thing, randomly cutting to close ups of plants, tadpoles swimming in a nearby ditch, etc as he goes about this. It's very prettily drawn and animated; I wonder what it's foreshadowing. Well, hopefully no frogs will be punched in this anime.
As he makes his way home while cowering from that mortal enemy of his people, the sun, a girl from his high school passes by with her nose in her smart phone. It kind of says something about how low my expectations for anime have been set that I'm relieved he doesn't tag along drooling behind her. Just as he's passing on by, he sees a truck coming up the road while she absentmindedly crosses it, eyes still glued to her screen. She doesn't hear his warning, so he does the only thing he can think to; drops his nerd prize, and dashes up to push her out of the way.
His final thought is musing about how out of character for himself this action was.
Well, I can't say how correct that self-assessment of his is, due to having seen so little of the kid. Maybe he was selfish and cowardly up until now, maybe he wasn't. Regardless, he saved this girl's life at the cost of his own almost without thinking, and that kind of has to say something about who and what he is.
We're only one minute into the show, so I'm not completely surprised when he finds himself sitting on a chair in what I imagine is the afterlife. There's a table with a book on it, and another empty chair by that table, so I imagine someone is going to come by to judge his soul momentarily. Let's see just what kind of wacky Christian-Shinto hybridization we're about to get!
Unsurprisingly, when his judge arrives, it turns out to be a mild mannered blue-haired woman with a weird cloth/energy/something effect hovering around her and a penchant for getting the camera stuck in her microskirt. Guess this is still an anime after all.
She informs him that he is, in fact, dead. His first question is whether or not his sacrifice was worth it; did he succeed at pushing the other kid out from in front of the truck before getting hit himself. When the microskirted psychopomp assures him that he did, his relief is palpable.
I can understand that. Imagine if you sacrificed yourself to save someone you barely even knew, and then it turned out that you didn't even succeed and your remaining time on earth was traded in for nothing, not even virtue to be its own reward at least in effect. On the other hand, learning that there is, in fact, an afterlife would mean that "death" doesn't actually exist, but that's sort of an overwhelming concept to get your mind around and the kid was literally just hit by a truck.
She also names him as Satou Kazuma. Cool, we have a name.
On the downside, apparently his sacrifice actually was in vain after all, because that vehicle would have stopped before it hit the girl even without him pushing her out of the way. But. Wait.
He pushed her out of the way. It sure looked like he was standing in exactly the same spot that she before he pushed her when the vehicle did, in fact, hit him. So...the driver was prevented from slowing down by him jumping in front? Somehow?
And...wait, he actually points out a totally different contradiction himself. It was a TRUCK he pushed her out from in front of, not a tractor. Okay, what the heck is even going on here?
...oh god.
According to Micropomp, the truck actually shot by right past himself and the girl without hitting either of them. A second later, a tractor came out of nowhere and screeched to a halt inches away from him after he pushed her out of its path. He died from shock when he felt the wake of the truck wash over him.
That. Wow. That got such a cringelaugh out of me. Well played, show.
Micropomp can't help herself, and starts laughing hysterically. She's been judging souls for a very long time, but this is the most inane death she's ever run across. Kazuma is understandably less amused than she is. She even makes a point of telling him that the doctors AND HIS OWN FAMILY laughed at his ridiculous death.
Fucking hell, this lady...
Anyway, she finally finishes laughing and says that she's now done "venting her stress." Is she a pillarwoman or something? A little small for that, but who knows. As he growls and steams, she introduces herself as Aqua, the psychompomp of those who die young. She then offers him two choices; either he can be reincarnated, or he can move on to a heaven...where he can, and I quote, "carry on like an old man." She then goes on to insist that the non-physical existence that awaits in heaven actually sucks and he shouldn't go there if he knows what's good for him, while squishing her boobs out at him and riding up her microskirt enough to let the camera all but bury itself between her cheeks.
I'm starting to get a gnostic vibe. Is this bitch an archon? I suspect that this bitch may in fact be an archon.
Except...then she tells him that reincarnation is also going to kind of suck, having to go through birth and infancy again. Instead, if he's willing, she'll offer him a third option: there's another world that's being invaded by demons that are slaughtering its human population, and since none of them are even remotely willing to be reincarnated onto such a shitshow planet the population is plummeting twice as fast. So, the powers that be are offering to send the dead from other worlds to that planet and letting them manifest in fully mature young adult bodies with all their memories intact.
Kazuma's expression communicates my reaction to this scene better than any amount of text ever could.
The speech ends with the dramatic spotlight just kind of fizzling out and Kazuma continuing to stare blankly at her until she gets back into a normal person position and tries to save as much dignity as possibly by switching back to a conversational tone. In order to assure that he can actually make a difference against the invaders instead of just instantly getting killed again, she's letting him incarnate with a divine boon of his choosing. Any one piece of equipment of perfect quality, or any one skill that he'll have complete mastery of. Kazuma proves himself sharper than most by asking her if he'll automatically know the language of this world he's being sent to, and she...has to check her notes.
After which she confirms that as an added benefit his cognition will be hyperstimulated when he first arrives, so that he can learn the local languages and life skills quickly. Though there's a small chance that this surge of divine energy might annihilate his soul permanently. When he asks her for more information about that, she denies that she ever said it and won't let him turn the subject back.
Never mind, Aqua isn't an archon. She's GLaDOS.
She keeps demeaning and teasing him on the one hand and encouraging him to pick a glorious boon to build a heroic legacy with on the other, until he finally decides he has just had it with this and says the one thing that's guaranteed to wipe that fucking smirk off her face; the one thing he wants to bring into the demon infested world with him is her.
Another angel immediately shows up to take over Aqua's job while she's away, telling her that the supplicant's choice is valid within the framework of the offered contract, and that Aqua is therefore obligated to comply. Aqua completely loses her shit as she screams, begs, and rages against this fate. The newcomer calmly assures her that everything will be fine without her, and that they'll send someone to recover her in the event that the demon king is defeated and the purpose of the boons no longer extant.
The other angel seems awfully happy about this. I can't say I blame her. She and the rest of her coworkers are probably throwing a party the instant Aqua is gone. Kazuma gloats and lets out a truly epic supervillain laugh (seriously, his VA really went the extra mile here) as he's sent to the demon invasion world with her dragged along with him.
Then, they manifest in their destination. Once again, with odd camera zoom-ins on some nicely animated water with sunlight gleaming off of it. A caption informs us that the archaic village that they've found themselves in is literally called "The Town of Beginning Adventurers."
...
This was probably a hilarious parody of isekai when it first came out in 2016. Just two and a half years later, and its literally indistinguishable from the real thing.
I fucking hate humans.
...
Holy shit, the town actually has a real name as well, I just couldn't see it at first because of some questionable sub placement. Axel.
So, conceivably Axel could have just been a normal town without any name besides that one until the rain of confused Japanese teenagers started showing up, at which point it earned the longer title. This actually has MORE care and attention paid to it than some modern isekai that are meant to be taken unironically.
Anyway, Kazuma is excited to start a new and hopefully more meaningful life in this primitive world. From the degree of cleverness and self-aware humor the show has demonstrated up until now I was half expecting him to be sad about losing his family, but then I remembered that they literally laughed at his death (I suppose Aqua could have been making that up, but the fact that he believed her indicates that his relationship with his family wasn't exactly great either way). Aqua is not excited.
A very weird thing happens when she briefly tries to strangle him. The video pauses for a moment, there's an eight bit sound effect, and the caption "pause: press start button" appears. There's some kind of videogame joke going on here, obviously, but I don't quite get it. It's immediately followed by another videogame joke that I do get, when Kazuma says they should find an adventurer's guild or something to get the lay of the land, and Aqua looks stunned and asks how a shut-in otaku like him could have learned how to handle situations like this. Indicating that she has no idea that this world they've been sent to is coincidentally near identical to earth's fantasy RPG's.
...
Once again. Brilliant satire just a few years ago. Today, indistinguishable from the thing that it's lampooning.
...
They go off in search of such a guild, which she has no supernatural ability that could help them locate. The camera keeps creeping up under her microskirt, which strikes me as just your usual juvenile anime titillation rather than any sort of irony, oh well. They eventually find their way to the very grandiose murderhobo guildhall (turns out that this town is actually more of a small city), where a burly man with a familiar voice (I need to check the VA: I'm pretty sure I've heard him in multiple other things) helps them to the admissions desk. Aqua seems to be gaining a lot more respect for Kazuma due to his virtual experiences making him so adept at navigating this world, and asks him why such a smart guy turned out to be such a worthless NEET in his last life.
Kazuma points out that he was, in fact, in education at his time of death, and that she should shut the fuck up.
It turns out they need money to register for guild membership, though, and Aqua doesn't have any power to create or find it. In fact, so far she hasn't seemed to have much in the way of powers whatsoever. Kazuma begins to realize that he might have dicked himself over as a side effect of dicking her over; instead of one person with a useful skill or item, it's just two people with no useful skills or items.
They mope off to a tavern that they can't even buy anything at. Aqua goes back into her default bitch mode now that one of his gamer assumptions turned out to not hold up (I guess this world is only coincidentally 99% identical to an MMORPG rather than 100% as it appeared until now), and they go back to arguing about whether or not he meets the definition of NEET. Finally, she tells him that she'll try and get them some money her own way, walks over to an elderly priest sitting in the corner, and tells him that as the goddess Aqua she must be obeyed by the faithful, which means giving her whatever cash the guy has on him.
This actually goes much, much better than I'd have expected it to. The priest doesn't believe that she actually is the goddess Aqua herself, but he apparently has heard of her, and is dedicated to another goddess who is considered subordinate to her. Since he's impressed by the quality of her Aqua cosplay, he gives her a few coins and just chides her not to take her performance to the point of sacrilege.
I started typing about how disappointingly illogical it would be, within the satirical framework that the show seems to be setting up, for the natives of this world to somehow have accurate knowledge about the actual multiversal gods when the natives of Earth do not. I also wondered for a moment if there was a problem with the sub, because Aqua seems to only be a "goddess" by technicality at best and certainly not someone who would have divine underlings. But then it hit me.
This world has been having awkward young Japanese boys isekai'd into it for some time, and some if not all of them were probably sent here by Aqua with their memories of interacting with her intact. So, it would be the most logical thing in the world for the natives, after hearing remarkably similar stories from all these newly arrived heroes, to begin worshiping the entity who sent them here and massively overestimate her power and importance.
Maybe I'm putting too much thought into this. But based on the kind of humor the show has been doing so far, and the cleverness of the writing, it would definitely fit. Especially if that means that the people will eventually be faced with the fact that their goddess of heroism who's been sending magically empowered people to defend them from the demons is actually just a bottom-rung divine pencil pusher and also kind of a stupid jerk. I hope it'll be something along these lines.
And, well. Aqua's reaction to a mortal actually thinking of her as something that should be worshiped definitely suggests that it's not something she's used to.
They come back to the adventurers' guild just as its closing up, and the camera zooms in on the registrar lady's ass as Kazuma approaches her. Once again, I'm not sure if the cheesecake is trying to be ironic or not, but if so I don't think it succeeds, as there's nothing subversive about it or even anything to distinguish it from the usual anime foreveralone bait. Anyway, she issues each of them an adventurer membership card that displays their level, experience, and stats in a manner identical to a videogame HUD. Again, it's kind of sad that there's literally no way to successfully parody modern isekai. She runs them through a hand scanner device that somehow determines what character class you can start as, and apparently Kazuma's high intelligence, decisiveness, and luck but relative lack of physical ability makes him more useful as a merchant or something than as an adventurer.
You know, in Kazuma's place I think I'd be pretty okay with that. If this world actually is under threat by a devil king (though to be fair, there's been basically no indications of this since they arrived. Everything seems very relaxed, prosperous, and well ordered, and there's certainly no sign of a war. I suppose Axle could be on the opposite side of the planet from the place the demons are invading from or something), then logistics are going to be pretty damned important. An arms merchant or quartermaster could make easily as much of a difference as the spiky yellow haired guy with the oversized heart-shaped greatsword who shoots lightning out of his dick. But, Kazuma really had his hopes up for being a dashing adventurer like in one of his Japanese animes MMO's, so, he resolves to level out of this NPC class as soon as possible.
Aqua's stats are the opposite; she's low intelligence (no shit) and very low luck (surprising, given the encounter with the priest. The only misfortune she's suffered so far was entirely of her own making), but the rest of her stats are astronomical. I guess being a goddess or angel or whatever she is does have SOME innate benefits. She chooses to be a priestess, probably because it's the closest option to "goddess," but according to the lady these are DnD style clerics who are mostly good for healing and support.
Aqua did mention that she had a minor healing ability of her own, I believe, back when she was getting tossed out of heaven after Kazuma. But choosing to develop and focus on helping other people when she has other options feels a bit out of character for Aqua. Dunno. At any rate, everyone in the entire guild cheers for her, because it's always such a hard time finding someone who will play healer.
Kazuma isn't thrilled about her, of all people, getting what he wanted for himself.
I begin to wonder if the lady mixed their stats up. So far, it's consistently been Kazuma with the awful luck. That impression doesn't diminish as the following montage - with heroic, inspiring music playing over it - shows Kazuma comically struggling with manual labor around the city. And also with having to sleep in a stable due to not having money.
It's not clear if this is the only "merchant" work available, or if he's just doing this by choice to put some points into strength. Also, it looks like they're working to reinforce the city walls, which is the first visual indication of a war we've seen so far. I guess this supports my earlier suspicions; the enemy is on the move, but still a long way off, and so the locals aren't panicking yet but they're building up their defenses.
We do see Kazuma's determination and decisiveness in action, though. He isn't deterred by hardship or difficulty, or even by humiliation when he fails to measure up to his coworkers. As the montage continues, this...well, despite the obvious and deliberate silliness, it actually manages to be legitimately heartwarming and inspiring as well. Kazuma and Aqua get used to each other, and start drinking milk together every morning to boost their bones. We see them start to be able to afford better food as they get better at their new jobs, and import blankets and so forth into their stable to turn it into a little apartment (instead of just renting an apartment, because lol). There's also some rather baffling stuff, like Aqua painting walls instead of, erm, healing people, and also some repeated shots of her puking out a fountain of rainbows after getting drunk in a Gravity Falls gnome kind of way. After a few weeks, they both get swole, and also seemingly cool with each other.
The episode ends with them deciding that there are too many isekai'd heroes in this region, which means no monsters to kill, which means no leveling up. Okay, that explains why Aqua hasn't been doing healing work instead of construction. I guess you can still get swole the old fashioned way in this world without having to kill things for xp, which is nice. Anyway, they leave Axel with whatever money they've raised to go try and level up so they can kill the devil king so that Aqua can go home and Kazuma can do...idk whatever I guess, he'll get a wish supposedly.
So, thoughts.
The first half of the episode was definitely stronger than the second, with the seemingly serious and poignant start leading into the hilariously subverted "hit by a truck" isekai plot device and then the solid gold that was the afterlife scene with Aqua. Once they actually got to MMOworld, the jokes continued to be funny, but they also got less biting and subversive for the most part (Aqua not realizing that earth video games are impossibly similar to this actual parallel world was an exception). It also felt off to me that Kazuma and Aqua got over their initial antagonism basically offscreen, during that montage sequence. It feels like we missed out on something there.
I guess my biggest concern about Konosuba is that it could easily just turn into an unironic example of the thing it's supposed to be parodying. With most of the really subversive jokes about the isekai genre kind of done already, the show might just be a pretty bog standard (if better written and much more beautifully animated than usual) isekai except with lots of meta jokes. I'm not sure that this will happen, of course. And even if it does, I don't think that it would become a bad show, per se. But it seems likely, and even if that doesn't make it bad it would still make it less interesting at least for me. Reading a Shield Hero liveblog while doing this really opens my eyes to how damned hard it is to effectively parody this genre in the first place. So, perhaps I should just be impressed that Konosuba has done as well as it has up to this point.
Anyway, I have several more commissioned reviews on the way. I'll give the next episode or two of Konosuba a watch just to assess it for myself, but from what I've heard from patrons since first writing this review it sounds like it might not be meaty enough to provide material for a longrunning LW. The next item on the agenda might be more promising in this regard.
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