Saturday, October 22, 2016

Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! - Anime Review

Hey guys! This time I'm going to talk about an anime which airs on Winter 2016, Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! or KonoSuba for short. I watched this anime after I finished with Re:Zero (which I already wrote here). I heard that this anime is a parody of Isekai genre itself. So I think watching this series is perfect for me who feels "meh" after watching Re; Zero. So how was it? Let's just dive into it!

Story
The story starts on our real world, where we meet our main protagonist, Satou Kazuma, He is a hikkikomori. But on that day, he went outside to buy some game. On the way home, he saw a girl and a vehicle is rushing to her. Seeing that, Kazuma tried to save her. And then he woke up in the "after life". Enter Aqua, the goddess who told Kazuma that he is already dead. Kazuma thought that he died heroically. But apparently he didn't. He died horribly and pathetically. Aqua laughs when telling him that, even the doctor who tried to save him laughed at his corpse (seriously tho ^__^;). So Aqua offers Kazuma two options. Sending him off to the heaven, or reincarnate once again in a different world while keeping his current memories on his life. She gave a little heads up that if he chose heaven, it'll be boring because everyone in the heaven doesn't have any physical body and just wandering around the heaven for eternity. Listening to that, Kazuma chose to be reincarnated in the other world instead. And then Aqua told him that if he manages to kill the Devil King in this other world, he will be granted one wish. Anything will do. So before he goes to the other world, he must chose anything that he must bring something to that other world in order to defeat that devil king (it could be weapons or anything). Since Aqua is being a jerk to Kazuma by laughing to his death and so on, Kazuma chose to bring her to the other world. So Aqua must live together with Kazuma in that other world. And of course that pissed Aqua off. And thus began their life at the other world living their lives in order to defeat the devil king. Will Kazuma and Aqua be able to defeat the Devil King and get out from that other world?


My thoughts on the series 

  1. We all know that anime with isekai genre is quite popular these days, and this anime is a perfect parody of that genre. This anime is genuinely funny and enjoyable for those who are really familiar with that kind of genre. 
  2. Even though it's a parody, their world building on the first episode caught me off guard. They really nailed it on the world building, And yet again, this anime only have 10 episodes. Unlike the other isekai anime that I just review couple of weeks ago. *cough* Re:Zero *Cough*. The mechanics of this other world is just like mostly MMORPG where there's some stats. And I can see some "Monster Hunter" like system. Where there's a guild, and they posted some quests for the adventurer's to take. And then they report back and get some rewards. But it's different from MH of course since it tackles the "Exp" system and it has various jobs like any other MMORPG would have. 
  3. What makes this show entertaining are the casts. Aqua is a stupid goddess. She is a arch-priest who has good healing abilities, but as she levels up, she spent her skill points for cheap party tricks. While Kazuma, he learns a lot of type of skills from thievery and dark magics. At first, he used thief skill and accidentally become panty thief. Everything gets even more interesting when Kazuma and Aqua finally starts recruiting other members to the party for some quests, But all of the party member (just like Kazuma and Aqua), are good for nothing characters (for comedic purposes). Like Megumin, a crimson demon who can only use one type of spell, Explosion. But after she used it, she will be out cold since it took all of her magic power. She only master that kind of magic because she believes that kind of magic that is important other than other skills and she refuses to learn other magic skills without thinking about her survival after she casts that magic. And the other party member is Darkness, a crusader, but she constantly misses when she attacks, but she loves to take damage from enemy and enjoys being a tank in the team since she is a masochist (^_^;)
  4. Continuing from last point, every flaw of all of the party members are exploited brilliantly for comedic purposes. This is a stupid show with stupid characters and they are self aware of it. It's not trying to be so serious about it which is good for this kind of parody. Every ordeal that they overcome are because of sheer dumb luck, since that's what Kazuma is good at. His luck is the best stats among other party member. 
  5. However, among other characters, Darkness' character trope is gets old quite fast. And she didn't really have some meaningful act on this series (in the anime, so far).
  6. The voice actor are great, they really deliver the emotion and the comedic value of the series.
Minor Problems that I had with this series
  1. The animation is done by studio DEEN, and they have this kind of reputation of "standard" and "quarity" anime studio. The quality is are good at the first 7 episodes even though there are a lot of repeated animation scenes. but episode 8 is the worst looking episode among them all. But I must say, whenever Megumin cast the spell, the animation looks pretty. I think this series' budget went there ^_^;
  2. Speaking of animation, the fanservice animation on this anime is quite distracting. Every time a boobie woman moves, it has some intense boobie shake. For me, it's an unnecessary fanservice animation. It feels like the animator was like "What kind of animation to make it more interesting? I know! JIGGLE DEM BOOBIES EVERYTIME A BOOBIE CHARACTER MOVES!" ^_^; 
  3. The pacing are actually good until we reach eps 8. Where there are some context that we don't get to see and the anime decided to tell us on a quick flash back and skipped it. IF they manage to tell us the story, this anime could have been 12-13 eps long rather than 10 eps

So here comes the final verdict, should you watch KonoSuba? If you are a fan of isekai genre or at least familiar with it and need some good laughs, you should check it out. They announced the 2nd season of this anime. But it worries me if they will be as good as the first season if they don't add some characters or new party members to the plate. 

So that's it from me, I hope that you'll find this review helpful, this is Reikichi, signing out! XD




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