Is Konosuba Funny…Like, at All?
Welcome, weebs, to Animated Observations
The spring 2024 season is a bit over halfway done at this point, and there’s been a lot of good to come out of it. Whisper Me a Love Song has proven itself a simple, albeit enjoyable bit of Yuri romance. Kaiju №8 lives up to the hype manga readers laid out for it, at least so far. However, one show sits above the rest as arguably the most popular of the season: Konosuba?
Of course, I phrased that like it’s surprising but it makes sense that a highly anticipated sequel people have been waiting damn near a decade for would attract a lot of attention.
Konosuba’s first season was released in the early years of the isekai boom around 2015, back when studios put effort into selecting adaptation material. It was met with a lot of praise for being a comedic/parody-esque take on the fantasy/adventure style storytelling the genre has come to be known for.
However, it has been a long time. Despite enjoying the series back in high school, part of me looked back on it as being a bit juvenile and uncreative with its jokes. So, when season three was announced last year, I was torn. Well, for a bit, and then life got busy and honestly I forgot it was even coming out. Cut to the present day. After catching up on the third season, it felt worth talking about whether or not It’s even still funny.
I’ll start with this: Konosuba has never presented itself as being much else besides crass, loud humor mixed with magical elements. Sure, the overarching narrative is there in the sense that they have a stated goal of “defeating the demon king” or whatever, but more often than not advancing that goal becomes incidental at best. Even in season three, while the number of narrative elements has gone up with the introduction of Iris and the magical artifacts given to people who cross over, almost all of them are used for the same style of humor.
With that being said, yes? The return of the show’s world and characters has been a pleasantly surprising one. The call back to one of the show’s more transphobic bits wasn’t exactly appreciated, but aside from that, it’s doing pretty alright honestly. Again, don’t expect too much in the way of cleverly formatted jokes or high-brow humor. Konosuba might as well be called “Isekai Family Guy” for how unserious it is.
Though, I do think there is something to be said for that style of loud, crass humor. Kazuma, Darkness, Aqua, and Megumin are four hopelessly incompetent idiots whose biggest accomplishment on a good day is not dying. Still, it is hard to deny the four have chemistry and often make for great bits. Are most of those bits resolved with one of them yelling at the other three after doing something stupid and/or horny? sure, but there is also a bit of nuance to it.
Kazuma’s weird step-sibling kink aside, his interaction with Iris and being honest with her when no one else would make for some funny and genuinely touching moments. The scene where he loses to her in chess over and over again made me both cringe and laugh out loud.
Is it high art with some big message at the end? Is it problematic in some ways? yeah, but it has a lot of solid jokes and an enjoyable cast of loveable dorks that make it worth continuing. Season three, along with Konosuba as a whole, surprisingly lives up to an admittedly nostalgia-filled lens of it.
I don’t know that my sense of humor has evolved all that much since high school, but what do you all think? Let me know in the comments.
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Originally published at http://animatedobservations.com on May 28, 2024.
