Konosuba Vol. 1 Review

Megumin had the world’s strongest magic – explosion – in her arsenal. However, she’s limited to using that once per day and she refuses to learn other forms of magic. Such is the problem in many characters in Konosuba and whether you like it or not will really depend on how you think of the light novel as a whole.

Review Notes:

  • Required Reading – None! You can start on a clean slate (although watching the anime will not hurt)
  • Featured Image is from the Bookwalker ver. of the book. Yen Press allows this without contacting them because this article is a review of the light novel.

KonoSuba: God’s Blessing in this Wonderful World starts of with Kazuma dying in the real world and transported to another world while tasked to defeat the “Demon King”. The catch? He’s supposed to pick a certain item or ability to bring with him in  the other world. However, he chose to bring the goddess Aqua herself, the very person (or goddess) who transports people to the other world for so long.

Kazuma thought bringing Aqua will  make her life easier in this other world. Turns out, Aqua won’t be able to use much of her powers there and will also become an adventurer like he will. Aqua, in turn, is useless in the eyes of Kazuma. Joining their party is Megumin – who can use powerful explosion magic, an Darkness – a lady knight with impenetrable defense. Both of their abilities seem to good when it sounds. However, Megumin can only use explosion and nothing else. She can’t use other types of Magic. And she’s limited to 1 explosion blast a day. Darkness, meanwhile, enjoys  the thrill of facing enemies head on and gets turned on by that very fact. She also misses anyone she targets with her sword.

So Kazuma has with her a goddess, an explosion user, and a knight. Everything looks good on paper, but with the details I mentioned above, how can they face one of Demon King’s generals when he sought to invade their starter town?

Thoughts. 

Actually, I think I have mentioned everything there is in Konosuba vol. 1. The light novel heavily focused on contradictions of each of the characters. For the purpose of discussion, let’s talk about Megumin. She wields the most powerful magic attack of all – Explosion. However, she only wants Explosion and refuses to learn even basic or intermediate types of magic. Which means her explosion magic isn’t useful at all in everyday questing. The light novel focuses on this a lot – the characters’ faults.

The fact that our hero Kazuma keeps trying to send them off is also something, let’s just say, I’m not comfortable. I’m used to heroes like Bell Crannel (Danmachi) or Tatsuya Shiba (Irregular at Magic High School) or even Subaru (Re:Zero), who’s main point has always been the fact that they want to protect the opposite gender.

Perhaps that was a trope that Konosuba wants to stay away from. In many light novels, the hero is surrounded with girls. All the girls love him and he has to choose (all the while the fan community will have their own nomination of the “best girl“.) In Konosuba, atleast in vol 1, there’s no clear indication if Kazuma has a romantic interest in the girls. Nor do the girls show any potential romantic interest to Kazuma. In a way, this is a big difference  to many light novel and anime that proliferate the scene lately (of course in defense, there’s not a lot of light novels in English).

Next, the volume has a clear ending. Yes, there’s the task of killing the Demon Lord. However, you can say that this volume can stand on its own without the reader having that urge to think that they can’t wait for the next volume. The story is contained. There was a main villain and he was dealt with. This is again unlike some of the (few) light novels I read. In SAO, as far as I remember, there was a setup for the next chapter of the story. In Danmachi, there were questions raised at the end of volume 1. In Occultic;Nine, oh man, that was a freaking cliffhanger. In Konosuba, nope, you can probably read Vol. 2 without reading Vol. 1.

In a way, I like to think of Konosuba as a book that you are encouraged not to treat seriously. You have wacky characters that make dumb choices. You have a goddess who is useless in the grand scheme of things. It’s supposed to be a fun light novel to read and indeed I had a good time reading it. However, I think I was laughing because I was reading them with their anime voices in my head, with their wacky distorted faces in punchlines engraved in my memory. So yes, the anime lead me to check out Konosuba’s light novel version (that, and the fact that there was a discount at Bookwalker).

Final Rating: 2.5/5

What I like:

  • I read their lines with the voices of the anime characters in my head
  • Funny at times
  • Megumin is annoying and funny

What I don’t like

  • I can’t help but think that the anime version is better. This is something I don’t usually think. I recommend SAO light novel over the anime. I recommend the Irregular at Magic High School light novel over the anime. But in Konosuba’s case, I like the anime more.
  • Aqua is annoying

 

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