Manga 60553 Kono Subarashii Sekai Ni Shukufuku Wo Reviews Filter Check 2

KonoSuba is a perfect case of the writer trying to have her cake and eat it too.


The initial volumes seem to be a parody of the many fantasy settings and harems found in other LNs. And it was done pretty well. The protagonist and his companions each had a distinct personality, and the hijinks they got up to could be pretty funny, even though I think their full effect is felt much better through animation.


However, in the later volumes, the novel falls prey to the tropes and cliches it was initially parodying. That too in a pretty blatant way, though the serial nature of the ... novel might be to blame for that.


For example, at the end of one of the volumes, one of the female characters comes up to the main character Kazuma, and tells him she wants to have his kids. Now, this is pretty clearly a 'tease', a hook to get the reader to buy the next volume.


It reads like the author knows exactly what she is doing, and is making use of it to get more male readers. There are three types of stories: stories the author thinks would be good and able to stand on their own (see: Les Miserables), stories the author writes as a form of wish fulfillment for themselves (see: Mikael Blomkovist in the Millennium trilogy), and stories the author writes as a form of wish fulfillment for the readers (see: 50 shades of Grey). Most stories are a combination of these three (as are the aforementioned books). KonoSuba is clearly leaning towards the third one, and I think that is a shame. It cannot really effectively parody what it itself has become.


Still, it has its moments I suppose. Don't let this review dissuade you from reading it, just know what you're getting into, and don't set your expectations too high. Nothing wrong with waiting for the upcoming anime, having read the LN and having watched the season already out, I have to say the anime is better, or rather, Konosuba's premise, characters and jokes transfer over to anime much better.