KonoSuba 3 – 06 – The Man in the Mask

When Kazuma and Iris switch bodies again, it leads to Kazuma being banished from the palace, which is when Chris meets up to discuss Divine Treasures. Kazuma tells her about the body-swapping necklace, and learns that it can be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands, as one can kill the person you’ve swapped bodies with and keep switching bodies to gain immortality.

This leads to Chris and Kazuma dressing up in cool clothes and go on a palace heist to steal Iris’ necklace. They gain access easily enough, but when Kazuma starts grinding on Chris under the pretense of maintaining the lowest profile possible, she raises her voice and they’re discovered by guards, leading to a chase through the palace.

The duo eventually ends up cornered by Claire and Rain, which is when Kazuma decides to finally “get serious.” With his Devil Army General-defeating powers, he’s able to easily dodge Claire’s charge and overwhelm her with magic that seems to deliver a pleasurable kind of pain.

When Kyouya shows up, he proudly proclaims the Steal ability won’t work on him anymore, so Kazuma uses Freeze instead to seal his sword in its scabbard and get him to lose his footing. Kazuma then gorges him with water, such that he and Chris can slip away when Claire and Rain are busy helping him.

Ultimately, Darkness, Megumin, and Aqua are the last line of defense between the masked thieves and Princess Iris (who even brandishes her own adorable sword, unafraid of combat). Alas, Megumin is completely smitten with the thieves’ style, and she and Darkness are quickly bound by Kazuma.

Even drunk, Aqua is able to lift the binding spell and rally Darkness, well aware that Megumin is no longer useful. But Kazuma and Chris are still able to slip past them and cast Steal on Iris’ necklace at the same time as they leap through a stained glass window and into the water below.

Darkness soon tracks the thieves down, and even when she learns it’s Kazuma and Chris, she doesn’t hold back on the face-crunching. That said, when Kazuma tells Darkness and Chris he only managed to Steal Iris’ ring, Darkness gets serious and grabs his arm.

That ring is only meant to leave Iris’ hand when it’s being given to her betrothed. She impresses on him the importance of protecting the ring at all costs, whatever trials come in the future. Trying to give the ring back could get him killed to protect the secret of how it was stolen.

At their farewell ceremony, everyone seems to adopt an opinion of the noble thieves similar to Megumin, only less intense: they are seen as impressive and admirable because they stole the ring to protect the princess. Kazuma gets the sense Iris actually knows he, her Big Brother, stole the ring, and that’s exactly the case, though he never confirms it.

As we saw in their flashbacks together, Iris has grown quite fond of Kazuma, as he alone doesn’t put on airs or dote upon him (though during their goodbyes she nearly gets in a brawl with Megumin for calling him Big Brother too much).

When Darkness tells Iris that Kazuma will defeat the Devil King and Iris’ face lights up with excitement, Kazuma just can’t quite move himself to contradict Darkness. She hopes he’ll return someday so they can continue their chess games and, perhaps, once he’s defeated the Devil King, so he can ask for her hand?

KonoSuba 3 – 05 – Divine Treasures

Kazuma was soaking up the renown from everyone recognizing his name, deeds, and general awesomeness. But once the battle begins, all it takes is for one scared little kobold to lure him into a pit where a hundred kobolds are waiting for him to suddenly lose his life. Darkness and Megumin steal the show instead with their bravery and explosion, respectively.

Eris resurrects Kazuma once more, but tasks him with collecting the Divine Treasures, meant to be used only by the Resurrected like himself and extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. And while he unceremoniously dumps the still-recovering Megumin on the bed of his room at the palace he’s once again granted, they still get to have a weekly Sweet Megumin x Kazuma Moment.

They’re both ready to head back to Axel, but when Iris comes in to say hi, Megumin notices her golden necklace is imbued with ridiculous amounts of magical power. Iris shows them the inscription on the back, which turns out to be Japanese, and when Kazuma reads it the necklace glows and flashes, and suddenly Kazuma and Iris have swapped bodies.

I’m on record here as loving any and all body swap episodes, and this one doesn’t disappoint. Iris moves and talks exactly like Kazuma, the latter a testament to Iris’ seiyu Takao Kanon’s vocal talent. Fukushima Jun similarly does a great job sounding like Iris in Kazuma’s body with a higher pitch and far gentler and polite speech patterns.

Both Iris and Kazuma decide that now that they’ve been thus afflicted, they might as well have some fun. Iris heads into town without retainers for the first time in her life, in Kazuma’s body and with Megumin as an escort. Kazuma meanwhile gets to serve up a much more smug and haughty version of Iris that flummoxes Claire and Mitsurugi with her new attitude.

Kazuma also uses this opportunity to be a little perv, heading to the bath to wash Darkness and Claire’s back. Claire’s a little too enthusiastic about this, while Kazuma ends up emotionally unprepared for the sheer amount of noble skin that awaits him in the bath. As Iris gets his body’s ass beaten into the stone age by some toughs Megumin provokes on purpose, Kazuma blesses his luck and decides not to worry about tomorrow … until tomorrow.

KonoSuba 3 – 04 – Mansion Life

Lord Aldarp grudgingly welcomes Kazuma, Megumin, and Aqua to his mansion to investigate the noble thief, but only because he still has the hots for Lady Dustiness. He’d even set up a magic mirror to view her in the bath, which Kazuma condemns while vowing to spend the night there. Darkness smashes the mirror, but it’s only the start of her troubles.

Between Aqua stuffing herself and getting loaded on all of the lord’s booze, Megumin frightening the residents of the city with her practice Explosions, and Kazuma essentially lazing about, Aldarp gets more than he bargained for. That said, I did enjoy Kazuma and Megumin’s sweet interactions as the latter all but admits she was worried about him before inviting him on a “date”—which is just her casting Explosion and him carrying her home…which isn’t a bad time at all!

While grabbing a midnight snack, Kazuma encounter what he believes to be the noble thief, but it turns out to be Chris, who assures him she’s there for a very good reason. Kazuma insists that he doesn’t want to hear it, as he knows the more he learns, the more trouble he’ll get pulled into. Chris agrees not to tell him the next time they meet. Kazuma doesn’t want to hear it then, either!

He does have Chris cast Bind on him to make it look like the thief got away, but when Aqua, Megumin and Darkness find him, none of them are in a hurry to untie him. Aqua first apologizes for breaking a bunch of his stuff while he was gone, while Darkness force feeds him flan and makes him apologize for putting her through so much hell throughout this trip.

After making a report to Princess Iris, Kazuma and his party are denied further access to the castle and end up at an inn. Before that Mitsurugi Kyouya gives Aqua the gift of a beautiful sapphire ring, but Aqua forgot who he was, and the ring doesn’t fit. Then in the middle of the night Chris visits Kazuma again to tell him what she’s been up to, whether he wants to hear it or not: she’s been collecting “divine treasures”, i.e. cheat items like the one that created money. She wants him to help, but he’s unenthusiastic about doing so.

Then an alarm sounds, indicating another Devil King’s Army attack and calling all high-level adventurers to joining the knights in repelling the attackers. At first Kazuma has no interest, leading Darkness to call him a coward, but then she begs him to help her get Aqua out of bed and keep Megumin from running off and Exploding everything.

Kazuma eventually determines that if he puts on a good show in this battle, he might just be allowed to live in the castle again, which is currently his primary goal in life. So he suits up, grabs Aqua kicking and screaming, and leads the party to the city gates where the other forces are stationed.

KonoSuba – 06

This week lampoons the “Epic Boss Rematch” common to fantasy anime, inverting it in numerous, hilarious ways. First, the Dullahan Verdia has to come to town to confront Team Kazuma and complain about how they haven’t come to his castle yet.

Unbeknownst to Kazuma, Megumin has continued her bombardment of that castle, while Aqua assisted by carrying her home each day. You didn’t think she stopped blowing the joint up just because she didn’t appear on camera doing so, did ya?

Verdia then attempts to look down on the party (having formerly been a noble knight) for not avenging their fallen comrade, only to see Darkness is alive and well and appreciates his praise. It’s only when a fed-up Verdia threatens to slaughter the town that Aqua switches from mocking mode to attack mode.

Her impressive Holy-based magic proves painful against Verdia, but doesn’t have the effect she intended (utter decimation). Now that she’s shown she’s not the magic novice he assumed, the gloves come off as he summons an undead army to, well, chase Aqua, then Aqua and Kazuma around.

Kazuma gets the idea to lead the army and Verdia into a trap with Aqua so that Megumin can blast them – and she does blast them, creating a giant crater in the earth – but while Megumin is out for the count, her efforts only made Verdia even madder.

When other adventurers attack him, he uses more of his own magic to apparently kill them, and for a few moments, the show almost seems to enter serious territory, as Darkness is visibly horrified by this turn of events. It’s her turn to take on Verdia, to avenge those dead men, so she leaps into action.

Only problem is, as awesome as she appears as she’s fighting him, her “finishing blow” completely misses, turning her pink with embarrassment. Even so, she wields an effective weapon against Verdia: her ability to weird him out with her masochistic ranting. This is a chaotic party that can keep any foe off balance enough for one of them to discover a weakness, which Kazuma does…and it’s water.

The whole town starts firing water spells at Verdia, turning the battle into a kind of aquatic dodgeball. Amusingly, Aqua wasn’t paying attention this whole time, and when Kazuma insults her, she makes the prevailing issue herself rather than the battle at hand.

When she finally unleashes her high-level water spell on Verdia, she exhibits the same profound lack of subtlety that is Megumin’s specialty, only with water instead of fire. A vast column of the wet stuff comes crashing down on Verdia, dousing him but also wrecking the city walls. Oops.

Greatly weakened by the torrent, Kazuma is able to steal Verdia’s head, and Aqua finishes him off with Holy magic. Victory is theirs! But Darkness knows that victory came at a cost: she reminisces on her interactions with the three fighters who Verdia killed (another funny send-up of an activity common to the genre), only to turn around to find them alive and well, thanks to Aqua’s resurrection magic, leaving her with egg on her face.

After a job – well, not well done, but done, the party celebrates at the guild hall (with Aqua getting toasted pretty quickly). Kazuma, to his surprise, his praised by everyone in the hall for his party’s deeds, and they’re awarded a cool 300 million Eris for taking out a General of the Devil King.

With this new fortune, Kazuma announces he’s going to retire and live a simple, quiet life henceforth, abandoning his plans to defeat the Devil King himself. This disappoints his three party-mates, but he doesn’t care. But when the guild official comes back with the bill for all the damage Aqua’s flood did to the city, they end up 40 million Eris in the hole, and Kazuma ends up having to cancel his retirement before he was even finished announcing it.

It’s the very end, when Kazuma laments the possibility of spending the rest of his life fighting battles with this inept party that will often cost more than they’ll make them in profit, that rings a bit false. This life looks like a shitload of fun, with minimal risk. I know Kazuma and I are different personalities, but I don’t see why he’s in such a hurry to leave this world. Methinks he doth protest too much!

KonoSuba – 05

I’m compelled to borrow my illustrious colleague Oigakkosan’s “My Goodness!”, as there’s so much good stuff to unpack in this latest  KonoSuba (the first episode I’m actually watching on time!).

First, as Kazuma is lamenting how differently the reality of his dream of cutting it up in an awesome fantasy world has turned out to be, Aqua seems to pick up on that frustration by requesting the party strike out on a new quest. The thing is, she also proves his point, because the main reason she wants a quest is money: she’s tired of working part time in the market and being in debt, not of the fact she’s not on a heroic odyssey.

Fortune would seem to smile on Aqua as she discovers a quest that is right up her water goddess’ alley: lake purification, with a chance of scattered alligators. For that latter bit, she intends to depend on Kazuma and the others, which is when Kazuma borrows from his past world by suggesting Aqua perform the purification from within a sturdy cage (a la shark researchers).

Two problems: transporting her in said cage really makes it look, as she puts it, like some rare beast taken away to be sold. And once she’s been dunked in the lake, where nothing of note happens for hours she likens the sensation to being a tea bag steeping. These are wonderful metaphors borne of a very bizarre and specific situation.

Of course, those alligators do eventually arrive, but Kazuma, Megumin, and Darkness do nothing in response, part bored into a state of apathy, part confident the cage will hold, requiring no action from them. The cage does hold, the lake is purified, the alligators withdraw, and Aqua completes the quest all but single-handedly…

…but there’s a cost: her nerve. She’s profoundly traumatized by two-plus-hours of being harassed by the beasts as she frantically accelerated her purification. So traumatized, in fact, that she won’t leave the cage even when it’s time to do so, deeming the world “too scary” to return to just yet.

I tellya, if I’d experienced what she had for as long as she had, I’d probably be in a similar state!

Thankfully, that state doesn’t magically disappear in the second half of the episode, 4-koma anime-style. The episode not only remembers it, but adds a fantastic new variable to the equation: the gallant Mitsurugi Kyouya, who is a veritable wellspring of fantasy tropes KonoSuba puts thoroughly through the wringer, to my surprise and delight.

Kyouya, like Kazuma, died (likely in a less hilarious fashion, though we don’t learn that), and was sent to this world by Aqua with her blessing and the mission to defeat the Devil King. Rather than bring Aqua along with him, Kyouya requested Gram, the Cursed Blade that has made him a very rich and powerful adventurer, complete with fancy armor, jewelry, and a couple of loyal groupies constantly bickering over him.

You don’t get any more cliche’d than Kyouya’s kind, but the show squeezes a lot more out of Kyouya than I expected, turning lemons into delicious lemonade. That’s because Kyouya happens to spot his goddess and muse Aqua-sama being paraded in the streets in a horse-drawn cage, which is decidedly not where he thought he’d see her, ever.

What follows then, is a glorious clash of Kyouya and Kazuma, or rather Kazuma’s party. While Aqua snaps out of her funk when Kyouya reminds her that she is, in fact, a goddess, she wants nothing else to do with the cat. None of Kazuma’s girls do! It’s as if they’re inoculated against the fantasy hero archetype. More than that; they’re allergic to him!

When faced with his arrogance and presumptuousness for just a couple minutes, Aqua just thinks something’s off about the guy; Megumin thinks he’s rude and wants to explode him, and he evokes a rare and undesirable urge in Darkness that flies in the face of her usual instincts: she wants to hit him. She must realize that if she were in Kyouya’s party she’d never have her masochistic desires properly addressed.

Pissing them all off even more is that Kyouya won’t drop the matter and let Kazuma pass. Instead, he challenges Kazuma to a duel, one Kazuma accepts, starts, and ends in the space of a few seconds, with a few lightning-quick yet fluid moments, Kyouya is on his back.

Kazuma’s inner monologue predicted a duel would eventually take place, but I’m so used to that being a bad thing, that fact that Kazuma wasn’t the underdog here didn’t occur to me until he Stole Gram right out of Kyouya’s hands and bonked him on the head with it (great sound effect on that).

Then, when his two groupies show up to avenge him, Kazuma continues to fly in the fact of convention by threatening to steal their panties if they press him further, really turning the sleeze up to 11 until the girls are running away crying. It’s harsh, but Kazuma didn’t approach them or their honey; they approached him. Mess with the perverted bull, you get the perverted horns.

One would think Kyouya Team would have learned its lesson, but Kyouya can’t help but be the valiant knight standing up against “Kazuma the Brute”, as he’s known in some circles for his inappropriate conduct with girls. He also seeks to “rescue” his goddess from Kazuma’s clutches, but Aqua responds to his second offer by cold-cocking him, delivering on her earlier vow to sock him if she saw him again.

But even if Kyouya is eminently punchable, Aqua’s violence isn’t senseless, it’s justified. She was looking forward to a 300,000-Eris reward for purifying the lake, but the guild deducted 200,000 for “cage repair” – a cage rendered useless when Kyouya prized the bars. Aqua also shows off her sneaky-playful shrewdness by demanding not 200K, but 300K from Kyouya, which he pays her on the spot.

Now that she’s rolling in cash, Aqua treats herself to a feast. And as if Kyouya hadn’t been stomped on enough, when he asks for his cursed sword Gram back, Kazuma informs him that he doesn’t have it; he sold it! That’s right; “our” hero didn’t ever even want the damn thing, even though it was part of his original dreams.

I’d like to think getting a good look at the “pathetic cheat” Kyouya has changed his thinking a bit on whether or not things have turned out bad. I mean, sure, he still wants to take on the Devil King, but there are worse things than having three not unattractive women by your side, not fighting over you at all! Plus, think of what all that Gram cash could buy. He could snatch up the stables and convert them into luxury lofts, with bidets and a pot-filler…and a trash compactor!

As for Aqua’s true identity being revealed…well, it isn’t, because Megumin and Darkness simply don’t believe her (having food on her face couldn’t have helped her credibility any). The matter is interrupted by another “emergency”, but at this point I know better; there’s no real emergency. Just the Dullahan, who’s really miffed they haven’t come by his place yet. This guy’s reminding me more of the Black Knight all the time…

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