Copied from my letterboxd account which you can find here .
I actually review all the anime movies I watch there cause sometimes they don't hit the character limit to post here or because I'm too self conscious. As well as reviews on other movies (if that's your jam although those reviews are mainly shitposts).
WOO SELF PROMOTION LETS GET ONTO THE KONOSUBA MOVIE!
I've been a fan of the series pretty much since the first season aired back in 2016. At the time it was a pretty fun spin on the whole isekai genre that was just beginning to take over modern anime and it stood out pretty well. Stood out so well in fact that its one of the 2 (3 if we wanna count Re:creators) isekai anime's that I can say I genuinely enjoy and remember fondly. Hell I was able to get through about 75% of the show on a rewatch before going out to see the movie and while it's not a show I think I'm gonna rewatch soon I still enjoyed my time with these four lovable assholes. So what were my expectations as a fan of the anime? Mostly just the same formula with new experiences.
That's what I got with Konosuba's break onto the big screen. Legend of Crimson still is able to capture that same charm that the series held back when it was still airing. Kazuma is still scum, Aqua is still a stubborn airhead, Megumin still wants to marrying a pile of C4, and Darkness is still well, Darkness. The band of endearing idiots still have that same chemistry and ways to get under each others skin that made the show such a blast to watch. Not that I was worried, but we haven't seen any continuation of the anime since early 2017 so i guess I was a bit apprehensive as an anime only.
The story this time takes place in Megumin's hometown, the village of the Crimson Demons and we get a lot more background on how Megumin and Yunyun grew up. Since we already got background information on every other major player of the series, made sense Megumin gets her time in the spotlight. I really liked the village. Every single inhabitant had that same over-the-top over the top energy that Megumin has and it made for a lot of really fun moments as we got to see just who exactly the crimson demons are. A lot of the jokes landed for me personally, but I'm not the hardest person to please when it comes to humour.
The thing that makes Konosuba stand out in terms of it's comedy is the jokes are always building on top of one another. The whole bit with the giant toads from early on in the first season had a lot of repercussions and set ups for a lot of jokes the rest of the season and beyond. This time around it felt like that whole component was absent. Again I liked the humour but it missed that special element that made a single event hit in a lot of different comedic ways. There were fun one-liners, reaction faces and gifs for days but those were trademark elements that keeps Konosuba perpetually talked about in most anime spaces and I don't mind these elements. They've existed since the beginning of the show and they didn't feel forced so it sits right with me.
There was one major element that really held me back from really digging the movie, the eye catcher. Now in the series proper there's this title card and one of the characters going "KO-NO-SU-BA" to grab you back from presumably an ad break or as a way to end a bit and change gears to something else the story is going to do. It works in the series because of the nature of how an aired show works. However for the first half of the movie this bit happens maybe 5-7 times and it feels like a lazy way to make something else happen. If it were just a jump cut to another scene (which it largely is) or a fade out transition it would be more apparent. The space that it does occupy is used to continue a joke for a few more chuckles or some funny performance by any of the seiyuu with the pronunciation of the series and its varied enough that it doesn't get stale, but being stale isn't the point here. The audience in a movie setting isn't walking away from an ad break or whatever other reason this exists in the series that keeps it from ripping you away from the viewing experience. Instead it's a cheap way to distract the movie as the film moves from scene A to Scene B. In a movie setting these aggressive jump cuts just mess up continuity or rob a well thought out way to connect all these separate moments. Thankfully around the halfway point this stops as the story kicks into full gear and there's not really a good moment to insert this bit in, which only makes it stick out more in my mind so why include it at all? Thankfully this is my only real gripe about the movie and it only exists for a total of like 10 seconds of the run time. But it's 10 seconds that pulled me ruthlessly out of the experience at multiple times during the run time of the film
I do want to point out Kazuma a bit. While the eye catcher was shattering, Kazuma has a bit of a different problem. Now in the series it's not a secret: he's not a good person. Well he's not a bad person per se, but a lot of his negative actions are definitely fueled by someone else pushing first or him going on a some ego trip or some dumb misunderstanding, whatever. My point is there's usually something you could point at and go "ok, well there's the reasoning for why Kazuma did X thing". He's just kind of too much in the movie. He's always been a pervert in the series I mean, dude's like 17 years old. As a once 17 year old dude, hormones be crazy and he's surrounded by a lot of women he views as attractive. There's enough motivation for his whole lewd persona and is constantly ostracized in the most ridiculous and public ways for that persona, thus making good comedy. Without getting into spoilers on specifics it feels like he's very close to crossing a lot more lines than I personally was comfortable with. You could make an argument on his motivations, but it came off as a bit much when he had more uhh, rapey inclinations. It was never overbearing but it was a bit too close to fetishizing his actions with the ways it was portrayed which is very much not ok. Granted a lot of anime toe that line but it's never an excuse for this weird bit of voyeurism that is seemingly inescapable in the medium.
Part of me wants to touch on the animation but I can't seem to find a lot of information on the staffing for this project to do anything besides speculation. The bits I can touch on however is that the primary studio that produced the movie changed hands from the series that did the series, Studio DEEN to Studio J.C. . Not that I have anything against J.C. staff I have seen a few series by them I thought were well animated but when it come to anime recently they cut maybe a few too many corners and tumble a bit, at least in recent years. Not shaming, animation is fucking hard and the Japanese animation industry eats animators and shits out anime, makes sense people cut corners where they can But J.C. staff cut maybe a few too many corners with production in recent times. Food Wars exists primarily on still shots, zooms, pans and mouth flaps and One Punch Man S2 was a hard step down from it prior season in terms of quality. Just examples that have stuck with me. Thankfully they didn't cut enough corners that I noticed with the film which has me relieved. The small details that enhance the memeing of Konosuba were given more love and the rest of the movie flows well with quality one would expect with a sequel movie to a series. The only thing I was a bit let down on is Megumins explosions. I was really looking forwards to seeing them in a wonderfully animated fashion and for the most part they looked good but I was more hopeful that they would be more "special" for lack of a better term. They definitely looked better than in the series and were spruced up enough to notice that difference but they left me with an underwhelming taste in my mouth.
A weird thing that stuck out was never actually in the film but in the credits. There were a lot of credits out to a lot of different animation studios. The credits were all in Japanese and while I am learning Japanese I'm definitely not at the level to be able to pick out why these studios were credited. Could be these studios helped in a way or just a simple shout out (not that, that would make sense but work with me here) again, it didn't break anything for me in the movie I just thought it was an interesting bit that caught my eye in the credits and am curious as to why they were there.
At the end of the day I enjoy the antics of this collection of assholes and the crazy shit they find themselves in and the film is more of that. Konosuba's got a potent formula at it's disposal and I'm a simple guy. The cast is fun, laughable, endearing in the right ways (with the exception of kazuma for a bit in the movie) all it needs is more circumstances to put them in and I don't think it can go wrong.
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