Spring 2021 First Impressions – Combatants Will Be Dispatched!

Streaming: Funimation

Episodes: 12

Source: Light Novel

Story Summary: The evil organization Kisaragi has nearly fulfilled their goal of taking over the Earth, so they’ve set their sights on various other Earth-like planets next in order to keep their momentum going. With a literal roll of the dice, Kisaragi leadership chooses Agent Six as their representative for this important mission. He seems like an odd choice as he’s irredeemably horny with a lowly number of “evil points” (having spent them all on dubious purchases), but it seems some of the folks in the upper echelons may have a soft spot for him. Agent Six is transported to his destination alongside Alice, an android with the body of a young girl and a deadpan attitude. Almost immediately they get on good terms with a high-ranking local Knight named Snow and Princess Tillis, whom Snow serves, but it turns out that those two are both generally looking out for their own best interests in life and not expressing any sort of altruistic intent. However, Agent Six and Alice repair an artifact important to the country, and thus Tillis hires the two as her personal guard – making Agent Six Snow’s new supervisor.

Impressions: I went to see the Konosuba movie when it was in theaters. My direct knowledge about the show itself was pretty minimal but I knew it through memes and an episode or two I’d seen at various times, and I had several friends who were excited about it so I thought it would be a fun time. That franchise is known for being a comedy about shitty people, and that’s the kind of touchy subject matter where execution is key. Seinfeld and Arrested Development are master-classes in making this line of comedy work well, while with so many other more unfortunate imitators the characters are just garbage and the writing isn’t up to the task of molding their lousiness into laughter. I had mixed feelings about the Konosuba movie, mainly because its humor skewed to far into dubious-consent, perverted territory at times and there was a very off-putting joke about a female-presenting character having a penis (and thus “tricking” the male lead). It kind of spoiled the experience for me (being in a room full of mostly younger people laughing uproariously at a blatantly transphobic joke didn’t help the matter).

This anime is based on a novel series by the author of Konosuba, and from what it can tell it seems to be cultivating a similar tone and sense of humor, for good or ill depending on one’s tolerance level. Much of the comedy is based around Agent Six’s incompetence, and much of that has to do with his unapologetically perverted demeanor. His dick seems to lead the way in a lot of his decision-making, as he (purportedly) spends his “evil points” on pornography, waxes poetic about and/or talks about grabbing boobs (and is beaten up or scolded for it) multiple times, and remaps the magic words for a country’s magical artifact into a dick joke, because he gets horny off of the idea of Princess Tillis having to say it out loud. I often really like juvenile humor, but not indiscriminately; if it involves thinly-veiled sexual assault or weird shame fetish stuff, count me out.

I will give this episode props for introducing a fun variation into the isekai fantasy mix. I like the sci-fi intentionality to the whole ordeal; the main character isn’t the typical hapless otaku, but instead a mediocre super-soldier from an Earth that’s dealing with some… issues. And the women he meets aren’t pushovers either – they’re manipulative and self-serving, so it doesn’t really feel like anyone’s being directly victimized or obsessed-over by the protagonist in a way that they couldn’t fight back. But overall this dynamic of bad people being trash cans to one-another is really something that requires a lot more grace and skill than this story seems to have, at least at this early plot point. I’m not sure what the planned destination is, and I’m not sure I care to find out.

Pros: I think this episode is well-served by its goofy, cartoony animation style. The one type of humor that did kind of work for me was the physical humor, including the grossly distorted facial expressions during particularly heightened emotional moments. It’s helpful, at least, to see that the show and the story aren’t being taken too seriously.

Cons: Much of what happens is mean-spirited and manipulative. I get that these are all kind of crappy people doing what they do, and that’s the basis for the tone and humor. I’m not a humorless old hag or anything (just a regular hag). I just find that it takes a more sensitive and cunning hand to write characters who are so terrible that they’re endearing, and this ain’t it, friend.

This episode also pulls the old “he’s perverted, but because he gets punished for it’s actually okay” and I’ve never really subscribed to that line of thinking. It’s just sort of exhausting to have to deal with some garbage dude’s breast obsession in the first place.

Content Warnings: Mild fanservice (cleavage and skimpy outfits). Some vulgar language, mostly referring to body parts. Firearms used to kill animals, with brief blood splatter. General horniness as humor.

Would I Watch More? – Probably not. I’ve sort of set this aside for now to potentially come back to, but I would have to be in a particular mood and I don’t know if that’s going to happen.