A Friend for This Crimson Haired Demon Girl!
What they say:
After a traffic accident, Kazuma Sato’s disappointingly brief life was supposed to be over, but he wakes up to see a beautiful girl before him. She claims to be a goddess, Aqua, and asks if he would like to go to another world and bring only one thing with him. Kazuma decides to bring the goddess herself, and they are transported to a fantasy world filled with adventure, ruled by a demon king. Now Kazuma only wants to live in peace, but Aqua wants to solve many of this world’s problems, and the demon king will only turn a blind eye for so long…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I seem to be having some trouble; I can’t stop laughing. Episode 2 of KonoSuba begins with more hilarity in the form of toads. Yes, the toads have returned despite it being winter. The reason is, presumably, because of Megumin firing off several explosions during Aqua’s failed attempts to help bust Kazuma out of prison. You may remember these buggers during season 1. They spent most of their time eating Aqua. Well, they eat Aqua here, too, and it’s even funnier now than it was the first several times. One of KonoSuba’s greatest strengths are its jokes, but it’s not just that. It’s how the series can take a joke that has already been used, twist it around, and make it so that it’s not only still funny, but that it’s even funnier now than it was the last time they used it.
A new character is also introduced in this episode. Yunyun is another Crimson Demon like Megumin, our dysfunctional mage with an explosion fetish. Unlike Megumin, she doesn’t seem to care for explosions. However, she has proclaimed that Megumin is her rival and her goal is to beat Megumin and become the strongest Crimson Demon in the world. I’m not sure why she’s trying to fight Megumin, but I cannot deny that the dynamic between the two of them is hilarious.
The humor in episode 2 is strong, far stronger than episode 1, which was funny but nowhere near as outrageous. Watching Kazuma, Megumin, and Aqua at work is like watching a dysfunctional group of D&D players try to conquer a dungeon, except they don’t know what they’re doing half the time, so they fail spectacularly. It’s even better because Kazuma is such a genre savvy character. I loved the scene where he and Megumin, covered in slime, argue over who’s going to take a bath first. They take real-world issues such as gender equality and anime stereotypes and cliche’s, and use those to further their comedy. It helps that every character here is not only screwed up, but generally unlikable. I can enjoy watching them destroy each other without remorse.
In Summary:
With meta and off the wall humor and ridiculous characters who take jokes several steps too far, this was the best episode yet, and it’s set a high bar for my expectations. I’m expecting the series to become even more outrageous and humorous with the passage of time. The only thing this episode was missing was us getting to watch Darkness act like a masochist, which I’m expecting to see next episode, given the little glimpse of her that we caught during one scene where I believe a bunch of maids were trying to dress her up.
Grade: A+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
