Is Konosuba worth reading as a novel?
A useless goddess, an explosion wizard and a boy who'd rather be in bed. What readers say about the Konosuba novels once the anime runs out.
What it is
Is Konosuba worth reading as a novel, or is the anime enough? Konosuba (この素晴らしい世界に祝福を！) began as a Syosetu web novel and became the light novel that taught isekai to laugh at itself. Kazuma Satou, a shut-in, dies in the least heroic way available and meets the goddess Aqua, who laughs at him. Allowed one gift for his new life, he picks her out of spite. They land in the beginner town of Axel broke, recruit Megumin, an archwizard with one spell a day, and Darkness, a crusader who can't hit anything and doesn't mind, and proceed to not defeat the Demon King for a very long time. It's a comedy about a party of losers, told by the one who knows it.
What readers love
The party. Every review circles back to the same four people and how badly they fit together, and the consensus is that the novels give them more room than the anime did. Then Kazuma's narration: it's petty, quick and sharper on the page, where the jokes don't have to wait for a cut. Readers from the anime also say the later volumes are the series' best, because the cast is set and the author can spend a whole book on one stupid plan.
What divides them
Whether it should have ended sooner. The series runs to seventeen volumes and readers who loved the first ten sometimes say the later ones repeat their beats, with a Demon King's general arriving on schedule and a fight that Kazuma wins by accident. The other split is Kazuma himself, who lies, steals and grumbles, and is either the funniest narrator in the genre or someone you'd rather not spend seventeen books with.
Is Konosuba worth reading if you've seen the anime?
Two things push us toward yes. The show adapted the first few volumes and stopped, and the party's best material is in the middle of the run, when Darkness's family and Megumin's village give the jokes somewhere to land. And the novel's Kazuma is a slightly worse person than the anime's, which makes him funnier, because his schemes fail on the page in more detail. Our one reservation is that Aqua gets less to do as the series goes, and the later comedy leans on the other two.
Come for a fantasy party where nobody is competent and the narrator knows it; don't come expecting the Demon King to matter.
Based on reader reviews; we'll write our own once we've finished it.
If you enjoy it, support the author where it's published: Kadokawa. Licensed English edition: Yen Press.
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