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Forum - View topicREVIEW: Konosuba: God's Blessing on This Wonderful World! GN 1
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2868 |
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if rezero is the game of thrones of isekai, knosuba is it's monthy python in the search of the holy grail. for non-western-media interested people, konosuba is the second coming of slayers(with megumin being the obvious reference).
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2617 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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I wish I'd thought of the GoT/Monty Python comparison! That's just about perfect.
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SkerllyF
Posts: 244 |
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Who´s gonna review Platinum End Vol. 1 and any World Trigger Volume(actually it should be reviewed from volume 1)? Please do it
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jenny10-11
Posts: 98 Location: Australia |
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Well, I'm sold. |
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Calsolum
 Posts: 898 |
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ha i love that description. Can't wait for S2, my favourite part of the series was when spoiler[ kazuma threw aqua in the lake to purify it and the crocodiles attacked her essentially scarring her for that event] |
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myskaros
 Posts: 600 Location: J-Novel Club |
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I really hope they animate the story where Kazuma swaps with the leader of another party for a day :X my favorite manga chapter!
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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There's that word again. Parody. I hear that word over and over again and I'm sick of it. Konosuba isn't a parody. It's a comedy about a dude surrounded by incompetent/inferior cute/sexy girls who end up relying on the dude due to their own inability. It's a comedic otaku self-insert harem. It runs in the same vein as Invaders of Rokujouma and Is this a Zombie. A parody is not something that has 90% the same formula and throws in a few curveballs for the rest. Weird Al doesn't just change a few words when he writes parodies. That's what makes it a parody. |
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myskaros
Posts: 600 Location: J-Novel Club |
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According to the Google definition, which is in line with my own understanding of the word, a parody is "an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect." It is perfectly reasonable to call KonoSuba a parody of the "transported to/reborn in another world" subgenre. The characters and storylines are exaggerations of staple fantasy tropes. Being a parody isn't a bad thing, so I'm more curious what makes you sick of a word that's simply being used to describe a story/work. |
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Megiddo
Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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Alright, what existing work is Konosuba a parody of? Is it Sword Art Online? Log Horizon? Problem Children? Which existing work does it use as a base and transform so that it's a completely different work? If light novels simply mimicking other light novels makes them a parody, then wouldn't that mean the vast majority of light novels are parodies, considering they regularly follow the same formula? What does Konosuba do to deliberately exaggerate the genre of "transported to/reborn in another world"? Because I watched the anime, and I saw the same trappings that I've seen in other isekai shows.
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myskaros
Posts: 600 Location: J-Novel Club |
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No, a parody, as explained in the definition, utilizes "deliberate exaggeration for comic effect." To use your previous examples, Invaders of the Rokujouma and Kore wa Zombie desu-ka? can be considered parodies of the harem romance genre. Unlike, say, Clannad or Kanon, which play the harem genre completely straight, where the harem relationships are all serious and any comedy comes from character interactions, the two parody series use the harem itself for the source of comedy, with girls who are completely abnormal (in the trope sense), and the fact that these irregular girls gather around the male lead is itself used for comedy.
The "living RPG" trope, where KonoSuba's characters have numerical stats that are in and of itself ridiculous (Kazuma only having high luck, for example), or how characters with advanced RPG-jobs are so completely inept in actual parties and overall dysfunctional. These are exaggerations of the shows you cited and played for laughs, not as plot points to specifically advance the story. The way the "hero" Kazuma is transported in the first place is a play on other "typical" isekai works - he believes he died doing something heroic, but actually misinterpreted the situation and only died because he was too scared. This is conveyed in a ridiculous, funny manner, not serious. The guide to the other world, the goddess Aqua, is unrefined and derogatory and later shown to be fairly useless, as opposed to other Isekai series where the guide is all-powerful (No Game No Life, Mushoku Tensei), nonexistent (SAO, Overlord), or some kind of computer/robotic voice that can only perform programmed functions (can't think of a great example of this, maybe Tensei Shitara Slime Datta Ken?). Again, this is an exaggeration and a deliberate change from other stories in the same subgenre and played for laughs. Yes, most modern works are derivatives of past works. Every "other world" story could be seen as a variation on, for example, A Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which itself is apparently a parody of "knight's chivalry." Many light novels indeed have parodic elements, since humor is an effective hook. However, calling a series itself a parody simply depends on whether the comedic exaggerations are the basis for the story or not. KonoSuba retains the comedy throughout the story and constantly introduces more parodies. However, something like Re:Zero intersperses parody for specific jokes but otherwise is played completely straight/serious, so, while it does contain parody, most people would not describe it as a whole as a parody. |
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Megiddo
Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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What you described is comedy. Not playing something straight doesn't make something a parody. It makes it a comedy. Certainly Konosuba contains parodies of the sword-and-sorcery setting, but it most certainly is not a parody itself. It doesn't take an existing work of literature and transform it to be something else.
Just because something is a comedy does not make it a parody, please understand this. Also, the guide being fairly useless isn't uncommon, just look at the guide to Problem Children. Or is Problem Children also a parody? The issue seems to be that anything that does not completely follow the expected the norms could be seen in your definition as a parody. That's just not true. Carnival Phantasm is a parody. It takes already established Type Moon characters and transforms their circumstances into silly/absurd comedy. The key word being 'already established'. That's what makes a parody. There has to be an already established work that is being transformed in order for it to be a parody. So yes, there are gags in Konosuba where it directly references other material and subverts them into something else. Those gags are parodies, however Konosuba as whole is not a parody. It is a rather by-the-numbers comedic otaku self-insert harem. |
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myskaros
Posts: 600 Location: J-Novel Club |
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Parody is a subtype of comedy in the first place - yes, KonoSuba is a comedy, but it is not primarily satire or stupid humor, it's first and foremost a comedic exaggeration (a.k.a. parody) of fantasy tropes.
I would urge you to look up different definitions and examples of "parody," because your own definition seems extremely restrictive and I believe you are mistaken in its broader meaning. Since you stated "I hear that word over and over again and I'm sick of it," are you implying that everyone else is mistaken, or could you consider that maybe just you are mistaken? |
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Megiddo
Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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I'm certain that other people are wrong. The Discworld book series isn't thought of as a parody, nor is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy commonly mislabeled trilogy, and yet those are two examples of literature that take their genre/setting and run circles around it, 100 times moreso than anything Konosuba did.
When Weird Al takes an already existing song and replaces the lyrics with something else entirely, then it's a parody. When the Lonely Island Boys create a silly song about being on boat, ejaculating, or throwing stuff to the ground then it's a comedy/joke song, not a parody. |
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myskaros
Posts: 600 Location: J-Novel Club |
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Well, I'm sorry you feel that way. The last thing I'll say is, if you look up the definition and history of the word, you'll find that its application in this article and in my examples is correct.
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Megiddo
Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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I hope you'll learn to use a dictionary and not a search engine when looking up the meaning of words. As Webster defines it, "a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule", it specifically details that an already existing author or work is required for a parody.
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