Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo!: Kurenai Densetsu

So I watched this movie like a few hours earlier in the CineStar in Frankfurt. It was part of a simultaneous screening in a few towns around Germany. I didn’t even know KonoSuba outside of the first 3 LN’s so I took my time to watch the first season just yesterday. I didn’t manage to start the second season yet, so I wasn’t aware of like 20% of the cast, which was unfortunate. I didn’t expect the movie to supercede the second season and I also do not expect the movie to be canon.

The story is rather dull, but KonoSuba lives off its enjoyment, the quirky characters and the witty banter between them all so I can ignore that point. The story mainly surrounds the Crimson Village and a lot of KonoSuba-typical shenanigans happen there. Our group also encounters another evil general of the 魔王 preceded by a horde of ugly goblins and fight them with Explosions.

The art is fair, but there were a few bad animated sequences. Some even had some kind of image blurring. Mostly the animation was okay though, it felt like an amalgamation of several studios which was then confirmed with the credits. I saw influence from White Fox, JC Staff (obviously) and Aniplex, but there may be more.
The colors are vibrant, don’t feel overly flashy though. This is a negative for me, because I kind of expect such a quirky show to flash me with near epileptic magic spells and summons. I wasn’t really blown away though.

The music is nothing special. The opening sequence starts with Subarashii Sekai, which we already know from the Season 1, but the credits theme is a newly composed one. I cannot really remember any memorable section in it though. It’s more of a smooth finish but not overly representative.

It could just have been the cinema sound, but the explosions were probably the most impactful of the show. They ran through every cell of my body and during a special explosion scene with an unexpected twist I even developed some goosebumps. Thats decent.

Voiceacting is absolutely superb, even the unimportant characters had great voiceacting and were as believably quirky as the general cast.

Enjoyment:

Well the enjoyment is rather awesome, simply because KonoSuba lives off its jokes. The jokes were spread evenly throughout the 1 1/2 Hour of playtime and it felt like watching a special episode of the show. I kind of felt like the trope of the Crimson Villagers going full-on chuuni is going to tire out really quickly, but they each had their individual twist to it which made it fun everytime. The banter was really enjoyable and also Kazuma fucking himself over by his limitless horny on main was a great joke.

I felt that the jokes were stretched a bit much though. The punchlines had always worked well. I doubted that they would miss a single joke right after the first 15 minutes.

Misc:

We were watching the movie with German sub and these were rather unfaithful to what was said in my opinion. Though they somehow made the jokes work in a rather primitive fashion. There is this scene where the main group insults Kazuma by giving him different honorifics and nicknames. The translated subs just filled these blanks with insults like “Kazumarsch, Kazumüll” etc.

Also there was a section where the original japanese sub was inserted and not translated. I cannot conjure an explanation for such an oversight?

Overall KonoSuba – Legend of Crimson is a decent experience, which I why I give it a solid 7 and watching it in a cinema screening was a good idea. If you excuse me now, I will watch Season 2 tonight.