KonoSuba – God's blessing on this wonderful world! 3

Episode 9

This episode doesn't utilize its real estate as strongly as it could have. I'm all for having side gags and one-off jokes, but if you dedicate about a third of an episode to a bit, it better be one of the funniest things ever or facilitate the show's narrative. That whole side story about a noble sexually assaulting Kazuma's friend over a misunderstanding was out of pocket. The payoff wasn't funny; it dragged on way too long and only tangentially related to the interesting stuff in the episode revolving around Darkness. If you cut that whole section out, you would've had a much funnier and better-paced episode.

As for the good parts of the episode, everything about Kazuma and Darkness was excellent, with the voice mimicry bit being a highlight. This situation is pretty much exactly what I thought it was. Darkness's family is in debt, and she must marry herself off to make up for it. This is just a repeat of our last plot point with Darkness. Unless there's something else I am missing, it just doesn't feel like there's a lot of new setup going on here, which makes me a little concerned unless the resolution to this story beat will be a fake out.

My final thoughts are about this episode's blatant intimate moments between Darkness and Kazuma. It's funny that the season was setting up this wholesome romantic tension between Kazuma and Megumin, but now we've just taken a hard right turn to develop all of this sexual tension between Darkness and Kazuma. I think that moment where Darkness entertains the idea of the two sleeping together is the perfect blend of drama and comedy, but even with these moments, the relationship feels a bit strange sometimes. The show is going out of its way to make it clear that these two are very physically attracted to each other and would probably be a good match sexually. But KONOSUBA also can't decide how much it wants to commit to these two being together socially. It may be that the lack of serious payoff in the relationship is supposed to be the counterbalance to the more gradual and naturally developing romance between Kazuma and Megumin. Weirdly, I'm debating on how seriously I'm supposed to take any of this. Maybe it'll be clearer after we get to the end of this plot point.

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KonoSuba – God’s blessing on this wonderful world! 3 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.