To protect her family name, Darkness leaves the party and
agrees to marry the depraved noble Alderp.
Rocked to the core, Kazuma must decide if it’s best to leave Darkness to
her decision or try to talk her out of it.
But it isnt long before Kazuma decides to do something big and stupid to
save his friend from a lifetime of misery.
It’s time for Team Kazuma to crash a wedding and hope they don’t end up
enemies of the entire country in the process.
The Season Three Finale of KonoSuba was a change of pace
for the series.
Instead of ending on
another epic battle against a huge final boss, we got the boss fight early and
ended on something of a more dramatic and emotional note than before. It wasn’t
bad by any means, this is still KonoSuba after all.
Still, it feels weird when three seasons in
the general comedy show shifts gears to get introspective and sometimes flat
out dark, especially with some of the teases to come in already announced
Season 4.
There’s A LOT to go over in
this one so let’s break it all down.
To me, this whole finale belonged to Darkness, especially
her English VA Cristina Vee.
We’ve never
seen Darkness acting so vulnerable and unsure.
Even when she thinks she’s made up her mind you can see how unhappy it
makes her parting ways with the life that gave her such happiness.
Cristina Vee digs deep for those moments,
making you love Darkness more than ever.
That said, Darkness is still Darkness so we got plenty of hilarity at
the expense of her fetishes and over the top battle happy self (her attempt at
a Xena: Warrior Princess battlecry was the best).
It was also great to see not just Kazuma,
Megumin and Aqua come to break up her wedding, but the entire Guild from Axel
showed up too.
Before that, they all
showed up to help her take down that insanely awesome Hydra.
Jeez, when you’ve got friends like these, why
would you want to do anything without them?
Seeing how Darkness’ decisions tied all the way back to
Season One was a surprise.
She’s been
holding onto the secret of Alderp holding sway over her family for a while, I’m
surprised this didn’t get out sooner.
But this wasn’t the only major call back in the finale.
The Divine Treasure plot returned and in a
big way.
Not only did we learn Alderp is
the reason Iris got her Freaky Friday necklace, but he also had the other item
Eris warned Kazuma about.
The scene
where Vanir appeared to rescue his captive “friend” Maxwell was one of the
scariest and darkest moments in KonoSuba so far.
It’s easy to forget given how much he’s
helped out Kazuma and the others that he is a villain first and foremost and he
has hidden agendas of his own.
I don’t
know which was scarier: Vanir being genuinely terrifying or Maxwell’s intro
overall, God if he shows up in Season Four he’s gonna be a major problem.
Looking past the surprising amount of dark foreshadowing
and emotion, the KonoSuba comedy was still on fire as always.
Best moments include Kazuma having to
restrain Darkness and mimic her voice to keep her guards from bursting in on
them (also wow Darkness was really gonna get busy with Kazuma until he freaked
out); Megumin playing with Kazuma’s bubble wrap; and the surprise restoration
of Darkness’ father.
Even if the mood gets
dour, it can never stay that way for long on KonoSuba.
The show is always ready to break the tension
with a clever quip or wacky facial expression.
Nowhere is this more evident than closing Episode 8 with Darkness’
farewell letter leaving the gang speechless…only for Episode 9 to open with
them demanding to see Darkness in their usual manner.
The only area of this finale where the comedy
didn’t land was the needless detour where Kazuma had to aid fellow adventurer
Dust in preventing a Noble from romancing Dust’s teammate and crush, Rin.
Given the situation with Darkness this subplot
could have been cut altogether and we could have maybe just kept the Season run
to 10 episodes with the last one being 45 minutes or something.
One last thing before we close out.
Season 3 seems to be split on who it wants to
gear up as Kazuma’s main love interest.
The first half of the season seemed to be continuing the Megumin route
begun in the Legend of Crimson Movie.
Meanwhile the second half was really pushing Darkness and Kazuma closer
together than before.
Hell, Kazuma gave
up his wealth and risked being on the run for life just to save Darkness from
Alderp.
Honestly, Megumin wasn’t helping
matters as she kept chiding Kazuma for not helping Darkness sooner, even
telling him that the man she loved would never act this way.
Clearly she’s talking about Kazuma and she
seems happy when he does go to save Darkness.
It’s giving me mixed signals and it bugs me.
Truthfully, it could go either way (though
part of me hopes Eris is an option too).
My moneys on Darkness always but still, hopefully we get a little Threes
Company comedy in Season 4 with this subplot.
So, how was Season 3 of KonoSuba?
Welllll it might not have overall been as
good as Season 1 or 2 but that’s not to say it was bad, far from it.
Some of the cringe story elements like
Kazuma’s “Onii Chan” obsession with Iris creeped me out and the series steering
into more serious matters did catch me off guard.
The show still continued strong off the
successes of Season 2 and Legend of Crimson.
The core quartet is still as gullible and loveable as ever and everyone
got to shine this season, especially Darkness.
Expanding the adventure to the Capital and involving Nobility was long
overdue and done in a way only KonoSuba could: sticking it to authority and
doing it’s own thing no matter how lewd or crude it got.
Plus there was plenty of action spectacle of
good character moments to show everyones actually grown a bit since this shows
beginning (except for Aqua, she hasn’t changed in the slightest).
As I said, Season 4 has been announced so
hopefully I wont have to wait 7 years with everyone else for more adventures
with Kazuma and company.
Cause these
guys have a standing invitation to the Gundam Anime Corner and I cant wait to
review their next adventures.
9/10
Next Week we’ve got another world traveler being
reincarnated into another world…but is it Isekai if someones being reincarnated
from the past into the present with no fantasy elements of any kind, just sweet
kick ass music?
The Gundam Anime Corner
welcomes
Ya Boy Kongming, Next Monday.
Get ready for some sick beats yall.
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