Production Aspects
Being a situationally based comedy, Konosuba is all about character reactions, it's also a comedy, and this comedy is almost entirely a parody of a fantasy adventure we all are familiar with and just having fun with playing around with it. Where it's like playing Baldur's Gate, and old RTS games like Warcraft 3 (My favourite) or newer RPG's like Bioware's Dragon Age: Inquisition except a lot sillier and stupid. Like the Nisio Isin's Monogatari series light novels, Konosuba also has a moderate focus on Meta humour, along with reaction based humour and absurd visual exaggeration through the visual department regarding character emotes and animations, as well as sharp and clever sound editing, emphasizing when Konosuba parodies escalating expectations, just to then subvert and complete smash them, with the juxtaposition of doing the opposite of what we'd normally, or rather subconsciously except as the norm.
Since it's in a comedian's nature to never to take a joke seriously, let alone his or her own, we often times don't take comedy seriously either as well, when most people don't realize, it's one of the hardest genre's to actually master and make seem organic, because comedy is largely subjective, therefor not taken as seriously as more traditional genre's that are easier to quantify and put your finger on, such as a romance or a mystery novel. It's also why comedy really has become the forefront or playground for experimentation, especially within the Film Industry - Because no sensible person would call out absurdity or jurassic change in the experimental spirit of things. (Unless it invokes a lot of what I call ISTs ex: Racist, Sexist, Misogynist etc.) In the experimental spirit of things, Konosuba has a lot to offer, as I feel not only does the original text by Natsume Akatsuki have a great sense of humour, I feel the production also has a very sharp and clever sense of humour as well, just going to show how innovative & fresh Konosuba started out to be.
Cinematography
Cinematography
Konosuba is constantly cutting, exaggerating and parodying caricatures, just to violently subvert our expectations for kinetic and explosive laughs. People say doing anything suddenly is bad, but with comedy it's a crucial asset, though in any other scenario it generally isn't. Comedy is an intellectual and diverse enough of a genre to actually benefit from breaking continuity, betraying expectations and emphasizing juxtaposition, in fact it's the secret to it, and Konosuba live's and thrives off this contrasting duality of dynamics - Constantly juxtaposing, parodying and building expectations up, just to violent subvert and smash them our expectations.
This is where cutting and transition come into play regarding the cinematography of Konosuba. Konosuba's is often choppy, flowing then breaking continuity, it's that dissonance between that transitional phase when our expectations are subverted or blown out of proportions that produces the gag, and Konosuba flourishes at it it thanks to department leaders such as head director Takaomi Kanasaki. Always opting for reaction shots and emphasis on them with Jurassic zoom cuts for establishing shots, to reaction shots. The reason for this is because of Character designer and Chief animation director Koichi Kikuta's special attention to character emotes and animations, a crucial part of what makes Konosuba just !POP! Because just as you are laughing and reacting yourself, so are the characters on screen as they are animated to emote, and the voice actors are offscreen do a fantastic job as well through their kinetic voice acting and reactions, and what seems to be like they're having the time of their lives.
Natsume Akatsuki on V.A's “The voice actors were really enthusiastic too, even if they got the OK, they asked for another take, most of them were very enthusiastic like that.”
I classify Konosuba as a wet comedy, being that it's far less of a observational comedy and far more of a interactive and subjectivist comedy - Thanks to the use of non diegetic dialogue, sequenced music that's corky and corny, as well as the comical sound effects and character animations. Rather than being like a dry comedy such as Orange is The New Black for example, where it's largely up to the viewer to engage and laugh on their own accord. This is where Kazuma plays a very prominent role - As the straight man, and therefor the protagonist as well. All situations are often staged from his perspective, with his monologue and voice, since he's usually the one trying to make sense of all the chaos characters such as Aqua or Darkness puts him through.Though I do still think that Konosuba still has quite a large element of observational humour as well, I guess only to be frequently transitioned/homogenized into more subjective and choppy takes and shot compositions. None the less Konosuba scenes are often introduced with higher angle medium long establishing shots thanks to the frequent group situations that occur, and when a particular character is singled out or made of some particular significance, perspective shifts with distance transitions zoom cut/ reaction shots and/or low angle shots sometimes with hand held properties for more unnerving scenes, often omitting the eyes with low lighting. Thanks to the frequent use of rapid cutting, distance and height transitions, Konosuba only generally reserves camera movement or sweeping zooms when showcasing special effects animations like we see Megumin often provide with her explosion magic, or basic lateral tracking shots. Along with many other things that make the editing seem provocative and choppy are the occasional use of sudden freeze frames, or deliberately cheesy slow zoom out freeze frames with exaggerated lighting to immortalize the most ridiculous moments in time within Konosuba.
Due to the emphasis on character animations, emotes and reactions, Konosuba's cinematography has far more of a frontal sense of framing because of it - To able to clearly establish character emotions as efficiently and effectively as possible, often using distance transitions and lateral profile shots to transition a scenes perspective or mood rather. Of course also being consistent with the 180 degree rule when staging action and the golden ratio to abide by, though just sparingly using shot/reverse shot patterns which I found intuitive and more creative with more out of the box thinking. Thanks to the more reaction based nature of the show, Konosuba benefits a lot from very clever sequential shot compositions, say like patterning between Kazuma's immensely perverted hand gestures with a close foreboding zoom, an escalating disgust by girls about to get their panties magically stolen, and a ridiculous parody of a fugue that's exaggerated as it's escalating dynamics for the string section, and corky choral modulation. It's this symbiotic nature between the character animations, cinematography, sequential shot composition and sequential sound editing, that gives Konosuba a really sharp and transient sense of humour.The humour isn't really all of what Konosuba is about, as Konosuba also flourishes in it's more rare subliminal and still moments, so we can soak in the mood and atmosphere from the great ambient and environmental noise, to the gorgeous colour compositions and pallets. Also having visually explosive spectacles through the gorgeous, absolutely orgastic special effects animations.
EXPLOSIONS!!
Which I guess I'll get to next...
Animation & Art direction
Spectacular animation and contrasting visuals has become something of a staple for the Konosuba production as a whole. Often times being witty, implementing out of the box thinking, such as animation directors utilizing rough cuts and deliberately doing away with on model constancy, so character emotes and animations can emphasize a more comical and exaggerated feel. In that respect Character Designer and Chief Animation Director Koichi Kikuta's character designs are flexible and eccentric working off of Kurone Mishima & Masahito Watari's original principle designs for both the manga & light novel respectively. Being that Konosuba is a situational and reaction based comedy, special attention on rendering facial animation was emphasized to have more life theatrical and life like character emotes, particularly for the more conceited and self indulgent scenes of characters such as Kazuma.
Of course, since Konosuba was clearly produced by writers and directors that are indefinitely perverts, a ridiculous amount of special attention was emphasized on innuendo, female body animations and character designs. Yes, most female characters are skimpily designed, specifically designed for the lowest of common denominators within otaku land, though as a result I dare say that due to this fetish, character design proportions and animations, while ridiculously emphasized for comedic effect, are indeed more life like and specifically rendered, thanks to all the moving "parts" and well drawn principle animations. As I've got to say from a aesthetic standpoint, the character designs, the choreography and execution of animation is just spectacular, so outstanding in fact it's to a point where even character extra's are rendered so well, I ended up actually being partially curious about them as well.Design wise, being that Konosuba largely functions as a parody, the visual component is also no exception. Designs are always familiar and archetypal of the typical fantasy genre, though with a light hearted and vibrant spin on it. Designs are beautiful in their simplicity and efficiency of the amount of line work regarding the ratio to the the amount of negative space. And each character has their own individual iconography as well as being colour coded for their archetype as a character and role they play as a combatant thanks to colour key artist in S1 Saori Yoshida, and colour designer in S2.
Kazuma's sports green with white, yellow and black accents, fitting of his shameless personality and the balance he brings to his party of extreme and overspecialized combatants. Aqua mainly sports blue, with white and yellow, and sometimes turquoise and and pink, also fitting of her easily upset and bipolar personality, as she's easily distracted as her mind wanders. Almost having the fashion sense that sailors or the undines of Aria have. Megumin sports red, with dark brown accents, yellow and tan boots. Fitting of her personality that's eccentric and extreme, though can easily be burnt out and sometimes be more amicable and warm. Darkness sports yellow, white, orange and black, fitting of her role as a paladin like crusader. Every character is made unique with their own set of contrasting colours of essentially 3 predominant hue's that compliment and contrast one another, respecting the rule of thirds and making good use of the iconography and negative space associated with their fundamental designs.
The rule of thirds take precedent regarding the colour pallet of background and setting, as leaders within Deen such as Art Director Masakazu Miyake, Saori Yoshida on Colour Design in S2, and S1's Art Designer Kazushi Fujii, tend to pick and mix a simplistic blend of balanced and contrasting hues for any particular scene, always making Konosuba looks simple and welcoming, though beautiful at the same time. Being diverse enough that finding a pattern within the selection of colours and hues is bit difficult, thanks to great lighting and detailed rendering of smaller micro textures and pigments. If I had to sum it up in a sentence though, orange hues of light, greenery and blue skies and indoor light hues of grey, blue and brown seem to take precedent as some of the main colour schemes utilized within Konosuba, and to great effect at that. Architecture, like Attack on Titan seems somewhat more derivative of Germanic architecture, and waitresses outfits and such seem to be a dead giveaway as well. Negative space common within the Germanic architecture is rendered with more pigmentation and texture adding to the already great principle design that the more traditional architecture has. Always having an acute sense of linearity, right angles and negative space that's often patterned with various intensities of the same hue, often being toped off with either rounder or triangular rooftops or sections.
Konosuba also integrates the use of CG particle effects & 3D alike amazingly well. First off, backgrounds are always a balanced blend between CG - 3DCG - Analogue methods, and all of which is seamlessly transitioned throughout an episode to episode basis and very well with traditional 2D animations. In fact without paying attention, you may not even notice that Konosuba implements 3DCG backgrounds being that Konosuba utilizes depth of field transitions and effects to make it hard to tell since a lot of things end up being shallow and out of focus, as well as the heavy tendency to use cuts and frontal framings instead of camera mobility and tracking shots, even despite Konosuba actually feeling incredibly lively and eccentric. Another factor is just how well rendered backgrounds and objects can be in a scene as textures and real time lighting was phenomenal, and how effectively they blend static images (Cut outs) within 3D environments. Takeshi Saito's amazing special effects within Konosuba, for me was the icing on the cake, as the particle effects, advanced real time lighting effects, not to mention the actual colour usage was absolutely incredible for how rich Konosuba's use for magic is within the anime. Having all the pop and razzle dazzle one would need in an anime for a life time.
A truly orgastic and spectacular special effects experience similar to that of Ufotable production such as Tales of Zestiria X or Studio Deen's own "Space Dandy" led by director Shinichirō Watanabe. I think how 3DCG Director Kana Imagaki and other leaders within Deen such as special effects master Takeshi Saito were masterful in blending CG - 3DCG - Analogue methods as such a cohesive whole, as I haven't seen such advancement and prowess from many other productions in the digital field of things regarding animation, blended so beautifully well with more traditional methods.
