Literature / KonoSuba

With heroes like these... Who needs better heroes?^note From left to right: Kazuma Satou, Aqua, Megumin, Darkness.

"To some folks out there, I bet this looks like the perfect setup, but from where I'm sitting, it's a recipe for disaster!"

— Kazuma Satou

Konosuba: God's Blessing on This Wonderful World!, originally Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! (この素晴らしい世界に祝福を!, Blessing this Wonderful World!), is a 2013-2020 seventeen-volume light novel series written by Natsume Akatsuki and illustrated by Kurone Mishima, with a first anime adaptation by Studio DEEN released at the winter 2016 block.

Kazuma Satou is a hikikomori who died pushing a girl out of the way of a truck, only to wind up in the presence of Aqua, a beautiful self-proclaimed goddess... who proceeds to mock him for his embarrassing demise,^note It wasn't a truck, it was a slow-moving tractor that was fully prepared to stop on its own; his actual cause of death was shock-induced cardiac arrest due to thinking he'd been run over. As he died he also pissed himself, and both his family and the hospital staff laughed at how stupid his death was before giving him a choice: either go to Heaven to lead a boring afterlife, start over on Earth as a baby... or reincarnate with his current body and memories in a different world in order to defeat a demon king who terrorizes it.

Given his past life as an avid gamer, Kazuma picks the latter option, after which he was told to choose anything, an item or ability of any type, to bring into the new world with him. And out of sheer spite, he chooses Aqua as his "cheat" item to bring. And with that done the two are both dragged into a fantasy world of grand adventure...

...Oh, how Kazuma wishes it were that easy. Instead, he is stuck with three "problem children": Aqua, the narcissistic water goddess; Megumin, a delusional Child Mage; and Darkness, a masochistic lady-knight.

Crunchyroll is streaming the anime under the title God's Blessing on this Wonderful World!, which can be viewed here for audiences worldwide except for Asia, Spain, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand; and German, French, Italian, and Dutch Speaking Europe. The light novels and manga have been licensed by Yen Press.

---

Blessing this Wonderful World with Tropes:

Tropes #-H

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects:
  • The Snow Sprites in 1x07 are rendered in CGI, leaving their animation somewhat sluggish compared to everyone else.
  • The horses in episode 2x07. While they are cel-shaded to fit in with the animation, the fact that they have full idle poses while everything else around them has Limited Animation makes them stick out like a sore thumb, and they look like they're capped to the animation's framerate (probably 12 frames per second) as opposed to the video framerate, resulting in jerky, stuttering movements that call further attention to them, with a closeup that is very clearly done with hand-drawn animation before cutting back to the CG. The carts they pull are also clearly CGI, as are their drivers when static.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The Winter Shogun's blade slices Darkness's sword in half when it attacks her.
• Action Bomb: The OPs of both seasons have these rocks with derp faces that explode when hit hard enough.
• Actor Allusion: In the Drama CD Maaya Uchida voices chuunibyou magician Megumin. Maaya Uchida's most well known role is that of Rikka Takanashi from Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!, a character that essentially codified that trope in anime.
• Adaptational Curves: The Legend of Crimson movie gave this to most of the female cast. Especially noticeable with Arue and Sylvia, who went from small-chested to having breasts bigger than their heads.
• Adaptation Deviation: While the differences between the original Web Novel and Light Novel versions of the story are minimal, two specific parts near the end of the series are completely different in the Light Novel version:
  • In the Web Novel, it was revealed that the Demon King was actually just another reincarnated Japanese human that was sent to that world by Aqua with a "cheat item", only to decide to use it to take over that world with Kazuma realizing that everything they had to deal with was Aqua's fault to begin with. In the Light Novel however, while the Demon King still has a Japanese name, he genuinely was born a Demon from that world and admitted that while he knows about Japan, he himself has never actually been there and we never learn why he actually waged war against humanity in the first place before Kazuma kills him.
  • After Kazuma dies while taking the Demon King with him in the Web Novel, Eris reveals that there are actually more than one Demon King in her world with each one stronger than the last, with the series ending with Kazuma continuing to fight the other Demon Kings. In the Light Novel however, this was removed entirely.
• Adaptation Distillation:
  • Wiz's debut is reduced to a quick flashback narrated by Kazuma as he and Aqua visit her shop.
  • Dust swapping parties with Kazuma for a day is removed.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • The anime changes the fight with Hans to be much more climactic: In the novels, Kazuma's plan to beat him was simply have Wiz drain most of his mana dry, have her freeze Hans, and then let Megumin unleash her power on him. In the anime, this got expanded into a full-on Thanatos Gambit, where he lures Hans into a crater, lets Wiz and Megumin go all out, and then Aqua annihilates him with the power of her followers' prayer.
  • Legend of Crimson expands on the fight with Sylvia. In the light novel, she is killed by a shot from the gun she was weak against. In The Movie, she manages to will herself back to life and assimilate Verdia and Hans. This leads to a much longer, more epic fight that involves the main cast, Wiz and Vanir, and the entire Crimson Demon village.
• Adaptational Protagonist: The "Legend of Crimson" movie condenses parts of the relevant volumes as well as the spinoffs that star Megumin (which depict her misadventures before winding up in the town of Axel and joining Kazuma's party). As a result, she becomes the Deuteragonist alongside Kazuma.
• Adventure Guild: The branch in Axel not only serves as a recruiting and quest-hunting centre, but also as a pub house as well.
• Ambiguously Brown: Alcanretia, city of holy water and hot springs has a noticeably sizable population of dark-skinned people, in contrast to the predominantly European-looking people in Axel.
• Amphibian at Large: Giant frogs with comical faces are a recurring enemy, and defeating them is more messy than triumphant.
• And the Adventure Continues:
  • The original web novel ended with Kazuma successfully taking out the Demon King with a point-blank suicide Explosion. In the afterlife, he rejects Eris's reward of reincarnating him back on Earth in a wealthy, loving family with two beautiful sisters (his original wish to Eris). Instead, he chooses to return to Aqua. To his dismay, Eris promptly tells him that the Demon King was just the first of many, each one exponentially stronger than the last, before wishing him luck on his new journey.
  • The anime's second season ends with the characters returning home after their fight with Hans and getting ready to continue with their lives, the same way as before. After the credits roll, Kazuma states the true battle is only beginning.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Megumin's sister, Komekko. Volume 11 shows her as this in full throttle.
• Apocalyptic Log: Parodied with the diary of the scientist who built the Destroyer. It begins like a classic example, then turns more and more informal, starts using "shiiiiiiit" like punctuation, and rather than ending in the usual ominous cliffhanger, the last words are of him calling whoever built the thing a complete idiot, right before remembering he's the one who did it. The readers end up understandably flabbergasted.
• Armor of Invincibility: One exists in the form of Aegis, considered the most advanced of the artifacts that the Japanese could choose from. It holds that title because it is invulnerable to damage, heals the user as a passive effect, and is sentient.
• Artistic License – Physics: When the Destroyer is about to "release its internally stored heat" and melt the entire town of Axle, the characters' solution is to.... cast Explosion. Which generates heat. Heat which would be added to the heat the Destroyer is already venting, due to the conservation of energy. Justified by Rule of Cool and the setting's wonky RPG Mechanics 'Verse.
• Art Shift: When Kazuma reaches his Rage Breaking Point after a little girl tries to scam him into joining the Axis Cult, the animation adopts a much different style with exaggerated outlines for the last several seconds of the episode.
• Astral Checkerboard Decor: The purgatory dimension where Kazuma ends up in after dying has a chessboard floor pattern.
• At Arm's Length: In 1x05, Kazuma holds Aqua back by her face as she flails her arms futilely to retrieve the dangerous request of putting down a griffin and manticore.
• Attractiveness Isolation: Soketto is often regarded as the most beautiful woman among the Crimson Demons. However she lives alone and has a limited social circle. It's insinuated her ability to predict the future is also responsible. Fortunately there's one person that ability does not work on: Bukkororii.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Explosion is considered the most powerful spell in the world, but it's so mana-costly that even users who don't immediately collapse like Megumin can still only do it once a day. It can also put the user and their allies at risk if fired too close, and is suicidal to use in underground dungeons. Because of all this, most people view it as a joke of a spell.
• Battle Harem:
  • One jealous adventurer lampshades it when claiming Kazuma doesn't deserve a party full of beautiful, powerful girls, and wishes he could be the harem protagonist instead. He ends up changing his mind after he switched parties with Kazuma for a day, to the point where he begged to switch back.
  • Played straight with Kyouya Mitsurugi, whose female party members argue over the right to be his girlfriend.
• Beleaguered Boss: As party leader, Kazuma has to deal with three cripplingly overspecialized girls who take turns holding the Idiot Ball and being The Load. They endlessly annoy him and there are many instances he'd be happy to be rid of them.
• Beware the Silly Ones:
  • Despite how each and every member of the Axis Cult is a Cloudcuckoolander in some way or another, there's two things they are terrifyingly serious about: demons and heretics.
    Alcanretia angry mob: [chanting] Slay the demons! Defeat the Devil King!
  • The Crimson Demon clan is known for being a bunch of utterly insane and delusional people. However, anyone who takes them lightly for that is in for a rude awakening, as the other thing they're known for is unbelievable magic power. To the point that they treat invasions by the Devil King's army as minor annoyances at best.
• Bio-Augmentation: Volume 5 reveals that the Crimson Magic Clan originated from chuunibyou humans who had their magic talent genetically enhanced. Oh and the idiot who came up with the idea to enhance said delusional mages in the first place? Why, the same numbskull who created the Destroyer, that's who.
• Bittersweet Ending: The anime's second season ends with the heroes defeating yet another one of the Demon King's generals, even when his plan to cripple Alcanretia's economy succeeds after Aqua uses a form of God Requiem so powerful the medicinal hot springs water turned into ordinary hot water. The light novels reveal this was actually a Belated Happy Ending. The anime does not include part of the epilogue in volume 4. It wasn't entirely a disaster — if anything, it was a blessing in disguise, as the resulting water was extremely potent holy water. Those who bath in it are cured of injury, and it is a potent weapon against the undead. This would in the long term prove to be even more marketable and thus profitable than were Alcanretia to remain a hot springs town.
• Blob Monster: One of the many ways that the world of Konosuba throws typical JRPG setting tropes on their heads is that, rather than being lowly EXP fodder, slimes are considered one of the most dangerous monsters in the world, as they're all but impervious to physical damage and their elemental resistance traits tend to be high. Mercifully, they're incredibly rare, but they're The Dreaded to any native adventurer. A Poison Slime is even one of the Demon King's generals.
• Blunt "Yes": While preparing for the Destroyer, Darkness asks Kazuma if he really thinks she'll prioritize her masochistic pleasures over protecting Alcanretia.
  Kazuma: Yeah. Obviously.
  Darkness: Wha—
• Book Ends:
  • The web novel ended exactly as it had began; Kazuma in the afterlife being summoned into the fantasy world, and choosing a goddess to take with him. The twist is that he ended up choosing Eris to get back at Aqua for pissing him off.
  • Episode 3 of season 2 starts with Kazuma questioning what he's doing with his life after one of Megumin's Explosions creates a rainbow. He finds himself asking himself the same thing at the end, when he witnesses Aqua puking up a rainbow, after he spent all his Eris on alcohol.
• Bound and Gagged: The Bind skill ties up the target with magic rope, which is hard to untie without dispelling. Lugkraft subjects both Kazuma and Darkness to the "gagged" part.
• Brains Evil, Brawn Good: One of the reasons the world is in such a dilemma is that Belzerg's value system enshrines that using subterfuge or "underhanded tactics" are inferior ways to win a battle, and that the Demon King should only be defeated by overpowered adventurers. Kazuma's quick wit, Combat Pragmatism, and more than a little luck start turning the tide against the Demon King, at the cost of his own reputation.
• Breather Episode: After the relatively dark and drama-heavy Volume 7, Volume 8 is a rather low-stakes Festival Episode, bringing the comedy back into full swing and with high doses of Ship Teasing.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: The whole "resurrect in a fantasy world with a super powerful weapon or magical power" premise is an allusion to MMORPGs where the game progression is ruined by a cash shop that sells leveled accounts and powerful, exclusive gear. Kazuma, Aqua, and most other Japanese transplants liken it to cheating.
• Brick Joke: In several episodes, Megumin (and occasionally Kazuma) sings a song with the lyrics of, "bakuretsu, bakuretsu, la, la, la" (explosion, explosion, la, la, la). In the second season, Aqua uses the same tune to sing a song with the lyrics of, "otakara, otakara, la, la, la" (treasure, treasure, la, la, la).
  • In volume 1, Kazuma states that he, as an advocate of "gender equality", Would Drop Kick a Girl. In volume 15, he does exactly that against Celestina.
• Brilliant, but Lazy:
  • Kazuma can be surprisingly effective as a Combat Pragmatist and can reverse engineer some Earth technology, but tends to laze around if he's sitting on a lot of money.
  • The Hikikomori members of the Crimson Magic Clan are powerful arch wizards capable of fending off the Demon King's army.
  • The creator of the Destroyer is a reincarnated Japanese man who was given the power of creation who at first attempted to make a weapon that could destroy the Demon King but gave up after months of anguish and used his powers to create whatever he wanted. Despite his laziness, his creations have huge influence on the world besides The Dreaded Destroyer, he also modified some humans that would become the Crimson Demons as described above, an Anti-Magic weapon called the Mage Destroyer that is immune and negates all magic and a magical rifle that needs the power of Megumin's Explosion and plenty of Aqua's magic to be fully charged and can one-shot the Mage Destroyer.
• Bullying a Dragon: Megumin does this to Verdia in Episode 4, talking big about how her constant casting of Explosion on the abandoned castle he was living at was all a ploy to bring him out and face off against the adventurers in Axel. Though he seemed to only want to leave them with a warning, she continues to taunt him, causing him to cast a curse on her which would kill her in seven days. However, Darkness intercepts the spell, and Aqua easily dispels it after he leaves.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Aqua's low intelligence keeps getting her into trouble, but Kazuma is also a frequent target of the world's abuse. It doesn't help that they always blame each other for all the misery they get.
  • Despite their strength, even some of the antagonists (Verdia, Vanir, Sylvia, etc) suffer from the zaniness of the world and the party.
• By the Lights of Their Eyes:
  • The Crimson Magic Clan are named after their deep red eyes, which radiate in varying intensity to the person's emotion state. In the dark they give off an "eye shine" that can be seen without a light source.
  • Baptized members of the Axis Cult have a strange glow that seems to emit from the back of their eyes, whenever they think of Aqua or are converting others to their faith. It's a sign of their insanity and the blessing of Aqua.
• Call-Back: In Volume 15, Kazuma forces Serena to do a hundred squats and push-ups similar to how he forced Darkness to do the same in the first season OVA.
• The Call Knows Where You Live: After Kazuma defeats Wolbach and foils his plans in Elroad, the Demon King starts making plans to attack Axel.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Vanir claims that both Kazuma and Darkness are attracted to one another, but are too afraid of destroying their friendship by taking it to the next level, thus they feign ignorance. Kazuma later analyzes his relationship with Megumin and thinks manga/light novel readers would normally be screaming at them to just get together already, but it's a lot different when he is also pretty conflicted with where his heart truly lay. In volume 9, during an intimate moment with Megumin, he apologizes to all the anime, manga and light novel protagonists he criticized for doing nothing in the same situation.
• Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them: Kazuma notes how he never realizes how helpful Darkness and Megumin are to his party's lineup and tactics until they have to step out.
• Casting Gag:
  • OVA depicts Megumin as a mad Mecha-otaku after between the series and her, Rie Takahashi played the role of a similar character in the adaptation of Knight's & Magic.
  • Probably the only thing that was known by Arnie Pantoja before getting the role of the shut-in gamer/otaku loser guy Kazuma was being in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders as Nukesaku, a minor vampire that got whacked easily by Jotaro, being called "nimrod" or other derogative loser terms by other enemies. In other words, a fellow loser guy. And for further hilarity, Verdia the Dullahan is voiced by Patrick Seitz AKA DIO. Therefore, DIO now got a taste of how it feels to be humiliated by his absolutely lowest ranking servant.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Kazuma and Chris bicker about what they should name their thieving group while they flee from the Royal Palace's guards.
• Central Theme: The idea that despite not being perfect or ideal, this world still offers plenty of simple joys and well-earned victories to be treasured.
• Chained Heat: Darkness Invokes this on Kazuma in an effort to get him to pay his taxes, and even weighs herself down with heavy weights to prevent him from lifting her up and running away. He gets away with not paying his taxes, but they're stuck having to go to the restroom, bathe, and sleep together until they can find the key. Megumin Exploits this so Kazuma and Darkness can peacefully resolve their Unresolved Sexual Tension, now that Kazuma and Megumin are sort of in a relationship.
• Chest Monster: Double-subverted. Kazuma and Aqua encountered a suspicious chest while exploring a dungeon, and to test whether or not it is a monster, Kazuma throws a rock at it. The chest itself is not a monster, but the wall behind the chest is.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Subverted in episode 2x09. While relaxing in the Alcanretia hot springs, Megumin and Darkness discuss Kazuma and mention that even though he's a massive perv he's a good guy at heart. However, it turns out to be a trick to find out if he's peeping on them in the hot springs. He is, obviously. Darkness promptly punches him out.
• Chromatic Arrangement: Kazuma (green), Aqua (blue), and Megumin (red), followed by Darkness (yellow).
• Chuunibyou:
  • The Crimson Magic Clan is an entire race of mages with overblown fantasies, down to the ridiculous clothes, nonsensical introductions, weird names, and, of course, overpowered magic. Later, it's revealed they were founded by the same Japanese transplant otaku who created Mobile Fortress Destroyer.
  • Also Inverted. Japanese chuuni often adopt ornate English or German-sounding nonsense names to sound more exotic. Whereas the Crimson Demons, who live in a western-style fantasy land that seems exotic to your average Japanese light novel reader, all have extremely common Japanese names with a minor twist (such as tacking an 'N' to the end of Megumi, or reduplicating Yun and Yui) that stand out from the absurd fake western-style names like Lalatina Dustiness Ford or Alderp that also sound they they were invented by a chuuni, yet are treated as normal by the world's inhabitants.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe:
  • This is how characters (specifically Aqua's companions) try to justify Aqua being able to use goddess-level powers despite not being a goddess: Since, in the Axis Cult, people's skills in Holy Magic and faith are tied to how completely bonkers they are, a person crazy enough to honestly believe they are the goddess Aqua and to mimic her name and appearance would naturally have enough Holy Magic to use skills like Resurrection and God Blow.
  • Played straight at the end of Volume 4 (specifically the anime's second season of the same event), where the Alcanretians' prayers empower Aqua's God Blow enough completely obliterate Hans.
• Clothing Damage: Happens to Darkness during the cabbage event. She intercepts attacks meant for some adventurers who had been knocked down. Sections of her armor start breaking off as she sustains more hits, and eventually even her clothing starts getting ripped. However, later in the day, her gear is completely restored after said event is finished.
• Color-Coded Characters: A subtle example with the main characters. Kazuma is green (eyes, jersey, and cloak), Aqua is blue, Megumin is red, and Darkness is yellow.
• Combination Attack: Combining spells of different elemental types requires decades of practice, unless it is performed with a soulmate. Though Soketto and Bukkororii are oblivious to this knowledge, it occurs when their spells are cast in close range.
  • Megumin and Yunyun are able to combine their Signature Move, Explosion and Light of Saber, because they're Vitriolic Best Buds with a Friendly Rivalry.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • When Megumin justifies her Crippling Overspecialization with Explosion, she declares it with such passion Aqua agrees with her. Kazuma meanwhile wants to dump her as soon as possible, but Megumin clings onto him and begs him not to abandon her like every other party has done, even blackmailing him by making him look like a paedophile.
  • Darkness gets a little too turned on at being hit with a curse that would kill her in seven days, and then imagines all the torture she would be subjected to by Verdia. Even he is creeped out by it, enough to make him hastily bolt out. Additionally, when Kazuma is chewing out Aqua for blowing all her money away and not being very useful to the group, Darkness wishes that he would verbally abuse her in the same manner as well.
  • After Kyouya loses a duel with Kazuma, his female companions disagree with the way he won. Kazuma threatens to steal their panties in public if they wanted to duel him as well. While Megumin attempts to cover her skirt due to having lost her panties to him days ago, Darkness has an excited look on her face at that prospect.
  • When Aqua is being attacked by monster alligators during a lake purification quest, Darkness wishes she were in the former's safety cage, all the while Aqua is frantically attempting to do her duties as though her life depended on it.
• Compressed Adaptation: Wiz and Dust both had proper introductions that were removed from the anime adaptation. In Wiz's case, her first meeting with Aqua and Kazuma gets a few lines of voiceover and some still images (despite it being an essential plot point for that episode's events), whereas the scenario where Kazuma and Dust switch parties for a day is missing entirely. Incidentally, the first season is two episodes shorter than your average light novel adaptation.
• Corpsing: Two instances, both In-Universe.
  • In Season 2 Episode 4 Kazuma and Aqua try to stifle their laughter after hearing that Darkness's real name is "Lalatina".
  • In Volume 12, there's an intense scene were Darkness essentially confesses her love to Kazuma, and she tries to end the conversation by leaving dramatically... but she forgets that they're still handcuffed together and falls flat on her face. Kazuma can't help but burst out laughing at the sudden change in tone.
• Crapsaccharine World: While the series definitely does not portray the world as sunshine and rainbows, if you weren't paying attention to the details you'd think it was relatively peaceful. However the casual way characters describe the darker parts of the world can be quite disturbing.
  • The only reason why Axel is somewhat peaceful is because of the presence of both the lich Wiz and the dullahan Verdia, one of the Demon Lord's generals. Monsters avoid the former, while the Demon Lord's lesser subordinates do so out of respect for him. Everywhere else lay at the mercy of demon raids and monster sieges.
  • The people tend to have some sort of Gallows Humor regarding their existence in a world beset by the Demon Lord. Their annual thanksgiving celebrations for Eris is actually a time of prayer for a chance to survive at least a year (instead of wealth or good health), while Aqua casually states that people don't bother giving birthday presents to each other because they don't expect to live too long.
  • Then there's the premise where the reason they are bringing in people from Japan is because the people of this world outright refuse to reincarnate back into it. It's also worth noting that the gods are so anxious about defeating the Demon Lord, so they provide Japanese heroes with their choice of various cheat items like the Infinity +1 Sword or Armor of Invincibility to speed up the process. So far, only a few actually managed to defeat various Demon Lords, with each successful hero being married into the royal family. This, however, brings on another issue since it is heavily implied that the current Demon Lord is actually a Japanese person himself.
  • Though it's played off as a comedic moment, agricultural crops gain the ability to move and become violent upon harvest season. To give an idea of how dangerous these crops are, in a community of powerful mages, Crimson Magic Clan farmers are some of the most powerful in the community because of the nigh-daily combat they face subjugating their crops. Axel does not suffer from starvation or food shortages because it lies on a major migration route, has an early warning system, and benefits from the large standing army of adventurers to "harvest" these crops. Communities lacking these fortuitous advantages are not so lucky.
  • Due to constant monster attacks, basic education for children is an alien concept, as they either become adventurers and join the meat-grinder, or they learn a trade to assist adventurers. The only known exceptions are the tourist city of Alcanretia, the home base of the Aqua-worshipping Axis Cult, who are so annoying that not even the Demon Lord would want to go anywhere nearby, and the Crimson Magic Clan's Magic Academy, whose students are collectively powerful enough to repel the Demon Lord's armies.
  • Curative spells are a rare commodity among adventurers, removing a key pillar of the Damager, Healer, Tank tactics that are vital to survival. Part of this is because Healing Magic Is the Hardest, but another contributing factor is the world's greatest source of healers, the Axis Cult, is considered an incredibly dangerous religion.
  • Wiz is recognized as one of the most powerful spell casters in the world, having once been the member of an epic tier adventurer party. Said group nearly suffered a Total Party Kill via a curse, the aftermath of which resulted in Wiz becoming a lich and serving the Demon Lord she was supposed to defeat. The Demon Lord has only gotten stronger since then.
• Crippling Overspecialization: This is basically the reason why Kazuma's team is such a handful.
  • Aqua suffers from this the least. While her skillset is limited to water magic, healing magic, and purification magic, she has enough variety to be extremely useful in plenty of different ways. Still, a major reason for being so useful is the huge power of her magic, which makes up for the limited variety. However, her (literal) god-tier Turn Undead magic is only useful against undead, which the party only occasionally comes across, and even when they do, it's probably because Aqua attracted them in the first place. Even then, her main problems with applying her skillset effectively are that she's a moron and also she's too paranoid to tell Kazuma what she's capable of doing until she absolutely has to, because she's afraid of Kazuma abandoning her if he decides she's useless.
  • Darkness is a serious case: she has extremely high strength and endurance, but nothing else. In addition, she can't even make proper use of her high strength, because she's so clumsy that she's terrible at hitting targets. As a result, pretty much her only use on the battlefield is to tank damage. However, one redeeming quality is that, as a noble, she is useful off the battlefield due to her influence and connections.
  • Megumin is the worst offender in Kazuma's party. She is a mage but can only cast one kind of magic, Explosion, an extremely powerful destructive area-of-effect spell. And as if only knowing how to use Explosion wasn't bad enough, the fact that she puts all her skill points in it has resulted in its mana cost being way too high for her to handle. As a result, she collapses due to exhaustion every time she uses it and needs about a day to recover enough mana to cast it again.
  • Conversely, because of his party members' crippling overspecializations, Kazuma is forced into being a Master of None, sticking to the basic Adventurer class so that he can learn a variety of skills to make up for their shortcomings. While Kazuma's cunning and high Luck means that he often puts these skills to good use, particularly in non-combat situations, it is nonetheless telling that his level is far lower than that of his fellow party members.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Kazuma's party as a collective whole. Their personality and combat quirks make them individually incompetent, and the leader is constantly berating the girls for their antics because of it, but when they listen to him and work together, there's signs of them being the world's best chance at overthrowing the Demon King.
  • Writ large with the Crimson Demon clan, an entire race of Chuunibyou wizards that run entirely on badass bombastic speeches that looks absolutely ridiculous to everyone else in the world (and even one or two of their own number). But they are completely capable of backing those speeches up, as shown when a unit of the Demon Lord's forces, over a thousand strong and led by a highly magic-resistant general, try to take on fifty Crimson Demons. It's a magical slaughter, and the mages aren't even TRYING.
• Cult: The Axis Cult is featured in Volumes 4 and 8, and is infamous for its adherents' zaniness and stupidity. Considering it's the Faith of Aqua, none of their antics are truly surprising.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Kazuma easily defeats Kyouya during their duel in episode five. He ends up stealing the latter's sword, then bopping him on the head with it.
  • Verdia easily defeats some random adventurers when they attempt to attack him all at once during his second appearance on Axel. Just one swing of his sword and they fell. It took less time than for the dullahan's head to rise and fall back into his hands.
• Cute Monster Girl: The Succubus that gets caught in Kazuma's Manor in Episode 9.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check:
  • The Succubi in this world realized that they would get a lot better reception, and could make a decent profit, by selling their abilities to make anyone dream whatever they wanted as a legitimate service.
  • While they aren't evil per se, Kazuma teaches the Axis Cult that they could make more money (and get a better reputation) during the festival if they perform legitimate services instead of trying to scam people into joining their religion. Their zealous nature actually ends with them outperforming the Eris cult.
• Cutting the Knot: When the monsters hiding in Keele's dungeon start causing trouble for nearby townspeople, Kazuma initially plans to just blow up the dungeon and hope whatever is hiding in there gets caught in the cave-in.
• Cyber Ninja: The Bomber Majin Moguninnin is a robotic ninja that destroys its enemies with Detonation magic. It also specifically targets overpowered Japanese people who are too content with their lives.
• Damager, Healer, Tank: Megumin, Aqua and Darkness, respectively; while there are occasions where he assists in these areas, Kazuma predominantly fills the Utility Party Member role.
• Dancing Theme: In the anime's second season opening, the "dancing" consists of the main cast lazily waving their arms and hips from side to side.
• Deader than Dead:
  • By the will of the gods, resurrection magic only works once, and on people who die prematurely. People who die natural deaths (i.e., of sickness or old age) aren't allowed to be resurrected. Necromancers and the undead violate this rule, and thus are considered abominations by the gods. Kazuma, however, gets to break this rule, since Aqua has institutional seniority over the goddess who oversees resurrections.
    • This is a plot point in Volume 7: while watching over Darkness's sick and dying father, Darkness tells him that resurrection magic wouldn't work. But since his sickness was caused by a devil's curse there wasn't a threat of this being the case.
  • In volume 16, when Kazuma enters Limbo after killing the Demon King with a point-blank Explosion, he looks down and realizes he no longer has a body, implying he died in a way that destroyed his mortal body and prevented it from being resurrected. He gets better though, as the gods decide that defeating the Demon King is a worthy enough action to warrant recreating his body.
• Deathbed Confession: Spoofed in the OVA-exclusive Episode 11. Kazuma, unable to get a cursed wish-granting choker off his neck, confesses to the girls so he can die with a clear conscience. Naturally, his confessions are all perverted: he tells Megumin that whenever he carries her he shifts her so he can feel her small boobs against his back, he says that when he talks to Wiz and Yunyun he's constantly staring at their chests, and admits that he basically just sees Darkness as a giant walking pair of breasts. As for Aqua... he admits that she's such a pain in the ass that, despite his best efforts, he simply can't view her in a sexual manner. Since his actual wish for some "peace and quiet" was granted, this means he doesn't actually die... at least until the girls send him off to another audience with Eris.
• Death by Origin Story: Kazuma is killed right off the bat. However, he is quickly resurrected in a new world to fight a demon lord as a consequence of keeping his memories and receiving a cheat item.
• Death Is Not Permanent: When someone dies in this verse, they have an option to reincarnate somewhere, or just stay in Heaven forever. This trope also applies to resurrection spells working on Kazuma in the fantasy world, despite the practice being illegal, because Aqua and Eris, both goddesses, are able to bend that rule in his favor.
• Debut Queue: In the anime, the first few episodes introduce the various girls that join up with Kazuma.
• Deceptively Cute Critter: Tranquility Girls are a type of plant monster that takes the form of a helpless and/or injured little girl that employs a Wounded Gazelle Gambit to guilt-trip adventurers that pass by into protecting it forever. If they try to leave, the Tranquility Girl will employ the use of addictive fruits that have no nutritional value, resulting in their prey dying from malnutrition. Once dead, the Tranquility Girl can use the corpse as fertilizer. They're considered so dangerous that other adventurers would put up warnings telling anyone who encounters one to kill it on sight.
• Deconstructive Parody: Konosuba takes pretty much every trope and character archetype associated with "Isekai" stories, and RPG games and either deconstruct, subverts, or inverts them, sometimes just to play them straight again later but always in a hilarious manner.
  • Of light novels that reincarnate ordinary humans as heroes into a fantasy world. The way Kazuma died is specifically a parody of Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation. The deconstruction part is that, unlike most NEET protagonists that reincarnate, Kazuma isn't really able to turn his life around significantly, due to a combination of having less luck in recruiting comrades and occasionally snapping back to his pre-reincarnation habits. He just doesn't have any motivation to do anything but recreate his NEET circumstances.
  • It also addresses the question of why the deities would reincarnate a random person to save an entire world, even if they died in a noble way: as it turns out, they make the offer of reincarnation to everybody in the hopes that if they throw enough wannabe heroes with a cheat item into the world, one of them will defeat the Devil King eventually - while some are exactly as successful as the genre normally paints them (there's an entire royal line descended from one of them), many either fail to accomplish anything or die again in short order - if Kazuma hadn't had Aqua to resurrect him every time he died, he wouldn't have lasted the first month.
  • Contrasting conventions where heroes embark on adventures for reasons other than financial gain or can sustain comfortably on quest bounties, the majority of adventurers are effectively low-income temp workers. For them, quests are an irregular source of income that provide just enough money to live on, such that they will resort to part-time gigs if they can't find other work. If you want constant quests, then you have to be willing to accept any kind of quest, no matter how boring, lame, or dangerous it might be, and you might not be qualified for some quests anyways.
  • It's also a reversal on the trend of such protagonists becoming charismatic powerhouses in their new world. Kazuma is stuck with a rock-bottom-tier class, and his companions, while top-tier, tend to have ridiculously unbalanced specializations to the point that they make themselves look more like liabilities than assets. Kazuma's perversion quickly gets him labels such as "the brute" or "Trash-zuma".
  • It also has an alternate take on the Harem Genre, where male observers of the quartet enviously mistake Kazuma as the luckiest man alive to have such beautiful companions, unaware of the sheer psychological pressure of handling his three "problem children" and all the dysfunction that comes with them.
  • Veterans of Tabletop RPG and Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game often remark on the hilarious antics of Kazuma's party, which remind them of personal experiences when "serious" gamers are paired up with "casual" gamers, and the chaos that ensues when they clash. Another common comparison is the case of a veteran gamer opening a new account (Kazuma) having to party with several newbies who purchased high-level characters from gold farmers.
  • Kyouya Mitsurugi, another Japanese transplant, is a walking Take That! to the Chosen One trope commonly associated with the fantasy genre, being everything Kazuma is not — a Bishōnen who has the Cursed Sword "Gram", an Infinity +1 Sword, as his reincarnation perk, is specifically tasked by Aqua to fight the Demon Lord, is accompanied by two cute girls who bicker over him, and lives on a creed of Honor Before Reason. Naturally, not only does Kazuma resent the unfair advantage, but also discovers that without Gram he's a mere pushover.
    • Additionally, Kazuma would have a cheat item like Kyouya, if he didn't try to be clever (and spiteful) by choosing the goddess of the afterlife as his cheat item. Turns out that having a literal goddess at your beck and call doesn't do much for you if you antagonize said goddess and refuse to play to her strengths. Which leaves Kazuma with effectively nothing but outrageous luck (which can be good or bad).
  • The Point Build System is deconstructed in Megumin's spinoff, where her clan's optimal build is to only spend skill points on Advanced Magic, but not Beginner or Intermediate Magic. This means the students cannot use any real attack magic until they have enough skill points to learn advanced magic, even if they perfectly understand how to cast said magic. This leads to a rather amusing scene where the teachers help them power level by freezing an enemy in place while letting them bash it to death.
    • However, the above is also played seriously when Megumin, Yunyun, and Komekko are at the mercy of several monsters, forcing Yunyun to spend her skill points on Intermediate Magic in order to survive and then slowly grind enough levels in the background across several books until finally earning enough skill points to unlock Teleportation by the ninth novel.
  • In-universe, there's a picture book that further deconstructs the idea of giving cheat abilities to reincarnated heroes, especially if those "heroes" don't have any of Kazuma (such as they are) and Kyouya's virtues. The protagonist of the story lets the cheat powers go to his head and becomes a comically insufferable "solo player" who only fights the Demon King for fame and fortune. In the end, his less than heroic motivations lead him to become the next Demon King. It's unknown if this was based on actual events in the novel's setting.
  • Even Megumin and Darkness could be considered parodies of their respective classes by taking their roles to their logical conclusion. Archwizards are supposed to cast destructive spells, which Megumin takes to extremes by being a one-shot Glass Cannon. Crusaders are supposed to defend their allies, which Darkness also takes to extremes by being a Stone Wall incapable of landing a single hit.
  • Surprisingly, Kazuma eventually does fulfill the tradition of isekai series heroes finding more success in the other world than in their original life. This also gets deconstructed. While he did manage to become rich, he never really grows out of his NEET mentality like other protagonists usually do, causing him to coast on his riches now that he no longer has to risk his life to make ends meet.
  • As much as can be expected for an RPG Mechanics 'Verse. The easy monsters near Axel have been hunted to extinction (unless herded in by a "Rookie Killer"-type). Monsters don't explode into money or items when they die; the guild offers a delivery service to bring them back to town and then you get paid accordingly after the service takes a fee. The nearby beginner dungeon has been thoroughly ransacked. New adventurers don't get "starter" equipment or anything for free, even having to pay a registration fee, and the adventurer's guild is full of Fair Weather Friends. Oh, and there's no Hero Insurance, either.^note There actually is, but it only applies during emergency-level quests, and thanks to circumstances like good old medieval corruption, it's never actually doled out even then.
• Didn't Think This Through: In Volume 10, Darkness ties Kazuma to his bed in order to keep him from helping Iris. The first problem with this plan arises when she has to help him go to the bathroom.
• Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?:
  • The reason Alderp never seems to get into trouble despite being a Devil in Plain Sight is because he took advantage of his summoned devil's amnesia to get infinite favors. Though his devil eventually realizes that he's being scammed and punishes Alderp for eternity.
  • When Megumin goes back on her deal to sell Chomusuke to Anis, the demoness complains that humans are often guilty of this trope when selling their souls in exchange for unreasonable wishes and wonders why they can't live more honestly.
  • Played for Laughs and literally with Aqua, who buys what she is told is a dragon egg for 75 million. Her dragon looks suspiciously like a chicken.
• "Dinner, Bath, or Sex" Offer: One member of the Axis Cult does this to troll Kazuma, asking "Are you here for conversion? Baptism? Or are you here for me?" Kazuma is dumbfounded before she laughs and tells him she was joking, while Kazuma rages on the inside and wishes he could punch her.
• Disc-One Nuke: Defied. Kazuma is incentivised to reincarnate in the fantasy world by an offer to choose from a selection of skills, all of which seem "broken" to his gamer instincts. However, the individual making the offer ticks him off just a bit too much, so he opts to drag her into the world instead. He thus locks himself out of the "newcomer protagonist with a unique, powerful, game-changing skill" out of spite.
• Ditzy Genius: The guy who created The Destroyer and the Crimson Magic Clan was of no doubt an absolutely brilliant magical scientist... But he also was somewhat lacking in common sense, even if he figured out that fact after finishing his final creation. Granted, the people who commissioned The Destroyer in the first place weren't exactly the brightest tools in the shed either, especially since it's implied the whole project was actually under-funded...
• Divine Ranks: Aqua claims to be a high-ranking goddess because of her jurisdiction over Earth. When Kazuma mentioned there were rules that prevented him from having consecutive resurrections, Aqua immediately demanded to know who had the gall to question her authority and tell him that. Normally one might think she was just being boastful, but Eris's submissive reactions indicate otherwise.
• Diving Kick: The Lizard Runner Princess unleashes a Kamen Rider Kick on Kazuma during Episode 6 of the second season.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Sora Amamiya (Aqua), Rie Takahashi (Megumin) and Ai Kayano (Darkness) perform the ending themes for both seasons.
• Door-to-Door Episode: The second half of Season Two's Episode 8, where Axis cultists attempt to win over Kazuma and Darkness to the Axis Cult, to the former's annoyance.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male:
  • Averted in Volume 5. Kazuma nearly gets raped by female orcs and it is treated with the same amount of seriousness had the same incident happened if the genders were flipped, exploring how traumatic such an incident can be on the victim.
  • Played straight but downplayed in volume 12. Darkness tries to rape Kazuma and it's Played for Laughs though admittedly, it's more because of how clumsy and inexperienced Darkness is than the idea of the male Kazuma being raped by the female Darkness.
• The Dreaded:
  • The Mobile Fortress Destroyer. It's considered less an enemy and more an unstoppable force of nature. The reward for destroying it is only exceeded by the bounty on the Demon Lord himself.
  • Clergy of the Axis Cult. Whenever possible, the general population avoid contact with the followers of Aqua, warning newcomers of the extreme danger they pose. Aqua calls them, "good children," but the rest of the world consider them deadly nutcases.
• Dream Weaver: Succubi can control the exact content of the dreams of the men they feed on. This allowed them to form a mutually beneficial business-like arrangement known as the Succubus Shop with the male adventurers in Axel where a succubus grants a man an Erotic Dream shaped to suit his tastes (they have to fill in a form and everything) in exchange of a small amount of his Life Energy.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Nobody recognizes Kazuma's party's feats, except for Iris and the residents of Axel, as more than a fluke. This is despite the fact that they've literally defeated several of the Demon King's generals (four, as of volume six), as well as the Mobile Fortress Destroyer. It doesn't help that Kazuma is renowned as a jerk who sexually harasses his party members, and is thought to have perverted Iris's mind. This changes after Kazuma personally leads Belzerg's army to victory over Wolbach in volume nine, then ingeniously secures the defense funding from Elroad in volume ten.
• Early Game Hell: True to its RPG roots, the starting conditions Kazuma and Aqua find themselves in are brutally difficult. Neither of them start with any gear or gold to buy items, forcing them to spend days doing boring menial jobs around town before they can even attempt their first quest. Upon attempting their first quest, they discover they are massively outclassed by even the most basic enemies.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: While later volumes would instead focus on one overarching adventure, struggle, Villain of the Week, or theme, the first two volumes (the first season of the anime) are instead more of a collage of Kazuma's struggles in Early Game Hell as he gets used to the bizarre RPG Mechanics 'Verse.
• Eaten Alive:
  • Played for Laughs during the "Kill five giant toads" quest, where Aqua gets repeatedly eaten, along with Megumin after she joins them, forcing Kazuma to then save them.
  • Played for Laughs again in season 2 where Aqua, Megumin and Sena gets munched. Megumin is nonchalant, Aqua repeatedly tries to get out, screaming in terror all the way while Sena is clearly getting off of it.
  • And in a not so comedic fashion when Kazuma is eaten by a Hydra. As expected when you're eaten by a multi-headed monstrosity, there wasn't much left of him to revive.
• Elves vs. Dwarves: Exploited by a pair of shopkeepers in Alcanretia, who deliberately play up stereotypes about their races and argue with each other for the sake of attracting tourists.
• Engrish: The second season of the anime ends with the message "THANKS FOR YOUR PLAYING."
• Epic Fail:
  • Aqua rushes at a giant toad in anger after nearly being Swallowed Whole by one. She prepares a flashy Finishing Move as she runs towards the toad. As soon as it hits, the spell fizzles out, as the toad is immune to water-based attacks such as hers. She is then once again eaten by another toad, forcing Kazuma to rescue her again.
  • Darkness takes on Verdia during the latter's second assault on Axel. They have what appears to be a Single-Stroke Battle at some point in the fight. Unfortunately, despite Verdia being stationary, Darkness only cuts the two rocks between him, missing him entirely.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • In Episode 4, after Darkness intercepts a curse intended for Megumin from Verdia, she starts getting a little too excited about being taken away and being tortured in various ways. Even he was so creeped out he simply tells Kazuma's party to stop blowing up his castle before leaving.
    • When he returns some time later, he chastises them for not showing up at his castle to try and defeat him and get the curse lifted, not knowing Darkness was uncursed mere moments after he left.
  • The Demon King allows Wiz to interfere if his generals cause civilian casualties, implying that he shares her views on sparing non-combatants (or simply doesn't want to antagonize her).
  • The Winter Shogun spares Aqua, Megumin, and Darkness after they all prostrate in front of him for killing his snow minions. Kazuma unfortunately isn't so lucky and gets decapitated, although he's forcefully resurrected and ordered by Aqua to come back instead of being resurrected back on Earth.
• Exposed to the Elements: In episode 7, they visit a freezing snow covered mountain in completely different costumes, but exposing just as much flesh as their usual outfits. Aqua has her usual micro mini pleased mesh skirt & thong on under her winter coat. Megumin has skin tight short-shorts under her parka.
• Expy: The blue armor with gold gilding that Kyouya wears in the anime, has similarities with that of the iconic Roto (better known as Erdrick in the English version) equipment set from the Dragon Quest series. The cross guard of Cursed Sword Gram also bears a similar shape to that of the Roto's sword. Roto was a savior from another world, the champion of a water goddess, who defeated the Demon King with an almighty blade: traits Kyouya sought to embody.
• False Camera Effects: In episode 2x09, after Darkness punches Kazuma in the hot springs, water droplets cling to the "camera lens".
• Fanservice: The series has it in spades, including (but not limited to) absurd amounts of bouncing and several butt and boob focus shots. Episode 9 and its introduction of the Succubus Shop and the chaos that results after Kazuma decides to hire their "service" for an evening dials it up even more.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: Kazuma's party has this dynamic with him as the Thief, who steals and lurks, Darkness as the Fighter, being super strong and tough, and both Aqua and Megumin as the Mages (healer and nuker, respectively).
• Fire-Forged Friends: Initially Kazuma saw his "problem children" as useless burdens, and the girls saw him as an unreasonable taskmaster. While these sentiments still hold true in later volumes, Kazuma has grown accustomed to and accepted the girls' eccentricities, as his tactics increasingly factor in their strengths, while he learns skills that compensate for their weaknesses. This never went unnoticed by them, and their increasing trust and loyalty demonstrate unspoken appreciation. And slowly but surely, their growing trust is reaping dividends, allowing them to defeat even some of the Demon King's greatest generals.
• First Town: Axel serves as this and a City of Adventure, because it is known as a town of low-level/beginner adventurers, and is the town furthest away from the Demon King. It is also where Kazuma and Aqua are dropped after the former's reincarnation.
• Fixed Relative Strength:
  • Played straight with the girls, as their personality quirks prevent them from "fixing" their flaws, and Kazuma willingly gave up an opportunity to correct Megumin's skillset, thus increasing levels only further magnifies the Crippling Overspecialization.
  • Zigzagged with Kazuma, who chose to learn skills to compensate for weaknesses of his party and/or leverage their advantages, becoming a more adaptable fighter in the process. However, he consistently holds the lowest level and stats (aside from Luck) in the party.
• Foreshadowing:
  • A quest for locating the mobile fortress Destroyer is mentioned in Episode 7, as one of the missions, Kazuma refused to accept that day. It makes a grand appearance in Episode 10, showing up at Axel without warning because no one else took the quest.
  • In vol 3, Megumin wins a manatite crystal from Yunyun. Megumin tells Kazuma that manatite can be used to supplement mana for spells but the quality of this one is too weak for her to use Explosion so it's useless to her, and tells him to sell it to pay off his debt a little. In the web novel, before the final assault on the Demon Lord's Castle, Kazuma uses all his money buying a small mountain of manatite crystals of the highest quality for Megumin, allowing her to spam Explosion on the Demon Lord's Castle, wiping out vast hordes of his army and even breaking the barrier.
  • Kazuma mentions early on that Megumin's useless in dungeons because Explosion will cause the entire dungeon to collapse, killing everyone. At the end of the web novel, Kazuma does just this to kill the Demon Lord, though he also dies in the process.
  • Aqua seems excited when Megumin mentions Alcanretia, the city of water. Which as they enter uses a lot of blue in their construction. It's because it's 'her' cults home city.
  • The very beginning has Aqua trying to summon Kazuma to the fantasy world as a hero, despite the fact that he's not hero material, simply because she has a quota to fulfill. It's implied that she does this to every recently deceased Japanese youth regardless of the kind of person they are. The current Demon Lord is implied to be a Japanese person, meaning the present situation is her fault, to begin with.
  • Very early on, there's a quest at the Adventurer's Guild to subjugate a manticore and a gryphon that are battling for territory. They finally take this quest in Volume 11.
• Formula with a Twist: The series is built upon the premise that the Reincarnate in Another World trope isn't inherently a dream come true. What if it doesn't provide a New Life in Another World Bonus, if the "cheat item" was an annoying Load, and the Unwanted Harem actually IS "unwanted"?
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: The Winter Shogun is a high-tier monster inhabiting a snowy wasteland otherwise occupied by largely harmless Snow Sprites who takes the form of a shogun. Aqua mentions that it subconsciously takes on a form of anything previous adventurers imagined, and mentions that several Japanese reincarnated adventurers have been there recently.
• Freak Out: The alligators in the lake Aqua attempts to purify freaks her so much that, for most of the rest of the day, she's sitting in her safety cage in a state that (as former Hikikomori Kazuma noted) is dangerously close to shutting herself in the cage forever.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: A pendant that Iris receives is actually a divine artifact sent down with a Japanese person that has this effect on people. The effect only lasts a half hour or so, and Kazuma denounces it as harmless beyond Power Perversion Potential (as he demonstrated when he swapped bodies with Iris). Then Chris points out that it can be used to Body Surf if a person in their new body kills the person in their old body, rendering them basically immortal if they keep swapping with people in younger bodies.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Several are hidden throughout the anime series.
  • In the fourth episode of the second season, when Kazuma is using Drain Touch on Darkness and she asks what Kazuma intends to do with her leftover bathwater, the camera zooms to her eyes. For a brief instant there's a little heart inside.◊
• Friendlessness Insult:
  • One of the ways Megumin mocks Yunyun is pointing out how the latter has no friends, often in response to Yunyun pointing out one of Megumin's flaws or problems. There's no real ill-will between them, though, as while Megumin will claim she doesn't care about Yunyun at all except as a sad, self-proclaimed rival, people who know them know they're Vitriolic Best Buds (to the point that several of their friends in the Crimson Demon village actually shipped them together). After Yunyun makes friends with several fellow adventurers, Megumin stops teasing her about being friendless... and instead begins mocking her for being single while she and Kazuma are now an item.
  • Dodonko and Funifura, two of Yunyun and Megumin's Crimson Demon clansmen, mock both Megumin and Yunyun for being friendless wierdos. Like with Megumin mocking Yunyun, there isn't any actual spite between them, though Megumin gleefully points out how while it's true in the past they were loners, she is now happily a couple with Kazuma and Yunyun the acquaintance of at least two eligible men while Dodonko and Funifura are both stuck in the Crimson Demon Village with no romantic options in sight. Dodonko and Funifura always respond with vexation and outrage that the two girls known for being loners (to the point several of their classmates like Arue and Nerimaki were certain they'd find comfort in each other's arms out of desperation) are now enjoying a romance-filled youth.
• The Fundamentalist: The entire Axis Cult openly reject and abuse any member of the Eris Cult, and are constantly pulling publicity schemes to increase membership, like trying to completely replace the Goddess Eris Thanksgiving Festival with a Goddess Aqua Thanksgiving Festival. Aqua, being their goddess, naturally makes her the goddess of fundamentalists.
• Funny Background Event: During the shot of the guild's horrified reaction to overhearing Chris crying about how Kazuma extorted her over her inadvertently stolen panties, three men are instead giving Kazuma an admiring thumbs-up, while the other males are smiling.
• Giving Radio to the Romans: Kazuma makes some cash by patenting and selling inventions from Earth. While his inventions started off as simple commodities, like flint-wheel lighters and kotatsu, he eventually tries to invent things like plastic and honest-to-goodness, Alfred Nobel-style dynamite.^note And his description wasn't that far off. The main problem he had was that he couldn't figure out how to make nitroglycerin. The thought of Kazuma bringing modern weaponry to the new world scares Aqua, but she doesn't object.
• Glad He's On Our Side: Kazuma often remarks how lucky they are that Wiz is a General of the Demon King in name only. She was a powerful Archwizard to begin with, in particular being able to cast Explosion without keeling over like Megumin. Becoming a lich made her highly Resistant to Magic and outright immune to physical attacks, and lets her perform a simultaneous Life Drain and Mana Drain, as well as inflict all sorts of Standard Status Effects, through mere contact. She's still highly susceptible to Aqua's holy magic as an undead, but even Aqua is terrified of Wiz when she gets serious.
• Glorious Death: The arch-devil Vanir has his perfect death all planned out, which he lays out in detail to Kazuma Satou. He intends to create a magnificent dungeon filled with deadly traps and terrible monsters, then lie in wait at the very bottom for adventurers powerful enough to make their way to him. Anyone who can do so would presumably be enough to slay him in combat, which is what he desires. However, he fully intends to last long enough for the victorious adventurers to open the fancy treasure chest he was guarding, which they will then discover is completely empty. Since he thrives on negative emotions, the outrage and disappointment would be the finest meal for him before he returns to the underworld.
• Godlike Gamer: Kazuma Satou is a deconstruction due to the series being an affectionate parody of the genre. While he seems like the typical example at first, being a Genre Savvy NEET who dedicated himself to gaming and got whisked away to a RPG Mechanics 'Verse, the new world is just different enough to his gaming experiences that his experience is mostly useless and he ends up being a Loser Protagonist with nothing ever going his way.
• The Gods Must Be Lazy: Subverted from all sorts of angles. Eris isn't a war goddess, so her contributions are often indirect or through the adventurers sent to save it. However, as Chris she's performed many heroic feats, and Kazuma eventually becomes her champion. Evidence points that Aqua was a lazy and irresponsible goddess who did as little Earth-related work as possible, and those habits are seen during her interactions with Kazuma and the new world. On the other hand, she has to be an active member of his party if she wants to return home, and she needs all the money to fuel her partying habits.
  • However this trope is also subverted later on. As it's revealed later in the story that despite her horrible character, Aqua was very good at reincarnating people and managing the afterlife. So much so that in Volume 15, the gods express regret and wish for her to return as soon as possible. Even Kazuma was horrified to learn that he was the last person to reincarnate as no one else has able to replace Aqua.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: The power and rank a particular god has is proportional to the number and fervor of their followers. Therefore, while the Eris Cult has more members, Aqua outranks her because the Axis Cult is significantly more fanatical.
• Going Commando: In the anime, Aqua definitely seems to not be wearing underwear. Season 2 Episode 8 shows this also seemed to extend to the Axis Cult, since every female member of the Axis Cult in Alcanretia in even moderately revealing clothing, with the sole exception of one old lady, is drawn such that they could not possibly be wearing panties under their clothes.
• Gory Discretion Shot:
  • Kazuma's death isn't shown on screen in Episode 7. The girls mention that he got decapitated, and he sees the blood splatter on the snow from said attack. But when he's resurrected, he's perfectly fine thanks to Aqua's healing magic (in the Light Novels, he suffers from the blood loss for a few days).
  • The Movie has Kazuma getting vaporized alongside Sylvia, but receiving enough Blessings from Aqua to ensure that there was something left for Resurrection. When he winds up in the afterlife, what's left of him is obscured by his chair, but the sight of it causes Eris to vomit.
• Growling Gut: Megumin's stomach does this when she first meets Kazuma and Aqua. She then tells them she hasn't eaten in three days.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: Verdia engages in some with Kazuma's group during their encounters. He tries to act like a typical villain, but is constantly mocked by the girls.
• The Hedonist: The central appeal of the Axis Cult is that it encourages its followers to pursue personal happiness and contentment as the highest of goals, rejecting shame and responsibility in lieu of being happy.
• Hero Insurance: Averted. Any property damage caused by Kazuma's party ends up costing them, such as the safety cage Aqua was in costing two-thirds of the lake purification quest (mostly caused by Kyouya bending it open to "rescue" her), as well as the 340-million-Eris damage to parts of Axel after Aqua used a Sacred Create Water to defeat Verdia, costing them all 300 million of their quest reward, with an extra 40 million in debt. Double Subverted as Volume 7 revealed that they are not actually supposed to be held responsible for damages incurred during exceptional emergency situations like the defense of the whole city and its inhabitants. The evil mayor of the city used a demon's power to warp the aftermath and tricked Darkness' family to fund the repair. He did so in order to force Darkness's family to marry her off to cover the debt.
• Hit Them in the Pocketbook: In Volume 10, Kazuma and Iris go to Prince Levy of Elroad to obtain more defense funding for the Kingdom of Belzerg. After multiple failed attempts and being belittled by the prince, he suggests that Kazuma and Iris relax at their finest state-run casinos. This turns out to be Levy's undoing, however, as Kazuma's strong point happens to be ridiculously high levels of luck. It gets to the point where Levi has to outright beg Kazuma to leave, as he managed to bankrupt the casinos and send Elroad into a financial crisis.
• Hub City:
  • While it's a bit of a stretch to call it a city, Axel is this for Kazuma and the girls. It is where they live and take quests.
  • A more straight in-universe example would be the kingdom's capital, though only well established or veteran adventurers have the luxury of doing so.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Vanir is this to Wiz. The way that he bosses her around, manages all the merchandising, and controls her shift schedule, you would think that he was the owner.

Tropes I-P

• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: In the anime, barring the first episode, all of the episodes' Japanese titles follow the same pattern: "この___に___を!" (Kono ___ ni ___ O! or "A(n) ___ for this ___!")
• I Know Mortal Kombat: Deconstructed: Kazuma initially thinks his experience playing JRPGs will help him out while making sense of the new world. However, the world behaves so unpredictably and has so many cases of where it tends not to in games that he seems like the one lacking common sense. Becomes reconstructed, however, as his experience gives him a Munchkin-like mentality to look for shortcuts, forming his Combat Pragmatist fighting style, and his experience as an MMoRPG guild leader helps him figure out how to effectively utilize his quirky and unreliable companions.
  • Parodied in Volume 3: Aqua insists that her experience playing visual novels similar to Ace Attorney and Danganronpa will help her defend Kazuma, with her "help" only consisting of her shouting "OBJECTION!" and "HOLD IT!" for no reason, nearly getting her kicked out of the courtroom.
• Impossible Thief: The "Steal" skill is basically the logical conclusion of thieving skills in RPG games that can allow for stuff to be stolen without notice, with the skill itself basically being a spell that steals things from a distance. It's also reliant on luck, and other people can make it harder by holding a bunch of worthless objects, including small rocks, as Chris demonstrates when she teaches Kazuma how to use it. Kazuma's ridiculously high luck stat allows him to abuse this skill for both practical purposes... And for stealing panties right off girls right in front of him, much to the horror of every woman in Axel, including Chris herself, who is a regular victim of Kazuma's panty thefts.
• Impoverished Patrician: While Darkness hides it from her party, the Dustiness family lost most of their wealth paying for the collateral damage from Aqua's flood (the 340 million eris debt imposed on her party was just a portion). Darkness later had to borrow money from Alderp to support Axel's farmers after the Destroyer's rampage, which put her family into a two billion eris debt. When her father fell ill (because a demon in Alderp's service secretly put a curse on him), Alderp foresees that he won't live long enough to pay it off and claims Darkness as compensation.
• Inconsistent Dub: While most sources have Darkness's last names as "Dustiness Ford", the anime dub has it as "Ford Dustiness".
• Inconsistent Spelling:
  • The Dullahan's name is transliterated as Beldia in the light novels, whereas it appears as Verdia in the anime.
  • Is the Wizard in Dust's party named Lynn, Rin, or Lean? It varies from translation to translation.
• Insane Troll Logic: When Megumin is asked why she continued casting Explosion at Verdia's castle despite him warning them pretty clearly about it the last time he visited, she stated that, after learning the pleasures of having the castle as a target, she couldn't return to just using an empty field anymore.
• Irony: In episode 2x09, a congregant tearily confesses that a painting of Eris's huge boobs is tempting him away from the path of Aqua. Eris especially in her disguise as Chris is pretty much the definition of Pettanko.
• In the Name of the Moon: Megumin introduces herself with a cool speech, as does her entire hometown because cool speeches are a must for members of the Crimson Magic Clan. In a side story is revealed that red-eyed wizards living in Axel gather from time to time to, among other things, decide who has the coolest signature phrases. To Megumin's surprise and horror, Kazuma was unanimously elected champion because he shamelessly plagiarized the best one-liners he could remember from manga and anime series that nobody in the other world had heard until then.
• Insulted Awake:
  • Megumin and Wiz are charged with firing Explosion on the Destroyer, but the former is too busy trembling in fear to focus... until Kazuma deliberately provokes her by belittling her passion for the magic.
  • Kazuma berates Darkness for being weak-willed enough to let Vanir take over her body. Vanir starts to brag that Darkness can't hear him anymore, only for Darkness (who Vanir had questionable control over to begin with) to angrily object to Kazuma's insults.
• Interrupted Intimacy: Any intimate moment between Kazuma and Megumin or Darkness will usually get interrupted by the other party members (usually Aqua) barging in. Kazuma eventually starts believing that he's under a Moment Killer curse. This gets Lampshaded in Volume 16 when Kazuma and Megumin are about to have sex with Kazuma noting that Aqua would usually interrupt the moment right about now. In fact, Kazuma stops himself from doing the deed because Aqua isn't around to stop him.
• Interservice Rivalry: Kazuma observes that no matter the country nor the world, governmental agencies don't really get along with each other. This allowed him to escape from tax collectors in Volume 12 by spamming his trademark Steal skill on female police officers and getting himself arrested and thrown into a cell for theft and public indecency. Knowing from experience just how inflexible the police in the other world is, Kazuma correctly guessed that they would stubbornly keep the tax collectors away from him while they processed him for his crime. Darkness, who was sharing the cell with him because she unsuccessfully tried to Invoke a Chained Heat situation with him so he wouldn't escape and lost the key, couldn't get over the fact he got away with tax evasion (see Intimidating Revenue Service below) and angrily yet resignedly kept calling him a "sly bastard".
• Intimidating Revenue Service: Thanks to Kazuma's party, the adventurers in Axel make a real profit out of their work for the first time in Volume 12. Problem is that it had been so long since that was the case that they completely forgot that their low income was the main reason why they were exempt from paying their taxes, and so the In-Universe equivalent of the IRS organized an armed city-wide hunt to get adventurers to cough up the dough before the deadline, after which they aren't obligated to pay due to their weird Medieval Fantasy laws. Of course, Kazuma being the richest adventurer in Axel prompted the noble in charge of the city (Darkness) to make special efforts to make sure he won't escape. He does so anyway thanks to a brilliant Invokation of Interservice Rivalry.
• I Want Grandkids: Both Darkness' father and Megumin's mother want their respective daughters to have grandchildren, preferably sired by Kazuma.
• Just Like Robin Hood: The Noble Thief who steals money and valuables from evil aristocrats in the Capital then donates it to the Eris Cult, who turns out to be Chris.
• Kangaroo Court: Double-subverted in Volume 3/Season 2. The judge for Kazuma's trial wants to give Kazuma a fair trial and states outright that Shena's "evidence" is beyond flimsy, but Alderp's subtle threats and influence allow him to effectively game the trial in his favor.
• Kids Raiding the Wine Cabinet: There’s no minimum drinking age in the fantasy world; anyone can drink as long they’re ready to face the consequences. Megumin is still generally barred from any booze, though.
• Kill Steal: Crimson Magic Clan members have a habit of stealing the limelight from their allies, especially when it comes to taking out strong monsters or Demon Lord generals.
• Kleptomaniac Hero Found Underwear: Kazuma's first use of the Steal skill winds up stealing Chris' panties on accident. All the following times, however, were entirely on purpose.
• Konami Code: A plot point in The Movie, believe it or not. One of the Demon Lord's generals, Sylvia, takes Kazuma hostage to get to the Crimson Clan's underground storage safely, but to her surprise is unable to open the vault with her barrier-breaking tool. When Kazuma spots what looks like an NES controller on the locking mechanism, he accidentally mentions the Konami code as a possible password. When Sylvia "threatens" to seduce Kazuma for more details (side note: Sylvia is a Hermaphrodite), Kazuma inputs the code on the controller to spare himself from getting traumatized. Unfortunately for him, the code works. Fortunately for him, he can then re-use the code to trap Sylvia in. Unfortunately for him, and everyone else, that gives Sylvia the time to merge with the ultimate weapon hidden inside the storage room and assume her One-Winged Angel form.
• Lap Pillow: Aqua does this for Kazuma in episode seven shortly after reviving him. Kazuma doesn't appreciate the affection and consideration (otherwise he would be laying in the snow) and shouts "Goddess change!", mostly because Aqua was insisting on him showering her with praise.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Much to Kazuma's distress, the girls favor charging in/firing Explosion to other strategies, and sometimes do so without consulting him.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Kazuma and his group show how dangerous they can be when a fight turns serious, such as their fight against Verdia, who was largely a Butt-Monkey until he decides to attack them.
• Level Grinding: Kill quests not only provide pay, but also experience points. In Volume 16, Kazuma's level grows at an unprecedented rate as he progresses through a dungeon full of monsters with Wiz and Vanir's help after his level drops back to 1.
• Licking the Blade: In The Movie, one of the goblins that confronts the party shortly before arriving in the Crimson Demon village tries this and nearly cuts off his tongue.
• Lie Detector: Interrogators use a magic bell that will ring whenever a suspect lies. Since it responds to dishonesty, it will stay silent toward something factually false as long as the speaker sincerely believes it to be true.
• Like Brother and Sister:
  • The typical banter between Kazuma and Aqua is not unlike bickering siblings who find it easier to annoy each other, than keep civil and not argue.
  • Invoked by Kazuma in his relationship with Iris. Iris has other ideas.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • When given the option of being sent to the fantasy world, Kazuma doesn't take kindly to the poor treatment he receives from Aqua. In revenge, he takes advantage of the "cheat item" perk by choosing Aqua. Her superiors seem to roll with the situation rather quickly.
  • The Adventurer class's Power Copying abilities let the user learn any skill that is displayed and named in front of them. Key word being any. While obviously intended to be used on the skills of other classes, there is nothing preventing it from being used to learn forbidden or restricted skills like Drain Touch. In the final volume, Kazuma uses this exploit to learn Explosion and kill Maou the Demon King.
  • When collections agents come to get back taxes from all the adventurers in Axel, Kazuma gets himself thrown in jail to avoid them. Knowing the city guard will not allow the collectors near him while he is being processed, and that their Interservice Rivalry will prevent any form of compromise, allowing him to get way with tax evasion.
• Love Freak: The Axis Cult is surprisingly progressive about romance and sexuality even when compared to modern Real Life religions, and one of its tenets is that true love can be enjoyed between anyone and anything, so long as you hate and agree to the extermination of demons and the undead (Though even Aqua herself is lightening up on that front). Unfortunately, this attitude also attracts many kooks like Cecily, who use their religion to justify acting on their absurd fetishes.
• Lower-Deck Episode: The "Consulting With This Masked Devil" Spin-Off novel focuses on Vanir and various other secondary and minor characters in the series, like Yunyun, Iris and her bodyguards, Luna, the Succubi, and, of course, Wiz. Aqua is the only main character present for any of the stories, and the others are only mentioned.
• Luring in Prey: There's a plant that lures prey in by mimicking a small, helpless child, then convincing them to stay there until they die.
• Mask of Power: Downplayed in Volume 6. Vanir sells mass-produced masks similar to his own that, if worn on a moonlit night, will increase the wearer's mana, enhance their metabolism, and give their skin a silky luster through the mysterious power of the devil. Kazuma is given one for free due to his joint business venture with Vanir but treats it more like a cursed item. Later, when Chris convinces him to team up with her as a "Masked Chivalrous Thief" to raid the royal castle to steal a dangerous artifact so it can be sealed he wears it as a disguise. He actually seems to have forgotten the mask had any powers at all, but only notes that he felt in excellent condition and if the mask did boost his abilities in any way he didn't notice.
  • Based on Kazuma's time wearing it, the actually benefits are likely small boosts. Kazuma definitely had a lot of energy and was in top form, made abundantly clear when he tore through the castle's Knight Corp, Mitsurugi, and the Royal Guard while wearing it. While he terrified the opposition by downing powerful and experienced fights in a single blow and having seemingly limitless mana, Kazuma notes that he is actually just using Drain Touch to quickly deplete their stamina and replenish his mana. Aside from being unusually fired up he didn't actually do anything he couldn't do without the mask. Then again, he was also unarmed and was trying to avoid hurting anyone so it's possible the mask could boost his attack power if he fought for real.
  • It's only mentioned in passing, but Claire thought the masked figure was quite handsome despite generally disdaining Kazuma so the mask might actually have the power to boost attractiveness.
• Masochist's Meal: In one chapter, Darkness brings some blowfish for the party to enjoy, with the logic that Aqua could just cure the poison before it kills them, since she's immune to it. The following meal almost results in a Total Party Kill.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Pretty much everyone's reaction when the Destroyer shows up in front of Axel in episode ten. Aqua even already has some stuff loaded on a cart to run away with.
• Master of None: In contrast to his party members' Crippling Overspecialization, Kazuma is utterly lacking in any specialization, in part due to his decision to stick with the basic Adventurer class. This allows him to learn a variety of weak — though surprisingly useful — skills to supplement his party's shortcomings.
• Medieval Stasis: Zigzagged. The current status quo of the Konosuba world is stuck in a vaguely medieval setting, but there are hints that pockets of advanced technology/magic innovations existed in the past. In particular a sub-plot is shown that one of Aqua's former candidates to defeat the demon king had the power of creation on his side, and this allowed him to make advanced technologies from his imagination alone. He built advanced city states, complete with computers, robots, life like androids, electricity and full blown labarotories straight out of a military thriller movie. His work was undone however when one of his super robots went rogue and destroyed civilization after civilization, reducing the world back into a medieval status.
  • Kazuma for his part misses a lot of the innovations that used to exist on Earth, and feels sad that the greatest comforts of a medieval setting barely compare to the comforts that existed on Earth. To fix this problem Kazuma made a deal with Vanir, that he shares the basic schematics of what he understands about Earth technology and Vanir will do his best to recreate it. Since Vanir has the power to read minds, anything Kazuma fails to explain Vanir can guess the rest based on what he sees in Kazuma's mind. While Konosuba's world is not a 1 to 1 ratio with Earth after Vanir's help, some basic technologies are now around; such as dynamite, radios, cameras, etc.
• Metal Slime: There exists an incredibly rare low-level monster called an "Onion Duck".^note Its name comes from the Japanese idiom "a duck comes bearing onions", meaning something incredibly lucky or unbelievable happening, akin to pigs flying or Hell freezing over. It gives large amounts of xp when killed or eaten, its onion is a valuable potion ingredient, and its flesh is rather tasty. All of this presuming you can get past its Cuteness Proximity.
• Misfit Mobilization Moment: Despite their flaws, Kazuma and his party usually find a way to defeat whatever boss shows up at the end of each volume, though not without consequences in the first two volumes.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The series starts off with a fairly somber tone. Kazuma appears to be a typical Neet who chose to do something heroic at the cost of his own life and Aqua comes off as a regal Goddess...and then we find out how he died...and she starts laughing her head off.
  • The infamous orc scene from Legend of Crimson. Kazuma is being chased by a group of female orcs and it's Played for Laughs at first, and then it gets really dark when they tackle and tries to gang rape him.
• Mook Horror Show:
  • The Masked Chivalrous Thief to the defenders of the Royal Castle in volume 6. Interestingly, it isn't as much how powerful he was but instead how he completely sidestepped the fighting logic of guards, heroes and wizards alike, making their considerable strength useless against him. For example, he used a simple ice spell to trap a high-level Sword Master's weapon into its scabbard, depriving him of his main method of attack, and immediately stepped within his guard to summon some water into the adventurer's mouth and nasal cavity and froze it solid, which effectively disabled him until a wizard could thaw the ice with magic and even then the Primal Fear of near-asphyxiation would keep him out of the fight for a while.
  • In Volume 9, once the walls were completely rebuilt and Wolbach declared that the battle was at a standstill, Kazuma, Megumin, and Yunyun decide to try the exact same tactic of combining Explosion and Teleport. The only difference being that the Demon King's mooks don't have a fortress to hide in. We're treated to a large amount of the Demon King's army fleeing in terror and begging for mercy whenever they show up.
  • In the finale, Kazuma buys all the manatite that Wiz had foolishly stocked up back in Volume 8 so Megumin could spam Explosion to her heart's content. She not only easily breaks the barrier around the Demon King's castle (which only had two Generals maintaining it by that point), but strikes terror in his army as she bombards her enemies without giving them any chance to fight back.
• Mukokuseki: The novels state that everyone Aqua sent from Japan has black hair and eyes, yet Kazuma is depicted with brown hair and green eyes, while Kyouya is depicted with lighter brown hair and blue eyes.
• Mundane Solution: Aqua needs the rest of the party to guard her when she's purifying a lake, which could potentially take her all day. Their best solution: stick her into a medieval shark cage.
  "Am I a teabag?"
• Mundane Utility:
  • Aqua plans to use a snow sprite she managed to hang onto to chill drinks and make snow cones with in the summer.
  • This applies to just about everyone in Megumin's village. At one point, the villagers were summoning tornados to wash clothes!
• New Life in Another World Bonus: Aqua, the current Goddess in charge of reincarnation, has been granting these perks to various Japanese individuals to aid them on the quest to save her world from the demon lord. One such example is Kyouya Mitsurugi and his legendary sword. Kazuma, the protagonist, out of anger at Aqua's belittlement of the circumstances of his death, chooses Aqua herself as his "reincarnation perk", to mixed results.
• Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Subverted. Darkness kneels and says a prayer for the adventurers killed by Verdia during his second attack, all of whom had criticized her before. However, Aqua resurrects all of them, causing a lot of embarrassment to her after they hear what she thought of them.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • In Episode 4, due to Verdia moving near Axel, low-level monsters have gone into hiding, thus drying up quests for newcomers such as Kazuma and Aqua. Megumin passes time by practicing Explosion on an abandoned castle near the town — which so happened to be Verdia's hideout. He ends up showing up at Axel's gates to voice his complaints about his constant misfortune. When he shows up again, Kazuma finds out that she was still doing it after the warning, this time with Aqua carrying her back home.
  • In episode ten, they manage to stop the Destroyer from blowing up the town by having Wiz teleport the core somewhere else. Unfortunately, it lands by a rich noble's mansion, and Kazuma is then accused of treason as a result of said explosion.
  • How Kazuma handles the issue with the hydra. Darkness was so persistent about defeating it so she could use the 1 billion Eris reward to pay off her family's debt to Alderp. However, since Kazuma invited the rest of the adventurer's guild to defeat it, they had to split up the reward about fifty ways, meaning that she couldn't use their much more meager reward to clear her debt.
• No Romantic Resolution: Played with. By the end of the Light Novel, while Kazuma and Megumin are in an openly romantic relationship, the relationship between Kazuma and Darkness is left unresolved, as while Kazuma rejects her confession saying he isn't as much a scumbag to force her to be his mistress, he says he would forgive her if she managed to force her way into the relationship, pretty much being an open-ended invite that goes unresolved, the only acknowledgement being that Darkness constantly rejects marriage proposals because of her feelings for Kazuma, and Eris noticing that the constant marriage proposals annoy Kazuma more than he lets on. Similarly, Eris/Chris and Yunyun's possible feelings for Kazuma remain unaddressed, as does the matter of Iris' Precocious Crush on him.
• No-Sell:
  • In Episode 2 of the anime, Aqua's ultimate God Punch has no effect on Giant Frogs because they are immune to water-attribute attacks.
  • Verdia and his undead knight's armor is supposed to do this to the spells of priests. The fact that Aqua's Turn Undead managed to harm him goes to show, depowered or not, how effective she is against the undead.
  • Darkness is capable of doing this to Vanir's dolls, whereas they do a crippling amount of damage to any other adventurers when they explode, she simply punches one in the face and walks away without a scratch.
  • Aqua is also able to do this with Vanir's clairvoyance. Her holy aura makes it impossible for him to read her thoughts, and it also obscures his vision for anyone nearby her.
• Not-So-Abandoned Building: Megumin and Kazuma find a castle out in the boonies so that she can practice her explosions with nobody around. It turns out that not only is it occupied, it's inhabited by the army of the same General who's been chasing away all the weaker monsters. And he really doesn't like the explosions.
• Official Couple: Kazuma and Megumin as of volume 12. It is no longer a secret and, though it's still "less than lovers", they frequently state their loyalty to each other as a reason to not get romantically involved with other people.
• Officially Shortened Title: The Portmanteau Series Nicknameinvoked "KonoSuba" was adopted as the primary title of the series by English translator Yen Press, and is also spoken aloud in the anime's ad bumpers.
• Off with His Head!:
  • Kazuma suffers this from the Winter Shogun during a snow sprite kill quest. However, only the blood splatter on the snow is seen, and referenced by the girls. He's perfectly fine when he resurrects.
  • This could have potentially happened after Darkness's father saw the "aftermath" of her and Alderp's son's practice duel.
• Oh, Crap!: Serena has this reaction upon realizing she just insulted and threatened to kill Aqua in front of the Axis Cult.
• One-Gender Race: Orcs turn out to be this. It's not natural: female orcs are just so outrageously horny they've literally snu-snu'd male orcs into extinction and have resorted to kidnapping anything with a dong they can get their hands on. An encounter with an entire horde of them leaves both Kazuma and Darkness completely catatonic, Kazuma from nearly getting the same fate as the male orcs, and Darkness at the realization that one of her biggest fantasies is a thing of a long gone past.
• Only in It for the Money: Adventurers are not necessarily heroes. Volumes 11 and 12 show that most adventurers only see their profession as a source of income, and won't risk their lives on difficult quests where they're likely to die, even if they have high rewards. Like Kazuma, they will stop adventuring once they come across a decent-sized fortune, and this leads to a huge backup of quests at the Adventurer's Guild, since adventurers aren't obligated to complete any of them.
• Only Sane Man:
  • More often than not Kazuma has the displeasure of being the non-quirky member of his party, though he occasionally joins in on the antics himself. Near the end of the first volume, however, Verdia also ends up getting frustrated by the insanity of the party.
  • The epilogue of Volume 3 hilariously reveals that Aqua and Megumin think they're the Only Sane Man of the party too.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: Kyouya is the only one who can use his cursed sword Gram. After learning this, Kazuma decides to sell it rather than keep it after taking it from him during their duel. Later, it's explained that cheat items (known to the world as "divine relics") like Gram are either weakened or outright useless in the hands of anyone aside from the original owner.
• Orphaned Etymology: Megumin uses Excalibur as a euphimism for Kazuma's penis, despite being from a parallel world where Arthurian mythos never existed. Probably. As it turns out, it's one of the divine weapon, now in the hands of Iris.
• Our Demons Are Different: Demons (or devils, depending on the translation) are inhabitants of Hell who can only come to the mortal realm if they are summoned, or have an extra body they can possess somewhere. They feed on the negative emotions that humans emit, and if they feed on enough, can create an "extra life" that can be used if their bodies are exorcised or destroyed. None of these necessarily make them malevolent beings, and many of them, like Vanir and the succubi are perfectly fine coexisting with humans so long as they don't try to hunt them down or prevent them from fulfilling their contracts.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Dragons in this world vary from the size an elephant to the size of small buildings. Dragons have innate magical abilities based on their color and rarity, and it's implied that abilities such as fire breath are magical powers rather than biological ones. A dragon's intelligence increases with its age, starting off as intelligent as a smart animal (like a dog or bird of prey), to becoming as smart as a human after a thousand years or so. The oldest percentile of dragons can shapeshift between a human and dragon form, though they retain their draconic appetites while in human form.
• Our Goblins Are Different: Goblins in this world travel in groups, are small as grade-schoolers, and carry weapons.
• Our Liches Are Different: Liches are undead sorcerers in this setting, with the more powerful ones capable of creating The Undead from their presence alone. But the only liches encountered in the series thus far are Wiz and Keele, and both have been pretty cordial and not at all evil. The former goes out of her way to lay spirits to rest because the Eris church demands payment for such a service and only became a lich in the first place to save her former party members from being cursed to death by Verdia. The latter only became a lich to be with his beloved until her final moments and then asked Aqua to send him to the other world since he can't commit suicide.
• Our Souls Are Different: All things in the world have souls, so killing or eating anything will cause you to absorb a part of it of their memories in the soul and gain experience points.
• Our Vampires Are Different: They are mentioned as being a step above Dullahan and a step below Liches in the undead Sorting Algorithm of Evil. Kazuma finally meets one in Volume 16, though the vampire wisely backs down when faced with an angry Wiz and Vanir, allowing the lich and devil to plunder his hoard of magic items. He plans on moving out and becoming a tomato farmer.
• Perpetual Poverty:
  • Kazuma's group is stuck with this, and early on has to resort to manual labor simply to survive, and even their early quests don't amount to much due to the amount of trouble they have just trying to complete it, such as killing five giant toads and getting paid about what they were making just laying bricks. Later, thanks to his high Luck stat, Kazuma does make quite a bit of money, but mostly keeps it all to himself because he (correctly) believes his party members (particularly Aqua) are incapable of spending it responsibly.
  • Megumin's family lives like this. Anything Megumin makes that doesn't go to immediate needs or upgrading/replacing her equipment, she sends back home. Unfortunately, Megumin's Hikikomori father promptly spends any money they make on worthless magical items, meaning they're constantly struggling to be fed.
  • Wiz and Vanir are constantly struggling to make a profit, and any profit they do make Wiz shortsightedly spends on some horrible business venture. It's so depressing that, when a racketeer comes to extort their profits, he feels so bad that he ends up leaving them food and money. However, Wiz, being undead, can survive on limited nutrition, and Vanir, being a devil, doesn't need to eat at all, so poverty doesn't affect them much more than in their long-term goals.
• Pervert Revenge Mode: Megumin and Darkness throw many washtubs (and Chomusuke) over the fence dividing the women and mixed bathing areas at Kazuma after finding out he was attempting to peep at them.
• Phlebotinum-Induced Stupidity: Aqua is notorious for her sheer stupidity, and it reflects on her followers, the Axis Cult, who actually suffer a penalty to their Intelligence.
• Piggyback Cute: Following the (unwilling) recruitment of Megumin to the party, her full-body paralysis after every casting of Explosion usually results in Kazuma carrying her home on his back. While in the beginning Kazuma was a bit reluctant towards this situation, the two of them spending a lot of time physically close to each other acts as major Ship Tease fuel between them, especially when it's just the two of them doing something together.
• Pity Sex: In Volume 7, Darkness offers her virginity to Kazuma as a parting gift before she resigns herself to Alderp to pay off her father's debt. Kazuma decides to go along with it, presses down on her stomach... and compliments her abs. So much for that...
• Ponzi: The Axis Cult attempts to use one for fund raising. This draws the ire of the Eris Sect, since it violates the sanctity of fortune.
• Potty Emergency:
  • In Episode 8, Kazuma and Megumin both have one in the middle of the night, but are too scared to go to the bathroom because of the ghosts in the place they're staying at. As usual, Hilarity Ensues.
  • Darkness suffers this in Volume 12, as her attempt to use the magic portable toilet introduced back in Volume 5 is hampered by the loud noise attracting monsters. When she reaches Zeeleschilt's residence, she's more focused on relieving herself than their original goal.
  • An implied example occurs in Volume 15 when Kazuma traps Serena's cottage in a block of ice. Serena notes the cottage doesn't have a toilet.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Because of the small amount of episodes allotted to it (ten regular episodes plus one BR-exclusive OAV), the anime had to skip or rearrange some of the gang's misadventures.
  • Wiz's introduction, which in the books took up an entire chapter, was reduced to a twenty-second flashback in episode 8. What's more, it's placed much later in the broadcast, where chronologically it would have occurred sometime after Kazuma learned Steal from Chris. The scene was, however, adapted into an audio drama.
  • The aforementioned chapter where Kazuma and Dust trade places for a day, because the latter mistook the former's companions as a Battle Harem, was skipped entirely, and episode 9 instead focuses on something that happens after that, the Succubus Shop.
• Pre-Climax Climax: In Volume 16, Megumin proposes sex with Kazuma before their impending assault on the Demon King’s castle. Kazuma decides to hold if off while Aqua’s not at home (having gone off alone to fight the Demon King), even thought she’d likely interrupt them if she was.
• Pretty Freeloaders: Aqua and Megumin are definitely falling into this trope, as they barely do anything useful during the quests, and often need Kazuma to loan them money or feed them.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Comes with the territory given how self-centered the protagonists can be. Verdia, the first antagonist of the series, only goes after the heroes because Megumin was insistent on using his castle for target practice. Even then, Verdia was willing to let it go and spare the city the heroes were living in if she just stopped, but Megumin refused.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Apparently a lot of the Demon King's subordinates are like this, maintaining the barrier for him just because he asked them to.

Tropes Q-Z

• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Demon King's Generals include a perverted dullahan, a lich whose shop is constantly in the red, a devil who thrives on upsetting people, a slime who has to endure a crazed cult, a hermaphrodite chimera, a bath-loving evil god, a foul-mouthed dark priest for an obscure goddess, and the king's unseen daughter.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Kazuma's group have various flaws which make them unsuitable for any other group, save for Kazuma himself, who is simply too low-level at that point to be of much use to others. Despite that, they manage to mostly work together to get their quests done.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The Tranquility Princess, after Kazuma coaxes her into showing her true colors, gave everyone in the party a verbal thrashing.
  • After Aqua accuses Kazuma of having a special ability that's helping him to cheat in Rock Paper Scissors, and demands he send her back to the Heavenly Realm with his "special ability", Kazuma gives her such a brutal one, insulting her, her uselessness, and how if he could trade Aqua for a real special ability he would have done it a long time ago, actually reduces Aqua to tears and basically shuts her up the entire trip.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning:
  • Vanir's eyes turn red when he's using his Clairvoyance ability.
  • Downplayed with the Crimson Magic Clan, whose eyes emit a red light usually prior to combat. However, Kazuma notes that Megumin's eyes also glow whenever she just gets excited or anxious, and there are people who misinterpret it as a threat.
• Red Shirt Army: The adventurers who attack Verdia suffer a Curb-Stomp Battle when he not only dodges all of their attacks, but also kills them all in the process. Subverted later when Aqua quickly resurrects them after the battle.
• RPG Mechanics 'Verse: Kazuma's new world largely runs on this principle, with its denizens' abilities and characteristics (like Luck and Intelligence) being gauged by measurable attributes, which increase by killing monsters or completing quests.
• Relationship Labeling Problems:
  • In the epilogue of novel 11, Megumin approaches Kazuma to thank him for his help looking after her little sister Komekko. After wistfully talking about how they first met or how Megumin decided she wanted to join Kazuma's party because he and Aqua looked like they were having fun all the time, she then suggests that the two of them become "more than friends but less than lovers". In the next few volumes, both Kazuma and Megumin, in addition to many people around them, express confusion as to what exactly that means. They'll have frank discussions about how many children they'd like to have or try to engage in adult activities (before inevitably getting interrupted), but when outright asked if they're an item they'll respond that they're "more than friends and less than lovers".
  • Matching up with the "one takes the relationship more seriously than the other" aspect, Megumin becomes a Clingy Jealous Girl when other girls who also get along with Kazuma (e.g. Princess Iris) get involved. Kazuma meanwhile while an unashamed pervert is actually quite loyal to Megumin, in that while he'll shamelessly make use of the succubus dream service, he'll actually turn down confessions from other people. He also admits feeling really happy when he happens to overhear Megumin refer to him as, "my man", lampshading it with, "what happened to "more than friends and less than lovers?""
• Relationship Upgrade: Sylvia suspects Bukkororii and Soketto are dating during the events of Volume 5. Even if this is not the case, the pair are regularly seen practicing magic and watching ice melt.
• Rewatch Bonus: In episode 2x04, Darkness's father mentions that his daughter, when she was younger, would pray for friends every day at Eris's shrine until she met a "thief girl". Said thief girl being Chris, the mortal disguise of Eris, meaning that Darkness's prayers were very literally answered.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Iris is a descendant of heroes who have defeated previous Demon Lords, and her father (the King) is often away leading his armies to defeat the current Demon Lord.
• Rule of Cool: The Crimson Magic Clan lives and breathes this trope. "Why would we seal away an evil god that we could just as easily destroy? Because it would be cool to have 'that spot where we sealed away an evil god'!"
• Running Gag: Quite a lot as expected of a comedy series, but one of the more frequent ones is having one of the characters attempt to strangle another in retaliation for something the another said or did.
  • Kazuma responding to people saying his name with a disinterested "Yes, I'm Kazuma."^note "Hai, Kazuma desu." regardless of the context.
  • Whenever certain lines are spoken/situations happen, the party - especially Kazuma - will typically have an identical, extremely unimpressed expression on their faces.
  • Characters staring unimpressed at each other outright saying the word "Staaaaaaaaaaare." for the duration of their time on screen. Usually gets louder should the camera zoom in on them.
• Scam Religion: Played with by the Axis Cult, Aqua's faithful. On one hand, it is notorious for its aggressive recruitment, indoctrination techniques and its followers being nuisances that certainly act like they're members of a Scam Religion. On the other hand, Aqua herself is an actual senior deity and the sacred waters of their central temple possesses incredible healing powers. Both factors make them a threat to the Demon Lord. In Volume 8, their shady practices lead it into a foul encounter with the dominant religion of the fantasy world, the Eris Sect.
• Scenery Censor:
  • It's amazing how that Modesty Towel keeps the viewer from seeing Darkness completely nude in Season 1 Episode 9, as well as drips of water on the screen covering Wolbach in Season 2 Episode 9.
  • In Season 2 Episode 2, Kazuma freezes the bathroom door shut so Aqua won't catch him bathing with Megumin. The blast of icy wind repeatedly blows up the small towel around his waist, but it also frightens Chomusuke into skittering around to cover his naughty bits.
• Schizo Tech: The world is a pretty typical fantasy medieval setting, but there are a few oddities such as internal plumbing, toilets and running water, or a mobile fortress destroyer, which a gigantic robotic spider that lives up to its namesake. Justified in that Kazuma isn't the first adventurer from Japan, and much of its technology is powered by magic.
• Schmuck Bait: Shortly after he finally infiltrates the Demon King's castle, Kazuma finds a paper saying "Do not push" over a magic circle. Kazuma immediately recognizes it as an obvious trap, and even has a Trap Detection skill to confirm it... but then convinces himself that it's actually a shortcut to the Demon King and presses it anyway. He winds up trapped in a room with the runaway Aqua, the only other person who'd been dumb enough to press it.
• Selective Obliviousness: Soketto, the beautiful seer of the Crimson Demon Clan, is able to glimpse into anyone's future except her own. When she tries to see who will become Bukkororii's soul mate, her visions fail to reveal the person. In addition he's the only person in the village she has difficulty predicting. The answer is simple: she can't see anything about Bukkororii because he's destined to be her first love.
• Self-Destruct Mechanism: In the spirit of There Is No Kill Like Overkill, the Mobile Fortress Destroyer has TWO of them.
• Shapeshifting Seducer: A Doppelgänger once used Megumin's appearance to seduce Kazuma and then his to do the same with each of his party members, all in order to restrain them and clear the way to assassinate Princess Iris. While it worked well enough with Kazuma, Darkness noticed something was amiss because the fake didn't look at her chest at all (her masochism got in the way of actually stopping the bad guy though) and Megumin accidentally interrupted the double's attempt to sweet-talk Aqua but neither figured out it was an imposter unlike the blonde. The Doppelgänger's biggest mistake was using the same disguise to seduce the twelve-year-old princess — probably the one girl Kazuma never treated or thought of in a perverted manner — who despite her obvious crush on her "onii-sama" stopped "his" advances short and all was left of it was a puddle of black liquid on the floor.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Just look at Darkness in Season Two, in a blouse and hat, and a dress with a more formal hairstyle. They will hit you harder than Megumin's explosions.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Megumin's mother to a T, who goes out of her way to remind Kazuma that her daughter is old enough to marry pretty much every time they meet. In later novels, she gets even less subtle than that:
  Yuiyui: … On another note, though I've heard rumors about it before, I didn't believe your mansion would be this luxurious. With that, I can now entrust my daughter to you without reluctance.
  Megumin: Yuiyui, ancestor of mine! Dost thou honestly have no better topic to discuss during this precious reunion with your beloved daughter!?
  Yuiyui: Hurry up and have a kid.
  Megumin: Hey, mom…!
  Yuiyui: Live a great life, all. I've already thought of a name for my grandchild. [Teleports away]
  • Chris, on the other hand, prefers to couple Kazuma and Darkness, especially given their previous near-sexual encounters.
  • Arue decides to forgo Kazuma altogether and wishes Megumin had stayed on the "Yunyun path".
• Ship Tease: As of Volume 9, both Megumin and Kazuma have plainly stated to hold attraction for one another, but neither push hard enough to turn it into a full-on relationship. It does, however, slowly progress in volume 11 and 12, at which point they basically see each other as partners (if not yet lovers).
  • In the anime adaptation, Kazuma admits that while Megumin, Darkness, and even Aqua are good-looking, their worst traits are an utter turn-off for him. That does not stop Megumin and Darkness teasing though.
• Shout-Out:
  • Kazuma's death is lifted straight from YuYu Hakusho's famous beginning, where Yusuke pushes a child out of the way of a truck when the child would have survived anyway, and he even gets a chance to sort out his afterlife as compensation. Of course, this work's parodic nature makes it so that Kazuma merely thinks he died heroically like Yusuke, when in reality his death was a lot less heroic and a lot more undignified.
  • Kazuma makes a wish/decision that a Goddess would accompany him would be similar to the beginning of Ah! My Goddess, in which Keiichi asked the Goddess Belldandy to be his partner. Of course, just like the above, because of the show's parodic nature, Kazuma's Goddess, Aqua, turns out to be generally useless, self-centered and whiny as opposed to Belldandy being all helpful and nice.
  • Every light novel title alludes to other media.
    • Volume 1: Oh! My Useless Goddess
    • Volume 2: Love, Witches and Other Delusions
    • Volume 3: You're Being Summoned, Darkness!
    • Volume 4: You Good-for-Nothing Quartet
    • Volume 5: Crimson Magic Clan, Let's and Go!
    • Volume 6: Princess of the Six Flowers
    • Volume 7: 110-Million Bride (Million Arthur)
    • Volume 8: Axis Church vs. Eris Church
    • Volume 9: Destiny of Crimson (Specifically the Collectible Card Game)
    • Volume 10: Gamble Scramble
    • In the anime, the wording in Megumin's explosion spell is a blatant reference to Lina's "Dragon Slave" from Slayers, which is fitting, since it's an anime based on the Dungeons & Dragons RPG.
  • The Cover of Volume 3 has Aqua and Megumin doing the "OBJECTION!" pose.
  • Megumin's delusional nature is accented with wearing an eyepatch, just like how Rikka Takanashi, a fellow chuunibyou, uses an eye gauze for an eyepatch in her chuunibyou mode. She also has quotes similar to Ranko Kanzaki. Until the anime, all three girls were voiced by Maaya Uchida.
    • Megumin´s whole thing, her explosion magic, is a shoutout to Slayers. The way she takes a very long time to complete her explosion spells and the accompanying light show are very similar to Lina's Dragon Slave. Megumin´s first incantation from episode 2 is also similar to Dragon Slaves incantation, including most of the key words like "Darkness" and "Crimson" in the same lines.
  • Kazuma voices a throwaway line in Episode 2 that references Gate while waking up to Aqua oversleeping again.
    "Vacation? What's that? Is it tasty?"
  • Megumin tells Kazuma about a quest to defeat One Hit Bear in Episode 7, which he intelligently refuses on the grounds of being suicide. One Hit Bear was also the nickname Japanese gamers gave to Heroic Bear and Darth Lycanthrope (translated as Fierce Bear and Darthbear in the American release) from Dragon Quest III. They were one of the few random Mooks able to regularly inflict a Critical Hit, sometimes two or three in a row, thus killing Squishy Wizard party members in one hit.
    • In the English translation of the light novels, the One Hit Bear has been renamed to One Punch Bear.
  • Episode 6 has the Dullahan Verdia throwing his head to the air then lo and behold, a great lidless flaming eye came to be. This allows Verdia to see all of his enemies at once thus dodging their attacks and killing them all with one slash as a result.
  • In Episode 7, an angry Aqua performs the signature side-to-side swaying motion of the Dempsey Roll, before getting blocked by Darkness.
  • In Episode 8, there are dolls that look like Shinku, Suiseiseki, and Souseiseki.
  • In Episode 9, there is a succubus wearing leotards in the same color scheme as Morrigan Aensland.
  • In Megumin's first spin off novel, the Onion Duck looks a lot like Farfetch'd.
  • In Episode 6 of the second season, the Lizard Runner Princess unleashes a Kamen Rider Kick on Kazuma.
  • In Chapter 29 of the manga, one of Vanir's dolls self-destructs while latched to Aqua, leaving her lying in a crater just like Yamcha (though she survives). Kazuma's face even gets an Art Shift to Toriyama's style while reacting to it.
  • In volume 7 of the light novels, one of the guards of the Dustiness home is named Chuck Norris.
  • In the movie, after Kazuma traps Sylvia using the Konami Code, the following advertisement break is accompanied with an interface of Konami's DanceDanceRevolution inserting said code as dance inputs.
• Sigil Spam: The populace of Alcanretia stamp the symbol of the Axis Cult on many things in the city, including pastries and soap.
• Single-Stroke Battle: Subverted when Darkness fights Verdia. They both swing dramatically and destroy stones nearby, only to realize that Darkness missed him.
• Skewed Priorities: One of the Crimson Magic Clan's teachers tends to favor chuunibyou-related answers to her questions rather than Megumin or Yunyun's more practical answers.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: Happens between the main quartet all the time, but mostly between Kazuma and Aqua.
• Snipe Hunt: The creator of the Destroyer didn't really want to make it in the first place, but since he didn't want to disappoint his bosses either, he asked them to retrieve a legendary, unobtainable power source. When they actually manage to bring him some, he has to build it.
• Spanner in the Works: Kazuma is forced to deal with three of them on a daily basis.
• Spider Tank: The Mobile Fortress Destroyer, which is literally a giant mechanical spider that lives up to its namesake. The idea came about when its designer squashed a spider on the plans and turned that in when he couldn't come up with any ideas.
• Spiteful Spit: Telling a member of the Axis cult that you follow Eris will result in this.
• Standard Hero Reward: The Royal Family is a firm believer in this trope and has a long history of marrying great heroes and heroines into the family, a practice that has produced an equally long list of badasses to its name. Currently, First Princess Iris is expected to marry the hero that finally defeats the Demon King and she's planning on arranging things in the background for that hero to be someone of her choice.
• Stupid Sacrifice: Aqua tells Kazuma that pretty much everything about pushing the girl out of the way of the "truck" was this. The vehicle wouldn't have hit her anyway: it was going very slow, and it wasn't even a truck, but rather a small farming tractor, plus the girl actually suffered a fractured bone after he pushed her. Kazuma wasn't even remotely close to being hit by said tractor himself either; he actually just died from the shock of thinking that he would (helped by three days of no sleep, which would take a toll on anyone).
• Succubi and Incubi: The succubus have an entire service industry, offering to fulfill the dreams of male adventurers.
• Superpower Lottery: Kazuma mentions that some "talented" people are born with extra skill points, and hints that Darkness and Megumin were these types of people, which is why Megumin could learn Explosion despite being level six and Darkness could have such a high defense. Kazuma, however, started with zero skill points at level one. Furthermore, some people just have high stats, and there's not much one can do if they have a low stat they can't improve like Intelligence, Magic, or Luck.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The heroes beat Verdia and saved the town, but in doing so caused so much collateral damage that the reward is basically taken away right as they get it. Sure they saved the place, but essentially flooding a town is going to cause massive amounts of structural damage, and someone has to pay for it.
• Superweapon Surprise: The Movie technically has two superweapons, both owned by the Crimson Demons, but one is absorbed by Sylvia, turning her into an Anti-Magic Kaiju while the other one is strong enough to channel an Explosion into a Wave-Motion Gun, but was being used to hang up laundry for decades.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: Darkness believes that Kazuma cajoled her into washing his back under the influence of a succubus. Kazuma had assumed he was already in the succubus' Erotic Dream, but rolls with Darkness' story and claims he can't remember what happened to save face.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Kazuma feels that his companions are "problem children" and he is their unfortunate babysitter who can't get rid of them, especially at the beginning of the story. He even lampshades it when Darkness wanted to join the group.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  • While inquiring about the Succubi's Erotic Dream services, Kazuma asks if there aren't any age restrictions regarding his chosen dream partner...then quickly makes a disclaimer about merely asking out of curiosity and not exactly being into underage girls or anything. Of course, this being Kazuma, he then verifies if it really is okay, and gets incredibly excited at the thought. This comes right after internally questioning the sanity of certain male customers who reportedly fantasize about being abused by older, stronger female adventurers.
  • After his party did nothing to prevent Kazuma from being Arrested for Heroism at the end of Volume 2, Aqua sneaked into the police station to break him out while Megumin and Darkness created some distraction to keep the police busy. She then explained that they didn't defend him before to avoid getting arrested as his accomplices in order to keep their options open to do something about it afterwards, definitely not because they were afraid of what Kazuma would do to them if he managed to get out on his own.
• Take That!: There are two high-level magic-wielding classes, the mage and the arch-priest. The mage requires high intelligence, but the arch-priest does not.
• Taking the Bullet: A spell variation of this occurs in Episode 4, after Darkness intercepts a curse that would kill its recipient in seven days meant for Megumin.
• Tempting Fate: The Crimson Magic Clan have this down to a science, and have published a list of things that you should never ever say unless you want to invoke the ire of the universe ^note Including, but not limited to, "There is less than a 0.1% chance of X happening," and "I'm glad that X hasn't happened yet," both ensuring that X will happen. Megumin hilariously Invokes this in her Spin-Off, by commenting on how peaceful their caravan ride is, and how they should arrive in the morning if they're not attacked by monsters. Cue monsters that she can grind for experience showing up.
• Teleport Spam: The Crimson Magic Clan is unable to damage Sylvia, who absorbed an Anti-Magic weapon. In order to buy time, they keep spamming the "Teleport" spell to dodge her attacks and frustrate her into utter madness.
• Theme Music Power-Up: Each of the first two seasons ends with a climactic battle against a powerful enemy, during which the group demonstrates surprisingly competent teamwork as that season's intro song plays in the background.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Due to the There Is Only One Bed incident right below, Kazuma ends up sharing a futon with a sleeping Megumin. In a bout of his usual genre savviness, he reasons that no matter what happens, Rule of Funny dictates he will be accused of trying to do naughty things to her, so he might as well actually do it. Fortunately, he can only think of attempting a goofy kiss and she wakes up before anything happens anyway.
• There Is Only One Bed: Invoked by Megumin's mother. She locks Kazuma and Megumin in the same room, knowing fully well that they'll have to share the same bed. Megumin wakes up in the middle of the night, realizes what's going on, then escapes through the window to go sleep at Yunyun's house.
• This Is Gonna Suck:
  • The second season opening has Darkness scheming an idea of using exploding enemies and an iron door to fly over the back of a giant turtle. While Darkness is absolutely thrilled at the idea, Kazuma, Aqua, and Megumin have an expression of total resignation at their fate.
  • After the four main characters finally get together, we get this gem from Kazuma
    "I see nothing but hardships in the future..."
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Aqua finds a quest that perfectly matches her skill set when she sees a job posting looking for adventurers to purify a lake.
• Those Two Guys:
  • Dust and Keith have this sort of role, though in the light novels, Dust seems to have gotten more character development.
  • Funifura and Dodonko are this in the Crimson Magic Clan. Megumin even points out that there's not much difference between the two, other than Funifura having a little brother that she dotes on.
• Throw the Dog a Bone:
  • Kazuma's party finally pay off their debt at the end of Volume 3 and even end up with quite a lot of leftover money.
  • Though Soketto is always oblivious of Bukkororii's unrequited love for her, upon discovering she can effortlessly combine his magic with hers, it fills her with a strange euphoria she never felt before.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Kazuma tries to discourage Darkness from joining his team by telling her all the horrible things that will happen to her if she gets captured by the Devil King, but this only ends up encouraging her instead.
• Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth:
  • Apart from possessing some of the finest healers in the land, this is the reason the Demon King is wary of the inhabitants of Alcanretia, as their behavior freaks even him out. This is the reason he sent Hans to covertly poison their hot springs to cut off their income.
  • Both Vanir and Beldia find Darkness creepy due to her masochism and disturbing fantasies. With the former, Darkness enjoys having her body controlled against her will, as well as the idea of her allies attacking her. With the latter, she gets giddy at the idea of being tortured in Beldia's castle.
  • Zereschrute essentially becomes the first character (we know of) to indulge Darkness's fantasies. Unfortunately for him she feels no negative emotions at all, and sends her away without his fingernail.
• Training Montage: Kazuma and Aqua do this at the end of Episode 1 after they become adventurers. Except they have to start out with manual labor, much to the former's chagrin.
• Translation Train Wreck: The season two premiere begins with a Star Wars-inspired opening crawl, written by Japanese writers and badly translated to English (such as misspelling "STRANGER" as "ETRANGER"), which is then narrated over by Kazuma, who is then subbed in English with a more natural-sounding translation of the exact same text as the opening crawl it's superimposed over. At least two viewings are required if you want to parse all the stuff on screen.
• Translator Microbes: Aqua assures Kazuma that he's have the parallel world's language hard-wired into his brain as he arrives (she offhandedly mentions that the process might fry his brain if he's unlucky). The few instances of Japanese text from Kazuma's predecessors are treated as alien language by the world's residents.
• Trapped in Another World:
  • Zigzagged with Kazuma. While he's repeatedly resurrected by Aqua after dying, Eris could reincarnate him back to Earth after each death if he refused to answer the spell (either choice requires consent). He enjoys the new world, troublesome party members included, more than he openly admits.
  • Played rather straight with Aqua, to the point Kazuma can manipulate the goddess by simply mentioning her return to the divine realm is contingent upon his victory over the Demon King.
  • One of the (possibly non-canon) drama CDs has Megumin and Darkness experience a downplayed version of this trope when one of Wiz's impulse-bought magical artifacts traps Kazuma and company in Akihabara for six hours. Kazuma intended to use it so he can return home and wipe his computer's hard drive of his Porn Stash. Unfortunately for him, all of his party's goofing around in Akiba wasted most of their time and they get warped back before Kazuma gets to complete his objective. To add insult to injury, the artifact erases the user's memory of their trip, so Kazuma never realizes this fact.
• Twinking:
  • The Rookie Killer monster deliberately sticks around packs of low level monsters, knowing that the low level adventurers it preys on would come to hunt them.
  • Kazuma has Vanir and Wiz escort him through the deepest dungeon in the world so he can power level on the high-level monsters they weaken for him. He pays them by letting them keep the hoard of magical equipment they find at the bottom (most of which he can't even use in the first place).
• Uncanny Village: Alcanretia is a breathtakingly beautiful city of canals, aqueducts, and lakes. It is home to the most powerful healers on the continent and feared by monsters for its legions of skilled priests. The idyllic society has become one of the most peaceful locations in the world... but visitors soon learn it's the Holy City of the dreaded Axis Cult.
• Underdogs Never Lose: Averted. Kazuma's party have given up quests they cannot complete, due to stacked difficulty. Kazuma has also died on several occasions, and only continued adventuring because of Aqua's influence and seniority over Eris to resurrect him.
• Ungrateful Bastard: In the anime's depiction of Alcanretia's hot springs arc, despite Kazuma's party and Wiz defeating Hans and preventing him from poisoning Alcanretia's hot springs, the Axis Cult shows no gratitude and runs them out of town. This is because Aqua purified the hot springs into normal hot water, rendering them useless to the town as a source of income. The light novel's volume 4 is a little different. Kazuma's party uses the reward money for defeating Hans to pay damages to the Axis Cult and leaves quickly, before any such riot could start. When Father Zesta and Cecily learn the full story, they are indeed grateful to their goddess for saving them, and are overwhelmed with joy to learn that the "normal hot water" is actually extremely potent holy water.
• Unimpressive Progress Reveal: The opening to the second season shows the party heading out for a quest, bursting with enthusiasm. Then all but Darkness are falling behind, then stumbling, then lying down exhausted... and then a shot shows they are still in sight of their starting town.
• Unreliable Illustrator: When Kazuma uses Steal to take Megumin's panties, they're described as being black. However, the accompanying image shows them to be white. They're colored black in the anime.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Hilariously Exploited by an antagonist. In Volume 3, Vanir noticed the UST between Kazuma and Darkness and very nearly succeeded at invoking a "Leave Your Quest" Test on them by telling them that his clairvoyance assured that nobody would interrupt them from fulfilling the "unreasonable request" that Darkness owed to Kazuma due to a bet.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Two examples:
  • Slyvia basically turns out to be a dream girl for Kazuma. Despite being one of the Demon King's generals she's beautiful, she's powerful, charismatic, and she's desperate for love. Kazuma is such a pervert that his wandering eye is attracted to any pretty girl that passes by, so he's quick to flirt with her and he quickly wins her over. Much to Kazuma's disgust, once Slyvia starts hugging him against her boobs he feels that she has a penis. As a chimera Slyvia absorbs the DNA of creatures she absorbs, and is thus a hermaphrodite with male and female parts (though it's implied she may have started out as a male). Kazuma despite some disgust does come to enjoy the level of pure affection Slyvia gives him, which is different than the annoying behavior he suffers from his usual companions. Sadly, Kazuma is ultimately forced to sacrifice her life to save his friends, and he regrets that he had to kill someone he actually had a chance to get with.
  • In the light novel, after Kazuma finally gets his deal with Vanir going, he decides to use the cameras Vanir helped him produce at the local beauty contest. One of the beauty contestants is a blue haired succubus who a stunning beauty that gets the whole crowd riled up. Kazuma and the crowd of men is suddenly surprised once the succubus starts speaking in Vanir's masculine voice, and "she" reveals that Vanir came here simply to rile up the crowd with the beauty of a succubus and then disappoint them with the reveal that she's actually a man. The crowd immediately starts throwing things at Vanir to express their anger.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The citizens of Axel get used to Megumin casting Explosion once every day, and treat the incredibly loud, destructive, and hot spell like a normal, everyday occurrence. In the spin-off volume, Vanir describes the daily explosion as part of the town's natural scenery, much to his company's bewilderment.
• Useless Useful Spell:
  • Played with and sometimes inverted with Aqua. Because of her high stats, she was able to pick up many skills. However, except for her healing and buff spells, Kazuma often declares many of those skills to be completely useless. Her Nature's Beauty skill is entertaining but has no practical value, she has a spell that lets those affected make vocal impressions, and she's preternaturally and genuinely good at art and construction… which are all completely useless to adventuring. Crosses over with Chekhov's Skill when these turn out to be surprisingly useful (or at least Kazuma finds a use for them), like the vocal impression spell allowing you to mimic voices perfectly, or her talent for construction allowing her to repair a fortress faster than the enemy can destroy it (and add a beautiful mural in the process).
  • Megumin's Explosion spell tends to enter this since she can only cast it once a day, and sometimes she gets so excited she lets it off before it would be effective, or even safe.
• Vagueness Is Coming: Averted. Predictions of the future are usually clear, accurate, and specific. If a seer gives a vague prediction, they are deliberately being coy.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: Both goddesses (even the otherwise gentle Eris) would gleefully eliminate all undeads and demons if given the chance. Naturally, this causes trouble with friendlier individuals like Wiz the Shrinking Violet lich shopkeeper or the lewd but harmless succubi running the Erotic Dream shop. Aqua does eventually warm up to Wiz, but it takes quite a while to get to that point.
• Vapor Wear: Heavily implied with the two girls hanging around Mitsurugi - their outfits are skimpy enough already, and their fear at Kazuma's Steal ability is likely because one attempt is all that's needed.
• Variant Chess: Episode 9 starts with Darkness and Megumin playing a game of it. It is also a recurring feature in the light novels. While the full rules are never explicitly mentioned, it incorporates features that emulate combat in the fantasy world, such as teleporting mages and Teleport Spam, healing, traps, thieves and steal, and the Explosion spell (flipping over the board and sending all the pieces flying, effectively wiping out the battlefield), which can only be used once a day. It is also apparently perfectly legal to win by paying someone to distract your opponent off the field with something so interesting that they resign just to see what all the fuss is about.
• Video-Game Lives: Devils have extra lives, which allows Vanir to show up in Wiz's shop with nothing but a "II" on his mask after seemingly getting destroyed by Megumin's Explosion. Zeeleschilt loses most of his from Eris kicking his ass over and over, and loses his last one when he happens to run into Aqua, though Vanir can bring him back at the cost of one of his own.
• Video Game Stealing: The first technique that Kazuma learns and uses is "Steal," which allows him to take things by concentrating, reaching in the direction of his target, and closing his hand while it glows. However, he has no control over what precisely he steals - it depends on the user's Luck Stat. Good thing that Kazuma has a very high luck stat.
• Visual Pun: A recurring battle involves mowing down the sapient cabbages migrating right through the city, a good way to build experience as well as a source of food. So basically farming.
• Vitriolic Best Buds:
  • Between Kazuma and Aqua, the vitriolic part is definitely there, the best buds not so much; but they are pretty much inseparable at this point. The two are still really bitter over their bad first impression of each other. Though in the later volumes they really soften up to one another, physical altercations between the two of them are still not uncommon.
  • Ultimately, Kazuma's entire party is like this, with arguments and grappling matches frequently occurring between them. While most of their animosity is normally directed toward Kazuma (sometimes in the form of Belligerent Sexual Tension when it's with Darkness and Megumin), he's also perfectly capable of throwing the Apple of Discord between the others.
• Wasted Beauty: Kazuma Satou has stated many times that Aqua is beautiful, but any attraction he had for her dried up once he realized that she's an incompetent headache of a girl. Likewise, another adventurer who initially expresses jealousy towards Kazuma for having a party of beautiful girls quickly changes his mind when he tries to switch parties with Kazuma for a day and almost gets himself killed by their ridiculous antics.
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: After Kazuma is killed by the Winter Shogun, Eris meets him much in the same way he met Aqua. Unlike the latter, Eris actually seems concerned for his wellbeing and promises to reincarnate him into a wealthy Japanese family. However, he sheds some tears as he talks about what he's gone through with the girls in the new world, suggesting he would miss it. Aqua then forces Eris to let him come back lest she reveal a shameful secret to him.
• What the Hell, Hero?: A minor example during episode nine when Kazuma thinks that he's having a dream influenced by a succubus when he sees Darkness in the bath with him. He later finds out it wasn't a dream, and that the succubus who was supposed to give him said dream he wanted was captured in one of Aqua's traps. He then protects her from the other girls, and gets soundly beaten, though the succubus does manage to escape. Darkness then gets upset with him the next day when he uses said beating as an excuse to not remember anything the previous night, but then accidentally says something to suggest he didn't forget anything.
• When Trees Attack: Agricultural crops gain animal intelligence and magical flight upon reaching harvestable maturity. They gather in massive swarms, attacking whomever attempts to stop their lemming-like migration to die somewhere remote without being eaten.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The web novel ends with Eris revealing the fate of each character. Kazuma and Aqua continue their quest to defeat the other Demon Lords. Darkness becomes a famous hero who gets bombarded with marriage proposals, but rejects them all while always telling Kazuma about it (Eris notes that he's too dense to realize that she's waiting for his proposal), and Megumin's still blowing up castles.
• White Is Pure: Invoked by Claire, the personal retainer to Crown Princess Iris. She always wears a spotless white suit (one generally worn by males) to demonstrate the purity of her loyalty to Iris. Most people who get to know her are aware that her loyalty might be a bit too strong. That said, she's a genuinely skilled and powerful warrior, with the fact that she can keep her suit spotless even in combat being a source of intimidation.
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Everyone in the Crimson Magic Clan has an unusual name, such as Megumin and Yunyun. Outsiders often assume they're nicknames at first. In addition, everyone in the clan share a similar tendency to choose bizarre names when naming things.
• The "Why Wait?" Combatant: Knight errant Mitsurugi Kyouya encounters Aqua being carted through town in a cage, and immediately presumes she needs rescuing. Mitsurugi challenges Satou Kazuma to a duel, with Aqua as the "prize." Presented with a "can't lose" situation (if Kazuma wins, he gains experience points; if he loses, he forfeits The Load Aqua), Kazuma leaps at the opportunity, taking two quick swings at Mitsurugi, making him backpedal. Kazuma then uses his Steal ability, which nets him his opponent's cursed sword. Kazuma simply bonks his stunned opponent with the flat side of the sword, and the duel is won.
• Wingdinglish: The anime uses at least three different fantasy scripts; to make things harder to figure out some texts using them are in English and others in inconsistently romanized Japanese.
• With Friends Like These...: Pretty much everyone in Kazuma's group has this attitude towards each other, with each of them thinking they are above the others' hijinks.
  • When the Imperial prosecutor comes to arrest Kazuma, his party and all of the members at the adventurer's guild start chanting for Kazuma's freedom. Then the prosecutor mentions that they could also be arrested for supporting him, and they immediately pipe down, and the rest of the party starts testifying against him. Ultimately subverted since they all conspire to break him out of jail right after. It's not a very well-executed attempt, but at least they tried.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit:
  • When Kazuma discovers that Megumin has too lopsided a stat build and a single and extremely situational skill to be useful, he immediately tries to dismiss her from the party. At first she tries a "Please, Don't Leave Me" approach, but as her bargaining gets more pathetic, some women overhear them and assume Kazuma was her boyfriend breaking up with her after having fun subjecting her and Aqua to some deviant sex play involving the slimy substance they were drenched in at the time. Megumin immediately plays on this, and blackmails him into allowing her to be a fixture by making him look like a paedophile.
  • Chris plays this up as well after Kazuma accidentally steals her panties while trying out the Steal ability she taught him (though he initially wanted his purse, he was quite ecstatic with his loot). She later makes a huge scene of it in the guild hall where a lot of people can hear what he allegedly did to her panties and blackmailed her into giving up all her money to get them back. Shortly afterwards, she looks at him, and sticks her tongue out at him, suggesting that she was simply teasing him.
  • After blowing what little earnings she had from the cabbage hunt quest and finding herself unable to pay her bar tab, Aqua pleads with Kazuma to give her some of his relatively larger bounty. He initially refuses to, until she starts saying something about sharing a bed with her and doing various things in it to her out loud in front of a lot of people in the guild hall. He then promptly gives her the money she needs.
  • One of the first things to happen in Volume 5 is Kazuma and his party running into a monster infamous for this. The adventurers' guidebook even explains, in detail, how the gambit works. Still, this monster is a Master Actor, and despite knowing it's all a trick, the party can't bring themselves to kill it, until Kazuma, worried about Yunyun falling for it goes back to check, and sees with his own eyes and hears with his own ears how he was being played.
• Yank the Dog's Chain:
  • This is arguably the driving force for the entire series. Every time things start going well for Kazuma, some Call to Adventure, imminent threat, or unfortunate circumstances force him to abandon his comfortable position. Volumes 4-7 are all Immediate Sequels, and each of them begins with Kazuma yelling at whoever's showing up to drag him into their problems for trying to disrupt the peace.
  • While fleeing from the possessed dolls of the haunted mansion, Kazuma was calling out for Aqua-sama to save him, noted that Aqua would be successfully eradicating ghosts in the huge estate, and warned the spirits to leave him alone or else they'd be destroyed by his powerful goddess. As much as it would please Aqua to hear Kazuma say these things, she was never within listening range.
  • The Spin Offs reveal that Iris has snuck out of the Capital to visit Axel on numerous occasions, and at one point even convinced her bodyguards to let her stay at Kazuma's mansion. They never actually get to meet again, however, until Volume 10, with Kazuma blissfully unaware that his beloved "little sister" had been in town and pining to see him again since he departed from the Capital.
• You ALL Look Familiar: The Crimson Magic Clan has dominant genetic traits that pass to their offspring, such as dark hair and red eyes, that cause them to almost look alike at quick glance. Megumin and Yunyun could easily pass themselves off as sisters to an unknowing stranger. The same could be said for any of the other girls from their village. It is justified in that the entire Clan was a genetic enhancement experiment program originally, which asked specifically for crimson eyes, because of them all being of Chuunibyou stock.
• You Just Had to Say It: Kazuma, being Genre Savvy, calls other characters^note Megumin in Episode 5 and an unknown adventurer in Episode 10 out on Tempting Fate lines, warning that such lines are bound to trigger an Event Flag. He's invariably right.
• Younger Than They Look: Several of the characters are actually younger than they appear to be, and it is usually the case that in the original novel, these characters really 'were' for the most part as old as they look.
  • It would be easy to mistake Yunyun for a young adult or someone in their late teens. When in fact she's only thirteen when introduced in the anime and manga, while in the original work she was seventeen.
  • Areu looks like a grown young adult and has a bust that could complete with Wiz's...but is only supposed to be twelve!
• Your Costume Needs Work: Early on, Aqua tries demanding money from a priest, claiming that she deserves alms as a goddess. Not only does the priest not follow her (though he does follow one of Aqua's subordinate goddesses), he tells her that she shouldn't try impersonating someone divine.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Subverted in Episode 4. Verdia casts a curse at Megumin which would kill her in seven days. However, Darkness intercepts it, and then Megumin and Kazuma decide to confront him at the abandoned castle in order to force him to lift the curse. However, Aqua easily dispels the curse, destroying whatever plans the two were going to do. Verdia shows up again in episode six to scold them for letting Darkness die from the curse, only for her to show up alive and well, with Aqua mocking him about removing the curse after he left.
• Your Mind Makes It Real:
  • According to Aqua, numerous Japanese people who arrived in the world before Kazuma related legends concerning the Winter Shogun, and they all congealed into a very dangerous conceptual entity that's the embodiment of winter.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Gaining experience is a mild variation of this. Killing or eating anything with a soul will cause you to absorb a part of it and gain experience.

---