I love KonoSuba. It's a pisstake of fantasy isekai harem power fantasies, starring a scumbag loser who brings all his troubles on himself (Kazuma), a bimbo goddess (Aqua), a wizard who refuses to learn more than one spell (Megumin) and a swordswoman who never hits the enemy because she's a masochist who wants to be hit instead (Darkness).

That said, though, there was never any guarantee that KonoSuba would work as a movie. It's gag-based. Dumb things happen. Our heroes react inappropriately and make dumber things happen. This works in 25-minute episodes, but might ninety minutes of it get a bit much?

Answer: it works. The plotting's not without some resemblance to comedic Brownian motion, but it's based on what was apparently one of the more serious original light novels. (Season 1 adapted the first two novels, Season 2 adapted the next two and now this movie's adapted the fifth.)

This is a Megumin film. Well, her and her childhood friend, Yunyun. We visit their home village and discover that they're all like that, which never stops being funny. Those are the two characters where a deeper, non-comedic level of emotion is (occasionally) being explored.

Kazuma's even more appalling than usual. The film dangles the possibility of sexual situations and he won't react nobly to any of them. One of those ends with him curled up in thumb-sucking infancy. (This isn't mental regression. He's just being self-pitying and pathetic.) The show treads a fine line with Kazuma, which incidentally I've heard is something that the original light novel author might not have done as successfully in his other series (Kemono Michi, Combatants Will Be Dispatched!). The guy's dreadful. That's the point. Almost everyone is. However the show's gang of four have stuck together all this time, get on well despite their abundant failings, understand each other and will always ultimately be there for each other when it counts.

Darkness (my favourite character) and Aqua get less of the spotlight, but that doesn't mean "none". Goodness me, Darkness is tough. And funny.

If you dislike big boobs in anime, avoid this. That's hardly unique (e.g. Cautious Hero among many, many others) and it would be ridiculous to call this a fanservice show, but it's falling into a middle ground that Tomoko dislikes. It's booby, but in an en passant sort of way that's just sort of there.

This isn't the kind of film you analyse in depth. It's about its jokes, mostly. There's a rather good action ending (although that has jokes too) and some deeper content for Megumin and Yunyun, but trying to dissect the plot would ultimately just be going through jokes. There are people who call the show's jokes mean-spirited, but I've never really got that.

Firstly, they're funny.

Secondly, it's karmic. Bad luck happens to people who've earned it.

Thirdly, that label could only apply to the show itself, not the characters. Darkness couldn't be a nicer person (if kinky), Megumin ditto (but basically a chuunibyou in a world where chuunibyou fantasies are real), Aqua's nice too (underneath her stupidity and incompetence) and even Kazuma's a big softie who will always end up helping his friends. Even their quests have never been to kill sentient monsters (which isn't the norm in fantasy), instead just involving undead or giant toads or whatever.

Despite everything, after all, our four heroes are still together. They're close friends. But also appalling.