Is Light Novel as good as the anime?

KazuroWeisemann said:
Seems there is no season three announcement yet .. So I thought about takeing a look at the light novels but...

Konosuba anime is hilarious because of the Art and the Voice acting (Most of the time) .. I wonder how is the Light Novel? Do you people think its good? I know its selling quite well now but I think that's due to the anime adaptation ..

Another thing thats bothering me is that even If the LN is good ranking wise , Translation in english might kill some parts of the LN .. Should I read Konosuba LN?

Toadesstern said:

The LN was already selling fairly well even before the anime happened which made all this "omg KonoSuba was the darkhorse of the season" really weird because it was hyped as fuck by pretty much everyone who's reading LNs.

Also no, while the art and voice acting might add some of the comedic effect I definitely have to disagree with that being the strong points of it. It's easily the authors writing and in that sense, yes it's worth reading the LNs. They're hilarious.
I haven't laughed that much from reading something in a while and the upcomming vols (1 season = 2 vols, so anime is up to vol4 now) are some of the best parts of the entire series for most people.

And while Deen for the most part sticks to the source and what's happening, due to it being only 10 episodes a season there is stuff getting cut. So rereading from vol1 might be a good idea just to get all those minor things out of it. But then again you probably won't really laugh as much because you already know what's going to happen... so maybe start with vol5 and if you like it go back to restart properly from vol1?

Blitzkami said:
The LN made me obssessed with Konosuba. I remember that I gave a 6/10 to the first season, but out of curiosity, when S2 was airing I decided to read the LN, and God, they are so superior to the anime I read all the volumes + spin-offs in less than a week,and now I'm impatiently waiting for new releases.

The reason is that the anime focuses too much on the humor, where the LN focuses more on the world building, the plot and the characters, making them many times more loveable, appealing and endearing.

The anime is made for laughs, but the LN truly immerses you in the universe.

Victoren said:
As season 1 finished last year I was so hyped to continue the story that I got the fan translated light novel to read, and well, I was reading at least 1~2 volumes per day, and I found it to be actually better than the anime (in my opnion, of course, but the anime is still great).
The comedy works greatly in the LN, Natsume knows how to show you exactly what is happening, the narrative itself is in a diary-like format, where the protagonist is kinda talking to you "in real time", if that makes sense, but it works really well too.
Plus, the anime cuts some really good parts, such as the chapter where Kazuma exchanges teams for a day with Dust (the guy who showed the succubus store to him, that guy and his team have more importance in the novels), and some other parths, such as the bath part with Megumin, is much better in the LN.

So basically, I highly recommend the novel for anyone who enjoyed the anime, it is great.
I'm actually really happy that the anime follows it really well (even though it cuts some parts as I said), and both the anime and the LN have some unique parts (Ex: in anime, there's the Wiz's dreams about Beldia, which is pretty funny, and in LN, the bath part says that Megumin has a tattoo on her butt, which is not that relevant, but it's mentioned later, making it funny).

Look for Skythewood (volumes 1-8, Vanir's spin off and the 3 Bakuen Wo" and YunsTranslation (volume 9 forward and Bakuen Wo 4) to read the fan translation, since YenPress only published 2 or 3 volumes yet.

KazuroWeisemann said:


I found the Skythewood translation .. But how is the quality of the fan translation?

Blitzkami said:
The LN made me obssessed with Konosuba. I remember that I gave a 6/10 to the first season, but out of curiosity, when S2 was airing I decided to read the LN, and God, they are so superior to the anime I read all the volumes + spin-offs in less than a week,and now I'm impatiently waiting for new releases.

The reason is that the anime focuses too much on the humor, where the LN focuses more on the world building, the plot and the characters, making them many times more loveable, appealing and endearing.

The anime is made for laughs, but the LN truly immerses you in the universe.

Victoren said:


I didn't have any problem reading it, though you'll probably find some grammar errors here and there, but nothing that big. And when there's some japanese reference and things hard to understand, he puts a note to tell you what it means and everything.
YunsTranslation also have some short stories, which usually are special bonus for deluxe editions and things like that.

KazuroWeisemann said:


I found the Skythewood translation .. But how is the quality of the fan translation?

Toadesstern said:


I read it in japanese but once people told me about the "fanfiction" (since calling it fantranslation resulted in it getting taken off) I checked it out just for shitz and giggles.
I didn't read a lot of the english version but it seemed fine to me.
I found one minor mistake in the fantranslation at the time I read the intro to vol1: he translated the scene with Kazuma dying as his parents bursting out in anger in the hospital, the original only says that they did burst out while omitting what emotion it was but it was fairly obvious that it was bursting out in laughter and not in anger. And yeah, that's the only thing that caught my eye when I read the intro in english

That being said, Yen Press has licensed the series for an english speaking release. I think just 1 or 2 weeks ago they published vol1 officially translated and as a fan who ownes most the vols himself I can only recommend getting a legit copy yourself so much. Sure, if you want to check it out read vol1 etc online but if you're enjoying it a lot maybe you should consider buying them. It's 14$ on Amazon for 1 vol which is a fair bit more expensive than the japanese original ones but they have to translate after all.
Not that I'm somehow related with them or trying to promote them here but you know... if you want to spend some money there are worse ways to spend it compared to trying to support something like this

Toadesstern said:


I read it in japanese but once people told me about the "fanfiction" (since calling it fantranslation resulted in it getting taken off) I checked it out just for shitz and giggles.
I didn't read a lot of the english version but it seemed fine to me.
I found one minor mistake in the fantranslation at the time I read the intro to vol1: he translated the scene with Kazuma dying as his parents bursting out in anger in the hospital, the original only says that they did burst out while omitting what emotion it was but it was fairly obvious that it was bursting out in laughter and not in anger. And yeah, that's the only thing that caught my eye when I read the intro in english

That being said, Yen Press has licensed the series for an english speaking release. I think just 1 or 2 weeks ago they published vol1 officially translated and as a fan who ownes most the vols himself I can only recommend getting a legit copy yourself so much. Sure, if you want to check it out read vol1 etc online but if you're enjoying it a lot maybe you should consider buying them. It's 14$ on Amazon for 1 vol which is a fair bit more expensive than the japanese original ones but they have to translate after all.
Not that I'm somehow related with them or trying to promote them here but you know... if you want to spend some money there are worse ways to spend it compared to trying to support something like this

Victoren said:


Yeah, I also recommend buying them, but if you're like me and can't wait to read the next volume, you can just read it by the volumes YenPress didn't release yet in the fantranslation and then buy the official when it comes out, 'cause it's not like isn't worth reading it again heh xD
I'll do that soon, too, sadly in Brazil the price of 14$ is stupidly higher...