To do a short review, Konosuba suffers from two key weaknesses:
-It doesn't give enough material to its characters.
-It doesn't diversify and use its humour enough
To do long, the story is super simple and the cover description says it all: Kazuma Sato is in a new world made with MMO rules and he's having a "tough life"(which never really comes off as tough at all).
The characters are what makes Konosuba and here's a simple list:
-Kazuma is probably a literal transposition of Kyon from Haruhi: the guy who complains about the madness of everyone else and seems to be the only level-headed guy. Which he is. It's kinda bothersome how every time something bad happens, he can smell it in advance and he's always right about something smelling fishy. Ruins the surprise every time.
-Aqua is a bitchy, pampered teenage girl-like goddess who is dragged along with Kazuma because he thought she'd be a great asset. Which she is sometimes, but most of the time she just gets in debt and has to beg for money. Which is also something that keeps coming back and is not used that well comedically. Like an episode will start, Aqua will want money, so they go on a quest. It's a fine plot-driving thing, but it'd help a lot if we knew how Aqua wastes so much money, since she seems to always have the same clothes, armour and possessions. But the character development isn't pushed deep enough.
-Megumin is a ...child? Not sure if she has no breasts or is really an early teenager, in either case it seems like she's more of a dense geek about black magic than a real kid to me. She loves to blast things even at the expense of her entire energy, and has to get carried around a lot after that. I have no idea why she's so obsessed about blast magic. Nor do the makers, apparently. You'd think a cute girl who loves to spend her entire life blasting things would make for a great laugh and could be really cute on the other side, but again the character dev isn't there. I just see a girl in mage clothes being silly and blasting.
-Darkness/Lalatina is a massive pervert who can't think of anything but getting raped/beaten/tortured/kidnapped/hurt. She literally picks fights with the sole hope of getting beaten, brought back to some castle then lewdly tortured. She literally suggests outright to the nicest, most patient Evil Knight you've ever seen that he should take her and torture her into becoming his woman. Or something like that.
Why is she such a pervert? Did she turn 11/12 and discover sexuality and find out that being submissive was the best thing ever? Did she get something in her life that brought her to be this much of a masochistic pervert?
I have no idea.
Now I think my point is made. Especially since 99% of what I just said applies to the rest of the characters too.
I think Konosuba lacks character development, for one. It's by far its biggest weakness because the characters come off as one-note, because they are. Bitchiness and debt, then blasting blasting blasting, then oooh hurt me I hope they hurt me, with Kazuma in the middle looking annoyed. 10 episodes of that will dry out both the characters and the interest in the show.
For two, the characters are all comedy characters, including Kazuma, that's obvious. But the humour is used in a very stale way.
Take Darkness' masochism for example. It's obvious that every time some sort of danger might show up, she'll be there to get aroused and jump right towards it. Which by itself is fine, but it's done in such a non-subtle way that it just gets tiring. Even Kazuma at some point goes "huh, she's acting really interested in this easy quest even though she always wants stupidly hard battles". If there was more subtlety to the characters' humour, I think it would work really great. Aqua could trick Kazuma into getting very well-paying but extremely hard quests, then get into trouble because the quest is so hard she'd go "kazuma-samaaaaa, save me please~", which she kinda does once, but just once, and then never in a subtle enough way. Megumin likes to blast things, alright, so have her get into situations where she'll want/get angered into blasting things she shouldn't. That happened once in the show only, and all the other times, the only joke is "Megumin used blast magic. Megumin is now on the ground dead tired". It's way too simple. The predictability makes the enjoyment very low, despite the fact that all the characters are great characters for such tongue-in-cheek humour and that the tone of the show is perfectly set to fit such a bunch of mad characters.
The humour is literally made to be used into recurring jokes and slapstick, but it's so repetitive and one-note that it just doesn't work, despite having everything on paper made to work.
With more character development and more subtle use of the recurring humour, I think Konosuba might do great.
It even does in the one succubus episode which I thought to be the most well-built episode in the entire first season.
(spoilers for that episode in this paragraph)
Kazuma is annoyed by Aqua again.
He learns of a place where succubi steal some of your life force and in exchange give you the dreams you ordered.
So he gets his order made and we see a little more of his taste in women and we see a new part of the world of Konosuba with the succubus service.
Then at night he goes to the bathroom and falls asleep, Darkness enters the bath and he thinks his dream has started and starts ordering her around with sexual demands. Which her perverted and shy self can hardly refuse.
Meanwhile the succubus that was sent to give him the real dream gets caught by Aqua and Megumin thanks to Aqua's protection field.
All of this episode and what ensues afterwards is IMO the best use of the characters and each of their tropes in the entire show. Except for Megumin which isn't very used, every character in the show is used according to his/her tropes, and each of their tropes is used in a way that's mostly subtle enough that it works just fine.
This part of Konosuba made me think again of One Piece and how OP literally has been buttering its pages with the exact same humour for over 70 books now. OP works where Konosuba doesn't because every time it uses one of the characters' tropes, it does so in conjunction with a situation. Zoro will get lost and he'll end up halfway through hell because of it, then will appear out of nowhere to save the situation. Luffy will get friendly with the worst person at the worst time and that'll put everyone in deep problems. The same happened in that episode of Konosuba. Kazuma did a thing, it turned out wrong, and Darkness and Aqua played off of the situation. If that was the case with every episode, I think Konosuba would work great.
But from what I've seen of it, I don't feel like condemning Konosuba or calling any of it foul taste of any kind. It doesn't feel like a bad anime that covers its shortcomings with the excuse of parody. It doesn't feel like a mean-spirited project of just making another MMO thing because it's popular and it's super easy to tie together a videogame world and an anime with hot girls. Nothing about Konosuba spells out "commercial" to me, it sure spells out simple and going for the low-hanging fruit, giving us one normal guy surrounded by ridiculously hot females with big tits, but even that side of Konosuba is done with a very different style and intention, giving us a side of the story that's trying to be somewhat more realistic with the characters doing menial jobs and failing horribly at their adventures, and trying to build a world beyond the generic MMO rules of gaining levels and getting skills.
If my guess is correct, then Konosuba season 1 isn't very good, but that's not out of a lack of talent or quality, it's just out of a lack of experience. If season 2 develops its characters more and keeps using their humour in a new, unpredictable way every episode instead of repeating the same predictable pattern, if it adds matter and prepares new situations for better comedy, I think Konosuba could turn out to be a really good, and really fun anime.
As is, it's just slightly above decent, but I really want to believe that it can get far better.
