H!KM is not just a mere isekai, it's a parody of isekai and i think this meta seems to have been lost on a lot of people who have gone into the show without this contextual awareness, taking the show far too seriously than it was intended to be. H!KM is not anything innovative, it is a continuation of Konosuba's innovation in isekai parody. Though it's main fault lies, unfortunately, in that it winds up being very much just more of the same; a group of inept, hopeless misfits somehow scraping by by what little fortune that can rub together to survive. Except this time with a bizarre 180 on the animation style being almost over produced.
Konosuba, the spiritual father to this series is raw with wacky child like animation that is both appreciable in its expressive rendition and simultaneously unworthy of note. On the other hand H!KM is over illustrated to the point where the characters are often stiff as a board, almost as if unwanting to crease their own perfect image. With intermittent "set" animation segments that juxtapose almost unnaturally to the point of breaking immersion. Part of me wonders if this was intentional, as an extreme form of balance, though for some reason some of this seemed like a meta joke to me in its own way. As Hanako skips across the bottom of the screen as if a cut out on the end of a stick it makes me think back to the obtuse comedy animation of Adult Swim's re-imagining of Sealab 2020, Sealab 2021, which looked like it was produced by a bunch of stoned teenagers.
H!KM offered a lot of potential to be more than humour, but never really evolves beyond the opening premise. The gags and weirdness are all there, but are so consistent it becomes common place and stale. How often does Genzou really need to repeat the opening gag of performing a suplex on Princess Altena and seeing her pants? The character development is basically nonexistent and whilst the idea of the show is ultimately as a foundation for slap stick humour, but in a weird scenario, Konosuba at least had some manner of story progression that made the show feel like less of a game show and more of a story. In Konosuba each character slowly develops by learning new skills and sharing experiences that connect them going forwards. By the end of H!KM's 12 episodes the characters remain almost exactly the same as they did when they were first introduced with the exception of perhaps princess Altena who becomes a masochist from all the humiliating suplexes. It doesn't help that the main character is also a Mary Sue offset by stupidity. An archetypal MC trope that allows for very little variation in comedy at his [Genzou's] expense.
At the end of the day, especially considering the fact that the pet shop aspect that ties the whole isekai plot together at the seams gets forgotten about in anything but off hand remarks/references by the MC's (now unrelatable) motivation to get out of bed, the show dissolves into a running gag on the MC's various unique perversions which actually aren't that funny; after Hanako dribbles at the thought of eating food for the fourth time in an episode, 12 episodes in. Or Genzou's 6th daydream about demon beasts, Altena's 3rd suplex of the day or Carmilla's "switch" sub/dom play with Genzou.
In spite of my various criticisms i still enjoyed the show. It's got aesthetic and quirk and isekai is always an amusing escapists dream even though they're currently dime-a-dozen at this point. I feel like this show might be on the "must watch" just because of its impact in subverting isekai shows.
