Budget KonoSuba: Combatants Will Be Dispatched!

Few shows reach comedic praise much like KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World! An isekai story that drafts how life in a new world would be like if you were a bit of a scum bag, and your party, about as useless as they come. It’s no secret I love KonoSuba, one of the few Isekais I go out of my way to not only watch but promote. So when I heard the original creator, Akatsuki, Natsume had another light novel turned anime set to air this spring, you know I had to check it out. Combatants Will Be Dispatched! Aimed at the very same vein of humor KonoSuba did, it’s about a scum bag that works for an evil organization invading different worlds to conquer them, and how was the landing you may ask? To be real, no great.

Combatants Will Be Dispatched! I want to say bluntly, was funny, but failed to do what makes KonoSuba such a gem, really breath life to not only Kazumi but those around him. Combatants follow Agent Sentouin Roku-gou, or simply Six as he is called from those around him. Launched into this fantasy world he is tasked with spying and establishing connection back to his home planet, the intention, take over the world by force. At his side for this mission is cute high-performance android Alice, and honestly, she is the best thing in the show. Crashing into the desert we learn the duo can request supplies by using a currency simply known as evil points, points that can be earned by, you guessed it, doing evil things. Right away they find themselves at the mercy of the wildlife of this new world, and Alice, being the charming android she is tells Six that if he wants to get out of this situation to get her a shotgun and fast.

As I mentioned I absolutely adore Alice and she quickly becomes the most consistent and diverse character in the series. Six is the typical scum bag low-key good guy who just goes around flashing people for evil points, honestly, he is a poorly done Kazumi, and I don’t say that lightly. It is hard to separate KonoSuba when watching Combatants, an unfortunate fact because if constantly compared only hurts Combatants as an inferior work. When Kasumi goes out and does things, usually for his own selfish needs, it makes sense in context. Six, however, a lot of what he does feels forced as if the writer is trying to think of the most over-the-top gag humor possible and have him portray those acts irrelevant to the context. Flashing people? Check, groping people? Has that too, forcing a demon lord to pose in certain ways in front of a camera? Has it. It is really bare-bones toilet humor that crafts a weaker narrative of comedy if compared to his prior work.

Eventually getting to the kingdom, Six and Alice run into knight commander Snow. Now if you read that name and a certain useless goddess pops in your head, you aren’t that far off. Snow is an Aqua counterpart and is every bit as greedy and useless. Confronting the monarch, Six and Alice can convince the kingdom that is currently at war with the demons, that they are valuable assets and can help them out. Getting his own unit, Six, Alice, Snow, a shoeless priest Grimm and a glutton Chimera Rose, they set out on an adventure of mayhem and chaos, taking the fight directly to the demon using every dirty trick in the book farming evil points along the way.

If we look at this series out of context to who wrote it and more importantly his other work, I think the only word that one can say about it is simply, it’s fine. The world is pretty cookie-cutter, a classic fantasy human v demons with a monarchal system. The people within the world are remarkably okay, Snow, for example, is so blinded by greed there are very few moments that even feel natural for her that are outside of that scope. Grimm’s whole bit is pretty funny, being a priest of Zenalith she can bestow powerful curses upon her opponents, the only drawback it being a 50/50 chance the curse will actually affect her. This sets up a system where Grimm is usually dead or incapacitated before most of the fights even start, forcing her comrades to take her corpse to an alter bringing her back to life. The sound is forgettable, though thinking back I don’t recall much from KonoSuba’s sound. J C Staff did a fine job animating the series, allowing the fan service and dumb humor to play out fairly seamlessly.

There is a pedo tigerman, that part is kinda weird, and by kinda I mean very.

Honestly if you are in the market for a comedy laced isekai/ fantasy, go watch KonoSuba, it is a better series hands down. However, if you are looking for some toilet humor, decent animation, a budget Kazumi but an adorable snarky combat droid with a shotgun, Combatants will give you a fair shake. The big question I have to ask myself is if this show got a second season, would I watch it? And as of the time of writing this, that is a hard maybe. If it was released in a stacked season like Spring 2021 was, there is no way, I put off Vivy for that crap. But if it found itself in the graces of a season where there were no more than 3-4 shows I had planned on watching weekly, Alice alone would be enough to convince me.

As always, thanks for the read!