The second season of KonoSuba: God's Blessing in This Wonderful World! is set at 10 episodes once again, plus an OVA that was released with the limited edition of the 12th light novel. The premise is that Satou Kazuma, a NEET, died but he meets the goddess Aqua in the afterlife who offers him a choice. He picks the one where he gets transported to an alternate reality where it is dictated with RPG elements, and as part of that choice, he decided to take Aqua along with him.
In the first season, two other party members join. The first being Megumin, a powerful magical user with the handicap of only knowing the explosion spell and as a bonus, collapsing after one usage (aka she can only use it once per day). The second is Darkness, a Crusader who has strong offensive and defensive abilities, but unfortunately she cannot ever hit anything and has a fetish for being hit and humiliated. The second season starts off straight after the final episode of the first, where Kazuma is arrested for transporting the explosive from the Destroyer into a local lord's mansion.
In the first episode, he is imprisoned, interviewed and then grilled on trial and things are not looking well when he is sentenced to execution. As Kazuma strives to clear his name (and huge debt), Darkness is forced to go to the Lord's house and suffers who knows what (although Kazuma, Aqua and Megumin had some lewd ideas. With the party now being heavily in debt and having all their belongings taken away, everything they worked so hard for is... gone and it is sad.
KonoSuba has crazy slice of life type of episodes with plenty of surprises. You get the giant toads making a reappearance, Megumin's childhood rival and Kazuma working hard to pay off the rising debt that somehow gets put into his name. There are plenty of hilarious events such as Kazuma and Megumin facing off to see who gets to use the baths first and in the words of Kazuma, he goes against cliches which makes it all the better and more surprising when he actually sticks to those words.
Things get a lot more outrageous too plus there's a ton of fanservice. It's like the characters blurt out whatever's in their mind and then ups it with even crazier stuff. However, the second season also feels a lot stronger in its humor, with episode 5 being one of the best episodes in terms of humor, plot and using everyone's personalities to their full effect. We get a great showdown between Kazuma and a strong enemy, some surprising characteristics from Darkness, and an epic ending that felt like that should have been the end of Season 1 instead of what we had gotten.
Kazuma is quite skilled at manipulating people as well as definitely not fighting fair in order to win. One of the best recurring gags is how other Adventurers mistake Darkness's actions as noble, when in reality she is just succumbing to her perverted desires. This extends to other members of the party when Kazuma gets into situations where the trouble that other people are asking them to solve was actually caused by them. Kazuma gets extremely embarrassed in these situations and his comments are too funny.
There is a hot spring episode towards the end but it is not your typical one. The journey to the hot springs was as funny as when they actually got there. A big surprise awaits them as they get to the famous tourist hot spot where it tests Kazuma's patience and Aqua feels the need to prove that she is a goddess. KonoSuba's biggest strength is its ability to defy your expectations to the point that when something seems to be going on as normal, you are just waiting for the punchline and the crazy stuff to happen. It doesn't disappoint in that aspect at all.
While touched upon before, this season hammers home that there are plenty of reincarnated Japanese people before Kazuma had come into this world. There's a pretty significant revelation towards the end regarding a particular hero which was clever. Funnily enough, Kazuma is making good progress in his journey to vanquish the Devil King during this season, just not in the way you would expect a grand journey to be. It does kind of seemingly boil down to luck and coincidences though. Overall, KonoSuba: God's Blessing in This Wonderful World! 2 is a fantastic follow up to the first season. It ups the ante and gives us a lot more humor and cleverness such that it definitely feels too short, leaving you clamoring for more.
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