Bruh, there’s digging a hole and then there’s digging your own hole. Honesty isn’t always the best policy.

You know, Konosuba is really contemptuous of NEETs.

For those unfamiliar with the term, NEET stands for "Not currently engaged in Employment, Education or Training." No, I don't know why half the words got left out of the acronym. Basically, it's someone who's unemployed and not in school.

The obvious place to start would be Kazuma, who is repeatedly called "hikiko-NEET" by Aqua (due to being both a hikikomori and a NEET before his death). He's definitely framed as a loser, but in isolation, that could be chalked up to his numerous flaws rather than being unemployed.

Aside from the anime, the only Konosuba media I've engaged with is the Explosion on this Wonderful World spin-off light novels. Volume 1 introduces, among other characters, Bukkororii, who is basically Kazuma if he grew up in the delusional wizard village instead of Japan. He stalks one girl instead of being a general pervert, but he's still cut from the same cloth as Kazuma. So again, it seems like that has more to do with his actual flaws than his employment status.

(Plus, Bukkororii does stuff. He and some of his wizard NEET friends patrol the woods near their village to keep monsters away. Sometimes they even make some money by selling magic bear livers or something. Whatever Megumin says, I'm not sure Bukkororii is actually a NEET. Definitely a stalker, though.)

But then I got to volume 2. Megumin, having graduated from magic school, has been spending her time trying to get a job. Due to her...limited spell selection, she's been rejected by every job she applied for. And Megumin is horrified by this.

They called me a genius, yet, somehow, here I was, unemployed. In fact, it was worse than that: I was living off the scraps of food my little sister kept bringing home from who knew where. It was enough to make me question my standing not just as a wizard but as a human being.

(KAEotWW, Vol 2, page 14 in my copy. Emphasis mine.)

I'd like to point out that when Megumin went to school, she was still living off the scraps of food her little sister kept bringing home. (And also lunches she mooched off the chief's daughter, which is arguably worse.) The only difference in her living situation (aside from the lunches) is that she was in school—ie, engaged in education—and hence, not a NEET.

The text makes it pretty clear that Megumin being a NEET makes her, to some extent, equivalent to Bukkororii and his fellow NEET adventurers. And I don't think this is just Megumin being hard on herself; after letting her wallow in her NEET-ness for about half a chapter, her friend rival suggests getting a part-time job in a restaurant instead of finding something which uses her magic education, and thus Megumin is no longer a NEET. The narrative seems to suggest that being a NEET was a problem, Megumin's feelings are accurate, and that the solution is to get a job so you are no longer a NEET.

Now, part of why this stings is how close this strikes to home. I, too, got an advanced education, spent a while trying to find a job which used it, and then settled for a part-time job at a restaurant. Part of it is how the details (like the comparisons to Bukkororii's buds and how Megumin was already in poverty) make it seem like NEETness is just axiomatically shameful, rather than being a problem for external reasons. And yeah, these two definitely don't interact positively.

But the big problem is how it reframes the other NEETs. If Megumin being a NEET is a problem on par with the other NEETs, it makes me wonder if Kazuma and Bukkororii's loser-ness was supposed to be connected to their NEET status. It makes me think about how their other/actual flaws are partially excused by the narrative, like how the girl Bukkororii stalks is implied to be his future significant other via fortune telling magic, or how Kazuma is basically always right. (Which is partially a consequence of his companions being a useless goddess, an explosion-addicted wizard, and a masochist paladin who keeps dragging the party and their enemies into her fantasies...but it still leaves him being the guy who is right most of the time.)

I don't think any of this is capital-P Problematic. (Well, the "Soketto is/will be in love with her stalker" bit kinda is.) The demonization unemployed people, if we want to call it that, is pretty incidental and usually tied up with other character traits that get more focus. But it definitely feels lowercase-i icky.

How to Draw Bukkororii from KonoSuba http://bit.ly/39DeSMS

Konosuba: An Explosion on This Wonderful World!: Megumin’s Turn

By Natsume Akatsuki and Kurone Mishima. Released in Japan as “Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Bakuen wo!” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Kevin Steinbach.

If you were going to suggest an obvious choice for a side-story spinoff in the Konosuba universe, Megumin immediately comes to mind. She’s the most popular of the cast, and her backstory could use some fleshing out beyond what we got in the 5th novel. Indeed, in Japan, this volume came out before the 5th novel, and the first thing I wanted to do after it was released was to reread that book to see if more of it made sense. It also allows us to get a sense of Megumin’s headspace – through most of this, she’s the narrative voice, and we can see her eccentricities filtered through a coating of relatively sedate and logical thought. Well, logical for the Crimson Magic Clan, of course, whose one truly eccentric member is Yunyun, she who gets embarrassed by the whole thing. If you wanted a book filled with Megumin and Yunyun being funny, good news, this volume delivers, while also fleshing out the overall story.

The book takes place two years before the main series starts, and shows us Megumin and Yunyun in magic school, learning the finer points of saying cool lines and practicing your awesome poses. Both have almost earned enough points to learn Advanced Magic – indeed, Megumin secretly already has the points to do it, but is saving up even more to get enough to learn Explosion, the spell that she’s been obsessed with since she was a little girl. Everyday life for Megumin consists of conning Yunyun out of her lunch every day, looking after her younger sister Komekko, and generally getting into trouble, particularly after picking up an odd cat, nicknamed “Ink” by Yunyun, who Komekko wants to eat but most everyone else wants to snuggle. Unfortunately, more and more monsters are coming to their village, and seem to be after Komekko! Will Megumin be forced to abandon her dream of Explosion to save her sister?

The main reason to get this solid first volume is the relationship between Megumin and Yunyun. Megumin tends to worry about Yunyun as the sort who would get suckered by the first person who called her friend, and she’s not wrong, as we later see two other classmates seemingly conning Yunyun out of money so they can help a sick younger brother, something Megumin regards with more than a little scorn. Despite Megumin’s constant bullying, it’s clear that the two are close – indeed, at least one girl thinks they’re lovers, and when Yunyun is dragged off by her other friends, accuses Megumin of being cuckolded. Despite that, there’s no yuri subtext here, but it is heartwarming to see Megumin look after Yunyun even while she makes her life miserable. The weakest part of the book involved the irritating NEET Bukkororii and his stalker crush on the girl he likes. Megumin and Yunyun think he’s a massive creep, yes, but so does the reader.

Aside from humorous foreshadowing, the other main cast is absent from this book, which is fine. It’s Megumin’s Turn, as the subtitle suggests. The next volume is supposedly Yunyun’s Turn, but I’m not all that optimistic about her achieving much – she’s funnier when suffering. In the meantime, Konosuba fans will definitely enjoy this.

By: Sean Gaffney