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Konosuba becomes so much funnier when you realize it’s basically a drag show for straight people.

Like, so much of the humor comes from how it plays the gender binary to ridiculous extremes while simultaneously allowing its main crew to fail horrendously at the exact game they keep enthusiastically taking part in. Kazuma’s refusal to act like “a proper man” due to his own laziness and self-centered personality combined with his near-constant lusting over women, Aqua’s proudly-displayed “feminine grace” combined with her childish and uncouth demeanor that keeps causing everyone problems, Darkness’ facade of a proper noblewoman that badly masks her insane masochism, Megumin’s lack of even that mask of traditional feminine charm and her resulting jealousy towards Darkness and Yunyun — you get me? Then you have all the background characters constantly dressing in these absurdly sexual costumes, men included, with a shamelessly detailed quality of animation dedicated to Those bits…

Idk, Konosuba is very much playing on the rigid gender binary in Japanese culture, which is often even more extreme than in the West, and I sometimes feel like that gets lost in translation a bit.

(Also the punchline of Kazuma’s whole “true gender equality” joke is that he’s a massive hypocrite who wants girls to play the “proper maiden” role for HIM while refusing to do his part as “a chivalrous man.” Even when he’s using that shtick to snap back against someone who is actually in the wrong, the joke is supposed to be that he’s taking a hilariously bad route to doing the right thing.)

#my art #re:zero beatrice #beatrice re:zero #natsuki subaru #invisible providence #this scene was too precious NOT to draw tbh #using a power made for evil to care for your loved ones #no one does it like Natsuki Subaru

I think Konosuba plays off the JRPG/Isekai tropes more than gender binary. Kazuma who's supposed to a noble Isekai hero, but he's too busy being a lazy self-serving piece of shit while pretending and putting on airs so people will like him. Aqua as the graceful elegant goddess except she's actually just a fucking narcissist loser who nearly got lynched by her own cult. Darkness trying to come off as a noble crusader despite being a massive pervert. It's moreso parodying classic Isekai tropes.

Yet it can still be funny even to people who don't know those tropes because the characters are so nuanced despite being parodies. Like, Kazuma has a fun morning routine with Megumin that helps them bond and profusely apologizes when his party fucks things up. Aqua is really good at crafts and genuinely nurturing when Kazuma needs it. Darkness is surprisingly pure-hearted when it counts. It's what makes them so much fun when 90% of other parody isekai are so boring

"Because I'll love you forever"

Self-Named Knight, Juli

#my art #julius juukulius #julisuba #not exactly #but considering that look of yearning maybe it's not that far off

First artwork of 2026! Took me three months and 50+ hours of work to finish! So why does it look imcomplete? Well... I have the rest of it. On my Patreon. I set it up at the beginning of the year, and pushed to create something good enough to actually put on there and ask people to pay me to see. It's $3, so if you have money to spare and like what I'm doing here, I'd really appreciate it. That being said, any support or encouragement is appreciated, so thanks either way.

Patreon: https://patreon.com/Markosan_FromZero

#oc art #beatrice #beatrice re:zero #re:zero beatrice #beatrice rezero #beatrice re zero #rezero beatrice #re:zero #re zero #my art

What do you think of Emilia as a Shonen hero? Oblivious and thick-headed yet emotionally intelligent when it matters, straightforward and blunt like a missile, reckless (despite being constantly protected by Tappei), with a kind of charisma that makes people who get to know her follow her to the ends of the earth. And also incredible powers that she was born with that have cursed her, but once she gains control of them she becomes more powerful

I honestly think it’s more fitting to think of her as a Shoujo heroine, lol. The animal mascot that follows her above all else, the otherworldly love interest who’s completely obsessed with her kindness and unusual beauty, the status as a princess, etc. Especially since she doesn’t seem all that interested in actually getting powerful: it’s more a matter of happenstance that she ends up so deadly. Garfiel is the one who’s really fighting to get stronger and defend his loved ones.

Her as a shonen hero is a fun idea, though. It does paint her airheadedness in a bit more of a familiar light, huh?

To me at least, shonen heroes aren't so much concerned with being more powerful as they are with protecting/saving their loved ones, like Luffy, Naruto, or Ichigo. They aren't usually concerned with gaining power (that's for their rival lol), and when they do it's in service to protecting someone they love.

Mainly just remembering this post I made though. I definitely see her doing this

https://www.tumblr.com/markosan-fromzero/807300075850203137/emilia-during-the-royal-selection-i-know-they

#btz!emilia

Hm. This feels like Tappei using Subaru as a mouthpiece to communicate to the reader an idea of what Re:Zero’s endgame would look like.

These 7 dwarfs Subaru speaks of then if I take this angle in mind are likely the 7 Witches then, which is neat foreshadowing from Tappei on how they aren’t all evil & have their own motives as Arc 4 will display.

#subaru #natsuki subaru #please

Still waiting on that ending where everyone can end up happy btw

Aaaaaaaand yup, yup. There goes Puck setting up Emilia alienating Subaru in Arc 3 for what she believes is his own good.

The insidious bit is that Puck ain’t wrong that staying with Emilia has hurt Subaru to the point he’s been literally scarred. It’s just that Puck’s intentions don’t come from concern for Subaru but moreso viewing him as a problem he wants away from Emilia.

I can sympathize with the callousness tbh on a personal lvl & the prioritization of what personally matters to you and not giving much emphasis to things you don’t care about, but Puck dressing it up like this is fairly manipulative which ain’t a great thing for how he communicates with Emilia even as I do personally admire the efficiency towards getting to one’s desired outcome in a fashion that is expedited + is also valid in many aspects, for truth is afterall the best weapon to sway people with for your own desires rather then lies as people often caricature.

In BTZ there’s a period of time where Subaru regularly sneaks out of the Karsten Estate as Natsumi Schwartz. It starts as just a way for him to get a break from everyone, but then he actually makes friends as Natsumi and starts going out to hang out with them for its own sake. It’s a bit like those first three days of high school, and he’s terrified of being found out but he just can’t stop himself from soaking up this opportunity anyway. Sometimes he runs into people who know him as Subaru, though, and while nobody’s figured it out YET it does make him very, very nervous.

Meanwhile everyone important knows damn well what Subaru does every other day and is fine with it because hey, Yorna and Tanza are with him so he’ll probably be fine, and we can show up to surreptitiously check on him every few hours or so if we’re REALLY worried. Besides, they know how important Natsumi is to Subaru, and it’s kind of a step up that he’s actually going and exploring that side of himself, right? It’d be nice if he would be more open about it with them instead of hiding it like this but hey, that’s his choice, and he can tell them when he’s ready.

Then a member of the group who’s really rather resentful of Subaru’s sudden, inexplicable rise among the nobility figures out Natsumi and Subaru are the same person and decides to expose him very publicly in order to knock him down a peg. The people who weren’t part of the whole Time Travel Incident actually DO start thinking worse of him, while those who saw everything are absolutely horrified and outraged by what these people just did to their friend. Subaru only really sees the first group and assumes that everyone now looks down on him for his crossdressing habit and shuts himself in his room for several days. Disaster. He doesn’t crossdress again until BTZ III.

#back to zero if #btz!subaru #btz!emilia #natsumi schwartz

Emilia during the Royal Selection: I know they said some pretty mean things to me about being a silver-haired freak, but that doesn't mean you can lose your head and start yelling at them! You have to be polite and get along with people even if they say you're disgusting and treat you like dirt! You shouldn't have defended me, I don't know what you were thinking!

Emilia after finding out Subaru got outed as a crossdresser, called a disgusting freak, and was publicly humiliated to the point of tears:

Wilhelm, who's right behind her and about to duel someone over this:

Emilia’s getting the fuzzies even back in Arc 2? Dang.

#my art #natsuki subaru #emilia #emisuba #oboreru #regulus corneas #mob psycho 100 #shigeo kageyama #reigen arataka

That is adorable. Poor passerby is confused as hell though.

My artwork from 2025

It's definitely been a trip

While this would be a far-flung future before you touch Arc 4, what would be your plans on the cast's reaction to Subaru's first trial? I just watched the audio commentary of that episode where Rie Takahashi bawled her eyes out and just remembered your fanfic of yours.

Sure I can give you some notes about that:

Begins very fluffy, ends in devastation

Reinhard is beyond delighted to see Natsuki Kenichi, because it “confirms” the assumption he’s had since the start: that Subaru came from an entire world full of Natsuki Subarus.

Anastasia is extremely invested in this world from Beyond the Great Waterfall. She is more interested in the technology surrounding them than she is in Subaru’s family life.

(This soon becomes her actively trying to distract herself and others from what is clearly a Very Personal Set Of Memories actually.)

The idea that Subaru gave up and holed himself up in his room for months like that is met with utter bewilderment because it does not fit with their impression of even the Subaru who first arrived in Lugunica at all. It’s not even a matter of him being lazy or not wanting to improve because he fully dove into his work as a manservant the moment he had the chance, so — it’s pretty clear from the very start that Something Else is going on, here.

Everyone’s impressions of Subaru’s parents are pretty varied. They’re not gonna see them as the Perfect Parents or anything, and different characters will have different ideas about what they should have done or w/e, but they’re all gonna understand that Subaru’s parents wanted what was best for him and loved him very, very much.

Ricardo, Rom, and Wilhelm are all particularly devastated by Subaru’s conversation with his parents, because they all have children of their own.

Subaru ends up completely bawling when it finally hits him, for the second time, that he will never see his parents again. Everyone tries to comfort him but the jar is in the way.

God, the reveal that Subaru was a shut-in who didn't have any friends is going to be just... so gut-punching, isn't it. Like, the nicest guy you know slowly feels more like an outcast until he just... gives up. And they realize not everyone really takes Subaru's Subaru-ness all that well... he really did luck into finding people who actually liked his bombastic personality, huh

#ds!subaru

It’s both funny and sad seeing Roswaal in the LN and early Side Stories because. He’s actually genuinely being really friendly and caring with Subaru? He teases him all the time, he gives him advice and offers a listening ear when Subaru seems to want/need it, he humors random, stupid whims — and then there’s details like how he’s heavily implied to have arranged for Subaru to “discover” his alcohol stash so that he had an excuse to offer him a reward of really expensive sake just so his new servant could have some fun, or pretended to be a spirit to turn a game back on him, or how he was. EXTREMELY brutal towards the Wolgarm that were about to murder Subaru in the woods the second he was close enough to know what was going on and actually do something about it. And he has a number of lines that sure do seem to say, “I will not let you die. I will always step in beforehand to make sure you and everyone else survives, so just lead us down the timeline that will give us the best ending.”

Like, Roswaal genuinely seems to care about Subaru quite a bit, and it really does come off like he WANTS to do right by him. And honestly…

If Return By Death DIDN’T involve Subaru having to die, and was instead some sort of time-travel ability that he could activate whenever he wanted, Roswaal’s attitude towards it in Arc 4 might have actually been solid advice. “Don’t worry about the people you leave behind in old timelines, because all that matters is that everything works out for us in the end. I don’t mind dying here so long as a version of me survives. You can’t be so hesitant to use it when the people you care about are in danger.” Hell, Roswaal seems to be of the mind that Subaru should use his broken ability to do as much as he can, and then the only thing he’ll suffer from afterwards are scars from what he’s WITNESSED that nobody else can know about — which Roswaal would then use “break periods” during times of safety at the manor to make sure Subaru doesn’t like. Have a breakdown from accumulated stress. Like a grad student having to crunch on some weekends to meet deadlines before going to a bar to blow off steam or something.

The fact that Subaru has to DIE to activate it 1) is something Roswaal crucially does not know and 2) recontextualizes absolutely EVERYTHING about the ability. Like, if we were watching Arc 4 from Roswaal’s POV we’d probably be like “Oh just stop being such a fucking baby and use your time travel ability Subaru…!” and then “Subaru has to die to use it” would probably be a MASSIVE twist and game-changer that turns everything on its head. It probably comes off like Subaru is refusing to use an ability that could literally save everyone he cares about from certain death time and again for no fucking reason.

Also there’s a couple details in Arc 2 about how like. Roswaal seems to just be getting used to the idea that he’s living with a time traveler now. Like in the bath he’s like “Ah, right. So I guess you’ve never seen me without my makeup on before.” Or he’s needling him about how much he knows. He might genuinely be under the impression that. Like. Subaru’s going to be time traveling for his own ends a lot during his stay at the mansion, and Roswaal is just gonna be sitting back and letting him do whatever he wants in that regard. “He’s still getting used to his new surroundings, so he’s probably gonna travel back in time a couple times while he tests out a few things and figures out what this place is.” Roswaal didn’t even actually know about the Wolgarm threat, and is largely implied to have just followed the instructions in his Tome without asking any questions about Why he was to leave the manor when Subaru left for the village a day early, so he might have legitimately just thought Subaru was screwing around to see what worked and what didn’t and was just kinda chill with it, because he took in a time traveler and the time traveler was gonna do time traveler things.

paipie0

That makes me wonder what he was thinking during the 4th loop where Subaru woke up screaming and going insane, for some reason he just kinda did nothing, not even trying to figure out what happened. Wasn’t even that worried about the time traveller being like that, cmon bro what if his downward spiral gets worse and you end up in the Wrath IF.

Roswaal somehow fucking missed that Ram was crushing on him for several years and assumed that she despised him and was salivating for the moment she’d finally get to kill him. Roswaal is not an emotionally intelligent individual.

He did do one thing, actually. He told Subaru he was a guest, and could stay for as long as he wanted without worrying about food, shelter, etc. It seems like he might have just — tried to let him sort out whatever he was dealing with on his own, giving him the physical support he needed to focus only on whatever his mental issues were. “He must have witnessed something truly awful while he was looping in the Capital.” That might have been his assumption, even.