Hello and welcome to Wasted Plotential, where we
discuss the wasted potential of our favourite plotlines.
The most frustrating thing about consuming a waifu-driven franchise is that your favourite
girl will never be the one who gets to be the most popular, especially with the Japanese,
who gravitate towards the tsunderes and the lolis, which are objectively the worst.
And that's why Konosuba as a series does not give a [DARKNESS MEWL] about Darkness.
Of the three main girls of the series, Darkness is my favourite (my actual favourite is Wiz),
but that's not saying a whole lot when the competition consists of the trash goddess
who is canonically the worst girl, and Megumin the meme loli. Of course Kazumi's gonna want to bang
the fourteen-year-old; and I mean that because in the light novels, as soon as she turns fourteen,
Kazuma becomes incredibly attracted to her. And of course Aqua will get a lot of focus due to being
the catalyst for the entire series and the one with the most motivation to kill the Demon King.
So where does that leave Darkness? As a background extra, essentially. She's just there to do her
BDSM shtick during action scenes and occasionally abuse her status to get her friends out of a bind.
And with the light novel series now at an end, unless we get a sequel series
to tie up the loose ends where the author really wants to give Darkness some love for
bloody once (a kind of Konosuba: Darkness if you will), it's going to stay that way.
I know how the series ends and, without spoiling anything,
I can tell you she does very little in the climax. But there was a story right before
the end where I think Darkness could have had a good bit of focus right before she
fades into the background again to focus on Aqua and Megumin for the final two volumes.
In Volume 15, a Demon King general named Seresdina, or Serena, shows up in town and
starts brainwashing the townsfolk into her followers and worshipers of her dark goddess
Regina. After half of the novel is spent with Kazuma trying to get under her skin,
she manages to trick him into becoming brainwashed by him feeling indebted to her. For the second
half, whether intentionally or not and with his inhibitions completely removed, Kazuma continues
to sabotage Serena's plans by sexually harassing her and deepening how indebted he feels to her for
allowing him this freedom to abuse her, destroying her reputation and weakening her power in the
process. Eventually, she can't take it anymore and begs his friends to take him back. Kazuma then
forces her to drink a potion to reduce her level to 1, neutralising the threat she poses for good.
What I'm proposing is that Kazuma's role, at least in the second half, should have
gone to Darkness instead. While Kazuma's antics throughout are funny, I think Darkness' traits
would fit into the second half quite naturally, and set up a nice bit of drama towards the end.
Darkness is a giant masochist, her entire premise being that she's a crusader with the highest hit
points in Axel more out of a desire to be beaten and ravished by strong monsters, than out of her
desire to protect the town. She absolutely gets off on being hurt and humiliated, so you'd imagine
she'd really enjoy this mental domination in which her inhibitions are nullified. I mean, we all
remember how much she enjoyed being possessed by Vanir, right? She'd go absolutely ham on
openly declaring her inability to resist Serena's commands, right in the middle of town, which would
sour Serena's reputation in the town by making everyone think she's some kinky weirdo with ill
intent towards Darkness. This persists and gets worse for Serena as time goes on, leading to her
giving up on trying to use Darkness for protection and political gain, just begging Kazuma and
friends to take her back, Kazuma taking the chance to make Serena drink the potion and achieving much
the same result as in the actual novel. So you can see where Darkness can take Kazuma's place
without really losing anything in the process. It just slightly changes the source of comedy we get.
But what was that drama I mentioned earlier? Well, part of the brainwashing is that the
subject becomes a devout follower of Regina, Serena's dark goddess who imbues her with power.
The significance here is that Darkness is the only member of the party to be explicitly religious.
Aqua is a literal goddess and thus Kazuma lost any faith he may have had long ago.
And I don't recall the subject of faith coming up with the Crimson Demons, but they'd probably
just make a god up as the alleged source of their chuunibyou power and not actually worship them.
But Darkness is a devout follower of Eris, which is highlighted by the revelation that her good
friend Chris is Eris in disguise. While mostly brought up as an excuse to not convert to the
Axis Cult, or to satisfy her kink around members of said religion, Darkness' faith clearly does
genuinely mean a lot to her, so you can imagine how she might be embarrassed but mostly able to
get over her humiliation from her actions under Serena's influence, but being genuinely devastated
by the fact that she was made to disavow Eris and her teachings, and worship a dark god instead.
Especially if Serena got a kick out of making Darkness publicly and repeatedly insult Eris
and her followers as a way of getting back at her for humiliating her so often.
Kazuma, knowing that Darkness' closest friend is actually the goddess she
worships and that Eris would never hold what Darkness was made to say against her,
can track her down and ask her to speak with Darkness as Eris and comfort her.
Eris is perhaps not allowed to openly appear in the mortal realm, deciding to go as Chris instead,
but her attempts to comfort Darkness as a different person who is "sure" that Eris won't
mind goes about as well as you'd expect. Kazuma then intervenes and exposes her as Eris somehow,
maybe by threatening to use Steal on her again (which is the reason she switched from a skirt to
shorts in the light novels) and she's able to make Darkness feel better by telling her what a good
friend she is and that she knows Darkness didn't mean any of what she said. Then in the epilogue,
Chris accompanies Darkness when she goes around to everyone she offended to help
explain the situation to them. And then in the next volume, when the party encounter Serena again
and Darkness goes to smash her pinkie toe with a brick, it's more personal and more hilarious.
With this, we get a nice bit of focus on Darkness right before the end, she learns that Chris is
Eris and we can hear in the next volume about how they've become even closer friends since,
we gain a bit of serious character stuff without getting too serious thanks to Kazuma's threats,
and we don't even lose anything notable by switching out Kazuma's sexual harassment
for Darkness' emphatic indulgence in her humiliation. You could even keep Kazuma
brainwashed alongside Darkness and lose absolutely nothing if his antics are that important to you.
Alas, Darkness will never get the attention she deserves,
because it's not enough for Megumin to get her own spin-off series that you need to
read to fully understand the multiple trips to the Crimson Demon village in the main series
like this was friggin' Index and Railgun, she has to be the one Kazuma falls for because he,
true to his Japanese heritage, has shit taste. I mean, just as an example,
Persona girls who get the push are fairly consistently the worst in their games, fight me.
If you liked this video, why not support me on Patreon and watch the exclusive
reading of the old script I wrote for this video months ago and forgot about? If not,
then make sure to share it with your enemies so they can suffer along with you.
Today's recommended video is One of Crunchyroll’s...Best? by The Cartoon Cipher. It's
a good channel about anime dubs, like Gintama, Dragon Maid, Kaguya-sama, that one Pinocchio
movie where he sounds like he's stone and, of course, Konosuba. Definitely worth a watch.