Frequently Asked Questions

What is the reading order for Konosuba?

The ideal reading order goes:

Volume 1-5 > Explosions 1-3 > Volume 6-8> Vanir-spinoff > Volume 9 > Continued Explosions > Volumes 10-14 > Continued explosions 2 > Volume 15 and beyond

The Dust volumes can be read at any time after you’ve read the Vanir Spinoff.

Are the spinoffs important?

Apart from the first explosions volume, none of the other spinoffs are strictly necessary to your enjoyment of the series, though they are all enjoyable in their own right and certainly worth a read.

Explosions 1 contains information that is vital to the events of Volume 9, which gives a truncated version of the events, but a fair bit of tension and payoff is lost if you are unaware of what happens in the prequel.

When is Volume 17/ the next chapter coming out?

Volumes are released when they are done. Main story chapters go up every Saturday, while occasional side content, like manga chapters and the like, might go up on Wednesday.

What Volumes do the Anime seasons cover?

Season 1 covers Volumes 1-2, Season 2 covers Volumes 3-4, and the Movie covers Volume 5.

I came here after watching the Anime. Should I start from the beginning or continue on from Volume 5?

My suggestion is to start from the beginning. The Anime omits several scenes from the LN, most prominently the introduction of Wiz and Dust. If it feels like they suddenly show up from nowhere and the show treats them like they’ve always been part of the cast, this is why.

Additionally, Season 2 and the Movie also makes some major changes to the way certain scenes unfold, and the Novels naturally follows the Novel’s versions of events rather than the Anime’s. Certain events in future Volumes might not make sense if you only know the Anime version of events.

I’m interested in learning Japanese. Is there a good place to start?

The way I did it was with Tae-kim’s grammer guide, this will give you a good foundation with how Japanese works and the rules of the language. Once you’re done with that, the next step is to use Duolingo (Alternatively memrise is also a good resource) to build up your vocabulary and memorize the characters. Using Realkana would also do if you are impatient and want a more brute force method of achieving this. Once you’re confident enough, head over to NHK easy news for practice.

Ultimately, though, this is just the path I took, and it might not be applicable to everyone out there. r/learnJapanese has a guide that goes into far more details than I do, and this website has a list of resource for anyone trying to learn japanese, so feel free to hit them up if what I posted here isn’t cutting it for you.