Review of Ya Boy Kongming!

I had always been a fan of RoTK ever since I was a kid, and having consumed so much media related to RoTK over the years, everything from live action dramas to games to anime, you get the sense that the stories and its characters are all overdone, and that there is nothing new to explore with regards to the series. So, believe me when I was Paripi Koumei is the freshest take I've seen on RoTK in a long long while that doesn't stray too far from RoTK while being a uniquely original experience. Paripi Koumei is practically a reverse Isekai (or pretty much entirelyis one considering how much of RoTK is Shu Propaganda/fiction), with Koumei himself (funnily enough voiced by the same guy who did Sima Yi in Dynasty Warriors) being a music producer in modern day Shibuya. After the obligatory Isekai Culture Shock gags, the show quickly and surprisingly gets into a comfortable groove with Koumei being this suave and savvy music producer to the real MC, Eiko.

Eiko is just so adorable, and, in a season with so many great MCs, stands out as the cutest of them all. You can really get a sense that even the animation staff had fun animating her as even the in-between frames show a lot of effort being put into making her just so squishy and adorable, what with the exaggerated expressions and heart mouths and all. Koumei himself is no slouch either, though his genius does occasionally veer too close into "reading the script" territory. A lot of his strategems are based off of the famous sequences from the original RoTK, reinterpreted in a modern day sense. And it's usually fun to see how the series reinterprets these moments to fit in within the setting.

However, as fun it is to see Koumei work his way through these situations with his unimaginable intellect/script-knowledge, his relevance becomes surprisingly minor come the second half once the Summer Sonia arc starts. And his (relative) absence is sorely felt as nearly every episode in the second half I find myself saying "Where's Koumei?".

To be honest I'm not all that into the music, especially not that awful rap. The OP and ED are incredible and some of the best this season, but the insert songs just don't grab my attention like they should, despite Eiko and Nanamin supposedly being these wonderful divas, their songs are somewhere in the realm of mediocrity for the most part. And oh speaking of rap, why oh why does Kabetaijin get so much prominence in this. He's easily the weakest link of the bunch and his raps are just terrible.

Paripi Koumei has been a fun show, though it is definitely much stronger whenever Koumei is onscreen. While Eiko's journey to the top is certainly nothing new or special, Eiko being such a lovable character definitely made the show for me, even if her songs ultimately never won me over as they did for Koumei.

7/10