Fresh out the gate on blu-ray comes the mighty Kongming, rockin’ the mic and representin’ like a BOSS. Let’s check out how this quirky fish-out-of-water time travel comedy meets inspirational pop artist triumph brings it!
Zhuge Kongming was a masterful tactician who ruled during the Three Kingdoms era of ancient China. Fallen sick and with armies being overrun, as Kongming dies, he dreams of a better world where peace reigns. Kongming then awakens in present day Tokyo where he soon comes across a beautiful young musician named Eiko singing in a local bar whose voice he finds absolutely entrancing. He decides there and then to become her manager and use his uncanny skills of tactical strategy to help her succeed in the music business. Along the way they also recruit a young rapper savant named Kabe who has lost his passion for the rhythmic verse but whose talent is reinvigorated through Kongming’s machinations (complete with freestyle rap battle between he and Kongming). Through a combination of Kongming’s tactical savvy, Eiko’s earnest and soaring music and Kabe’s caustic, bravura rhymes, will Eiko rise above and have all her dreams come true?
I have to say, this series threw me a bit of a curveball. Based on the initial premise of a Three Kingdoms tactician reborn in modern Japan, I thought it would be a mostly a quirky comedy of Kongming interacting with modern conveniences similar to Therma Romae or other fish-out-of-water comedies. While there is a bit of that, Kongming adapts to modern-day quite quickly and gets down to business. Instead the series is more of a musician-rising-in-the-ranks inspirational drama with some situational comedy not unlike Carole & Tuesday, BECK and other shows about bands/singers overcoming trials, playing shows and winning music competitions. The show cleverly incorporates Kongming’s brilliant skills of war strategy to the world of the music business to outfox the competition and bring more and more attention to Eiko’s music and personality while also fleshing out the characters in meaningful ways to get you to care about them, even Eiko’s competition in the j-pop idol band AZALEA. Also like shows like BECK and Carole & Tuesday, Ya Boy Kongming is wall-to-wall music as well, much of which are high energy pop bangers that have garnered something of a cult following already. By the end of it, I was almost sad to see it go, feeling like Eiko’s rise to stardom is just getting started. Here’s hoping we get another season soon.
On the technical front, Sentai gives us a nice and clear 1080p transfer which looks as bright and crisp as you would expect of a 2022 series. On the audio side, we have both English and Japanese Stereo 2.0 mixes (Why not a 5.1 mix? I’m sure folks would love to hear these power anthems in surround sound). Interestingly, during the rapid fire rap battles, rather than attempting to translate the rhymes into something coherent in English, for the English dub the audio just temporarily switches to Japanese. Some might find this a bit jarring, but in general anime fans have been conditioned to have songs left in the native language in many series, so this may not be much of an issue for viewers. The extras are the usual clean OP and ED themes and a couple of original Japanese promo trailers.
Based on the title, I thought this series might lean too hard into the goofy side of things with lots of wacky fish-out-of-water shenanigans, but fortunately, it actually plays it absurd premise fairly straight and presents a premise that works surprisingly well. Overall, I’d say I was a fan of this one and look forward to hopefully a second season sometime in the future.