What’s it about? Yuke is a red mage and a member of the A-rank party, Thunder Pike. That is until he finally realizes that they don’t appreciate his support in battle and often push him to the side, including when it comes to his cut of the gold. Out of frustration he leaves and seeks a new party, only to encounter one of his former students who invites him to come along on a new adventure!
I knew this review was going to be something special when the first thought I whispered under my breath was, “What in the fuck is this discount Konosuba lookin’ shit?” and honestly, I don’t think that’s completely off base for a series like I Left my A-Rank Party to Help My Former Students Reach the Dungeon Depths!, save for there being no isekai’d boy in otherworldly clothes. Instead, we have Yuke, an A-ranked but somehow lowly red mage (already ass, if you ask me because we know this story) who reunites with three young women on his quest to find a better party that doesn’t bully him.
But will I feel equally as bullied by this premiere, or will I come away an empowered guy? Who knows when it comes to these fantasy series. Guess I’ll just have to watch and find out.
Episode 1, “Clover is Born,” opens with a BIG BUFF BEAUTY–er…a party of adventurers exploring a dungeon wreathed in darkness and a seal. The adventures who stand before it have stopped the rise of the Demon King for now, yet the world isn’t out of the fire yet. In fact, the world needs a hero to appear and save everyone from utter demise.
Enter Yuke, who isn’t a hero, but is a member of the A-rank party, Thunder Pike. Oh, and he’s a red mage who feels very, very underappreciated because no one thanks him for his enchantments and scroll skills. Worse, he’s left off camera when his party gains praise via a magical livestream, which…okay, I’d be sore over that too if I kept everyone alive and gave them nifty skills boosts and stuff.
So what’s a guy to do? Well, leave of course. Yuke does it pretty promptly, kicking off the larger plot and leaving his rather ungrateful—and honestly, super rude and very dismissive—party members behind for greener grass and better horizons, starting with a new job and three former students…
I’ll be honest, I struggled with this one. While Yuke definitely doesn’t get his proverbial flowers from his team, you’re left wondering why he’s stuck around this long when his former teammates clearly don’t like him. It makes his departure feels less impactful and more like him having a sudden hissy fit, which I don’t think is the intent. His former party is quite dismissive of his actually kind of real complaints about his pay cut and the way they treat him when it seems like his red magic is basically keeping them alive during fights. That’s not to say he’s better than them, but it is to say his magic is clearly a part of their dynamic.
That said, I also don’t find Yuke to be an enjoyable twenty-year-old, and the addition of former student Marina and her party members Silk and Rain, three young women who are his juniors and D-rank adventurers, don’t necessarily make him more enjoyable. If anything, it feels a bit inexplicable that, once again, Some Guy has this weird magnetism to him that all of these skilled young women seem drawn to. Granted, we’re only just seeing the start of any potential cohesion with Yuke’s new party.
Ah, and about my Konosuba remark: turns out that if this were more like that series, it’d actually be interesting. Instead, this just has color-coded girls with very little character outside of praising Yuke for his red mage skills and blushing and stuttering bashfully, just to add some flavor. I mean, they do other things but so much of the premiere is the trio being impressed by their senior and his experience to the extent that I don’t know anything about them outside of their names and classes. My kingdom for a personality for each of these girls that lets them stand out: they deserve it.
While not an isekai entry, I Left my A-Rank Party to Help My Former Students Reach the Dungeon Depths! is just another average “Brown/Black Haired Young Man Adventures with Three Conventionally Attractive Younger Women” story. It’s , certainly not a feminist tale as old as time. If anything, it’s just another way to use a budget at a studio to make a story that will, inevitably, get a lot of eyes on it but amount to the sum of what you see laid out in the premiere. Not to say it’s bad or anything–there’s always an audience for this kind of adaptation, especially if there’s a localized version of the source–but it’s just that in a world where there’s umpteen anime coming out every three months, I’ve learned to be very picky and see what’s immediately hot and what immediately is not. This…decidedly is not, though it’s perfect if you don’t want to think too deeply about a fantasy world.
Ultimately, I’m not going stick around to watch unless I catch wind that something really interesting is going to happen, largely because I’ve seen this story before, and heck, have even seen similar elements in this very season. My recommendation is, as always, to watch and see what you personally think. My voice is only one of many, though I do also want to remind you that I always like to encourage everyone but myself to make wise watching decisions. Maybe, this season, I’ll finally take my advice to heart and watch the things that actually interest me.
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