The Ossan Newbie Adventurer, Trained to Death by the Most Powerful Party, Became Invincible – Episode 1

Content Warning: Mild fan service

What’s it about? Your typical adventurer is a teenager…right? Well, meet Rick Gladiator, a thirty-year-old man bucking the trend when he leaves his clerical work behind to pick up the blade as a novice fighter. Only this fighter has a secret: he might be F-rank, but he’s got serious S-rank strength!

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One of my favorite games, to this day, is Fantasy Life on the 3DS. If you’ve never played it, it’s basically a life sim where you can switch between fantastical and mundane careers, ranging from Paladin to Cook. You exist within a fantastical world…but you can also just be an angler. Dragons be here, but maybe you just kind of want to master your skills as a Tailor.

I bring that up because The Ossan Newbie Adventurer, Trained to Death by the Most Powerful Party, Became Invincible (Jesus Christ these titles are going to kill me, hereafter Ossan Adventurer) kind of echoes that with its premise of a man who starts his fantasy life as a clerical worker, but ultimately craves a bit of adventurer. Question is, will this premise pay off enough to reel me in, or is it back to paper pushing?

You already know what you’ve got to do if you want to find out.

Episode 1 opens with Rick Gladiator getting the absolute shit beaten out of him, only it’s consensual since he’s doing hella strength training. Hard cut to the most middle-aged man buttrock opening, and then hard cut again to the start of Rick’s adventure.

Normally, in this society, teens and the young become adventurers, leveraging their age as part of the comprehensive image and fighting package of your typical adventuring party. However, that’s not going to stop Rick Gladiator–cannot get enough of that name!–from gettin’ his head in the game! He’s trading quill for blade, scroll for fist, and let me tell you, he’s ready to get his rank and set off into the world.

What ensues is an actually kind of charming story about a medieval millennial getting his start in a field typically dominated by ageism and the belief that adventure is wasted on the old. 

Maybe it’s because I watched this at 9:58 p.m. with a headache, but I kind of love Ossan Adventurer. I’m not going to tell you it’s revolutionary because it’s not: this premise feels familiar, though I don’t know that we’ve gotten it localized before. What I will say about Ossan Adventurer is that it’s actually kind of refreshing. I found a lot to enjoy here, which I genuinely didn’t expect.

Rick feels immediately relatable as a fellow thirty-something, and while he’s ripped where I’m pleasantly soft, I did feel a kind of kinship with him. He’s someone determined to change the path of his life, someone who wants more and craves adventure. Most importantly, he’s not willing to let the fact that he’s spent his “prime years” at a desk in the guild stop him from achieving anything he wants. In fact, his fourteen years of work and two years of extreme training have set him up to succeed quite well: he just needs a foot in the door.

In fact, I actually think it’s this specific part of the premise that charmed me: Rick might just be another guy, but there’s something nice about seeing “just another guy” get to have an adventure. Rick is the character we see in the background, the clerk at the guild organizing documents and making sure all the new applicants get their I.D. cards. Now, he gets to take the lead and star in his own story as the everyday hero.

You know, I’m going to revoke my initial statement: I don’t think this charmed me because it’s late at night. I think it charmed me because there’s something here. It’s not the strongest show, and I think the back half of this premiere proves that it’s not necessarily A-list viewing. Ossan Adventureris probably never going to say anything particularly profound, nor is it likely to be the hidden gem of summer. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t think all anime have to break new ground. I don’t think everything has to be revolutionary. Sometimes you watch a show because it’s just kind of enjoyable and that’s enough. I think that Ossan Adventurer kind of slots into that niche perfectly fine. 

I actually think I might stick with this one, just to cheer on Rick and see him rise in rank. Don’t expect a feminist wonder from this show, but…I sense it’ll be pretty alright.