Anime Spotlight #52: The Ossan Newbie Adventurer, Trained to Death By the Most Powerful Party, Became Invincible

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Middle-Aged Newbie Digital Marketer, Schooled and Gambled To Debt, Became An Animeister.

The new trend in Japanese fantasy media this year seems to be guild receptionists who'd rather kill monsters than push papers, and I drafted this review in early 2025 when I was still doing the call to action twice in my posts, so please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read because I would also rather do cool stuff than work in customer service, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content. And read on as I review an anime with a long title where the long title happened before the anime started.

The Ossan Newbie Adventurer, Trained to Death By the Most Powerful Party, Became Invincible is a "read the manga" (and the light-novels, and the novels, all of which are still ongoing at the hands of Kiraku Kishima and their various illustrators) anime with no talk of a second season but at least five more seasons of story left to tell, if the MacGuffins in play are any indication.

Born with the innate skill to give himself plot armor when he thinks he's about to lose, as well as the most manly warrior name ever conceived, young Rick Gladiator (Aaron Campbell, of Banished from the Hero's Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside, SSSS.Dynazenon, and My Hero Academia) always dreamed of fighting the mythical world's strongest monster, Kaiser Alsapiet, and winning the Akashic Records (minus the Bastard Magical Instructor this time) so he could make a wish. He eventually succumbed to familial obligations and societal pressures and got a job as a guild receptionist despite looking like the red guy in an Arc System Works game and having the name he has, and so misses the opportunity to train his magic reserves because his skill doesn't activate until he's in his mid-thirties, when he punches the head off of a dragon in front of one of the two strongest women in the world (a well-endowed dark elf maid with the last name of Elfelt—because surnames are never creative in this series—who can cut anything with her bare hands and serves as Rick's love interest here, at least for as far as typical propriety repression allows), leading to the title happening before the beginning of the series, though we get some idea of Rick's training through dialogue and flashbacks. To me, the first few episodes didn't provide a clear draw, relying on genre clichés (the overpowered hero is insecure about his strength and casually breaks everything on accident, the low-class hero pisses off the aristocracy by upstaging, defeating, or otherwise offending them, characters calling a thirty-something an old man, and other such "jokes"). But these clichés thankfully don't become running gags in the series, only getting one or two episodes apiece before the story moves on and/or finds a new use for the characters involved (such as one of the aristocrats later becoming Rick's student and fangirl after he defeats her early in the season). The real comedy comes with the arrival of Rick's party members (making physical gags and deadpan creepypasta humor out of his hellish training flashbacks, a la The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic), as does the story proper. Apparently, Kaiser Alsapiet isn't just wandering around destroying everything because it was sealed away by an ancient hero, and the only way to fight it is to locate seven orbs (think of them as Dragon Balls, or Chaos Emeralds, or the orbs you get from beating the KONG Temples in DKC Returns that let you access a secret fruit dimension and play the game backwards) and break the seal. The major arc of the season, once Rick earns his adventuring license, deals with Rick, his party (a sapient orc named Ashorc, a half-elf-half-dwarf gunsmith named Eldwarf, the aforementioned elf-maid, and a young vampire named Draqul who can casually nuke anything by saying explosion onomatopoeia and pointing her finger at it) and the aristocratic warrior-knight Angelica competing in the King Of Fists Tournament to win the belt (inset with one of the McGuffin orbs) from a powerful wolf-man in a red vest and blue jeans. That's right; our heroes have to beat Terry Bogard at Tekken. And if that wasn't a blatant enough SNK/Bandai-Namco fighting game reference for you, the draconic tournament sponsor's brother is an arrogant, overpowered prodigy named Geese.

There's also some hint at a nefarious gambling plot by King Of Fists sponsor Snape (because Harry Potter can't escape this series, either) to buy his way into a political marriage with Rick's fangirl Angelica, but when it fails, he simply shrugs and moves on like that entire scheme could have been left out (aside from being a means to Angelica's growth as a character) and nothing would have changed.

It all ends with the party claiming their second of the seven legally distinct magic orbs after Rick's epic, teacher vs. student battle with Ashorc, and the promise of further adventures for those invested enough in the story to read the source material. The characters and themes were handled competently enough and the fights were spectacular, but given the safe, predictable, non-committal, borderline infringing nature of certain major factors in the story, I wouldn't be surprised if I forget Ossan Newbie Adventurer in a month and never see it again.

Sorry, but honesty can be savage sometimes. Let me know how you feel about it in the comments below, and come back tomorrow for another Anime Spotlight where the title is long and an overpowered guild receptionist hits monsters really hard.

Reviewing Anime With Long Titles,

I Became An Animeister Who Consumed

Web Space Until I Ran Out.