So in my quest to find more anime to watch I came across one with a title that is way too long called The Strongest Tank’s Labyrinth Raids – A Tank with a Rare 9999 Resistance Skill Got Kicked from the Hero’s Party. To explain the plot of the show I first need to explain a concept in the show itself. Characters have an invisible shield protecting them and each shield has a numerical value and once the damage it takes exceeds that value any attack after that is damage directly to the character. Rud was a tank for the hero’s party who joined in order to find a rare item to use as a cure for his sister’s illness, but was kicked out because his seemingly impressive shield was running out far too quickly for some reason, likely due to his skills that he knew he had but didn’t know anything about. Shortly after Rud is kicked out he meets a homunculus Luna who identifies all of Rud’s skills only to find not only the answer as to why that was happening but a revelation that as a tank Rud is actually extremely overpowered.

So to start with I’ll talk about the story and to be honest I’m not entirely sure how to sum it up. It really didn’t feel like there was one cohesive story to this show at all but several smaller stories told in rapid succession. Sure you have the whole Rud not knowing his skills plotline but that’s resolved in a couple of episodes, then you have the whole Rud trying to save his sister but that is seemingly resolved a couple episodes later and then it moves onto another story about Rud making a guild, then somehow possibly becoming a demon lord, then something about him having ultimate power. It honestly got very frustrating as the story kept moving from one thing to another with these plots that seem like perfect ideas for long standing stories only to be told from start to finish almost instantly. Frankly I had to go through my notes just to remember Rud was in the hero’s party at all or the fact that there was a character called the hero. The story was honestly one big mess from start to finish as it didn’t even seem like the show itself knew what story it was trying to tell. Now the ideas they had were all really great ideas just too many of them and not one of them was executed well. A great example of this is the illness for Rud’s sister. You would thing as a big motivator for Rud this illness was a matter of severity and urgency but really unless the show flat out told you she was sick it was easy to forget that she was as nothing about the character was presented in away that made this clear outside of maybe a couple minutes of her in bed with a fever. This really is a great explanation of why none of the elements were executed well because while they were brought up they didn’t have the follow through to make the gravity of the story they were trying to tell at the time work.

The problem with the story is also the problem with the characters. The show tries to flesh out most of the characters with in depth back stories and motivations and then somehow making those motivations intertwined with the plot the story decided to tell at the time. The problem is like those plotlines, these random callbacks to their backstories come up seemingly out of nowhere and then are resolved far too quickly for them to have any kind of emotional impact. Rud himself is an ok character enough but nothing about his personality really stands out except for his obsession with his sister. While I can understand the doting brother angle the way this is taken is a little extreme with him almost having an entirely one track mind towards taking care of her which also doesn’t work given how much the story failed to make the severity of her illness match Rud’s determination to help her.

The combat in this show also falls flat. The animation for the movements is very stiff and even then it seems like the characters have to have some heart to heart in the middle of the big combat scenes so the already pretty uneventful fight gets interrupted with an attempt to advance the storyline in a way that doesn’t work due to the problems I’ve already discussed earlier.

So overall this show had a lot of great ideas and that’s where the show ultimately fails. It had way too many ideas and to try and put all of that in a 12 episode season is just absolutely insane. I’ve seen less individual plot elements in shows where a season has twice as many episodes. The reality is because each idea is seen from start to finish so quickly it’s impossible as a viewer to take the time needed to be invested in the situation. I think the show was about five episodes in telling a story that I thought we would only scratch the surface of by the end of the entire season. Because of this no part of the story ended up being told well and not a single character was developed in a way that made me care about them. I honestly don’t know how I made it to the end of the season as there were times where I was just flat out bored watching it but I did and this is where I’m going to stop. I genuinely do not care of there’s another season because even if it improves on the story as a whole I just don’t have the interest to take the time to see if that’s the case.