The Winter 2025 Anime Preview Guide

I Left My A-Rank Party

As far as adventuring goes, supporting your party is a thankless job—even more so if you're just a lowly red mage like Yuke Feldio. So, when he gets fed up with his A-rank party of total a-holes, he ditches them for some former students—a trio of girls who just love his company. The thing is, to conquer the world's greatest dungeon and achieve his dream, he'll have to teach these cuties a thing or two, and he may learn there's more potential within him (and them) than he ever knew.

I Left My A-Rank Party is based on a light novel series by Kōsuke Unagi. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

While it's nice at times not to have everything overexplained, there are cases where I'd like at least a tiny bit of information. Admittedly, my burning question is what the hell is going on with Silk the elf's outfit – it looks impractical and uncomfortable. But I'd also have appreciated some information about the various mage classes in the story's world. What makes Yuke's “red mage” significantly different from Marina's “sword mage” or whatever kind of mage Rain is? Why are red mages rare? Are they more overpowered than other classes, or is Yuke just special because he's the male lead in a harem (or at least haremish) series?

Of course, the fact that I spent so much time wondering about this doesn't say anything great about the plot. It's pretty standard stuff, with an underappreciated hero leaving his party and joining up with a new one composed of nubile young women who call him “sensei.” About the only thing that really sets it apart from other similar shows is the presence of “streaming artifacts,” magic tools that allow people to livestream. Because that's what bog-standard LitRPG needed as a genre: livestreams. But there's a “see what sticks” feel to this episode that the “camrats” fit right into; along with that device, Yuke also has what's essentially Strega Nonna's magic pasta pot, also known as the magic item that features in folktales of ATU565, best known as “The Magic Mill.” If there's not a later episode where one of the ladies tries to use the soup kettle and accidentally floods a dungeon with stew, I'll be shocked.

And I've again wandered from the episode's main point, which was to show Yuke joining forces with Marina, Silk, and Rain to form the too-cutely named party Clover because Yuke is their fourth lucky leaf. His old party was called Thunder Pike, which isn't great, either, but it at least sounds more adventurous, even if I keep thinking of the fish when I'm pretty sure they mean the weapon. But names are at least half about being on the nose here – Rain has blue hair. But then the other members of Thunder Pike have names like Jamie and Barry, so maybe I'm looking too hard for connections in a desperate bid to find something to talk about.

As you can no doubt guess, this isn't off to a great start. It's not terrible, except for Silk's outfit; there's a logical progression of recognizable events and some interesting (albeit not good) visual choices made with how someone who has a buff or debuff cast on them looks. It's just the sort of episode that slides right off your brain, and there is a place for that. If you're into it, this should work, but otherwise, only genre fans need apply.

I am desperately writing up this review for I Left My A-Rank Party… with furious abandon because I just know that there is no possible way I will be able to remember a single detail of this show after another thirty minutes has gone by. We've had our fair share of disposable copycat anime cycle through our screens so far this season, but I Left My A-Rank Party is almost impressive in how much effort it is seemingly putting forth to be forgotten by all who lay their eyes and ears upon it. It is a true cipher of a production, from its by-the-numbers setup to its completely anonymous cast of characters and an art style that is indistinguishable from the dozens upon dozens of similar shows that have come before it.

Perhaps one benefit to being so preternaturally lacking in any recognizable personality or creativity is that it is just as impossible to hate I Left My A-Rank Party as it is to enjoy it. Our hero, Yuke, has nothing but the ridiculous use of the letter “Y” in his name to make an impression, but he is also not hateful or annoying, and he's not such a brazen store-brand imitation of another recognizable hero that you could be offended on their behalf. The same goes for his motley crew of heroine companions, who all fill the roles of “vaguely nice girls who occupy different classes of an RPG party and also have different enough hairstyles to distinguish at a glance.” Again, I am really trying here, but I could not tell you one concrete detail about either Marina, Silk, or Rain. They vanish into mist and silence the moment I attempt to conjure them up in my mind. I'm pretty sure they go on an adventure with Yuke after he leaves the douchebags in his other party, and…um…they fight some kind of monster, yeah! Oh, and I bet all of the girls are consistently and vocally impressed by how smart and cool and nice and useful their teacher is, yup. They probably comment on, er, his magic spells and…stuff.

If I didn't know any better, you could easily have fooled me into thinking that I Left My A-Rank Party was some weird, experimental attempt to turn the tutorial assets and stock mission templates from an old RPG Maker release into an anime, rather than being an adaptation of a real comic with, like, an author and everything. I might have been even more incensed by its hostile refusal to do literally even one thing that might stick in my brain long enough to allow me to write a complete sentence for this preview, but it's been a long week, y'all, and I can only muster up so much rage at this point.