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This anime is another in a long line of "Strongest [Insert Category] Kicked out of Party" animes. Which is fine, I don't generally mind the incredible amounts of repetitiveness within today's RPG anime genre.

What I DO mind is how incredibly bad this anime's story and characters are. We start with the biggest flaw: despite the series title, the MC, Laust, is not the strongest. He is the weakest healer. He was kicked out of the party for being a bad healer when, in fact...he is a bad healer. He's a strong melee fighter, but he was fulfilling the role of ... a healer and doing a terrible job of it. As a result, the show fails right at the beginning to establish the baseline for this type of show: that the party is in the wrong and the MC is the innocent victim. Instead, the show TRIES to do that, but viewers who have played and understand group RPGs instead dislike the MC for applying for a group slot he isn't qualified for and failing his group.

Thus we get to failing two: since the show fails to establish the baseline "party bad/MC good" plot points, the show forces that viewpoint on the viewers by having the original party be ludicrously, cartoonishly evil and stupid, failing to understand the most basic elements of the RPG world they're supposed to have grown up in. To avoid spoilers I won't say how, but trust that you'll end up hating the storyline about as much as you hate the original party.

And finally (at least so far), there is the MC himself, who is a terrible combination of naive, bland, and irresponsible. The show has him continue the ludicrous farce that he's a healer despite it being constantly and obviously undercut by every element of the show. On top of that, no matter how badly he's mistreated, he forgives everyone, something the show treats as a good thing even when it leads to ludicrous injustice and bad outcomes for not just the MC but also everyone else. Again, won't spoil, but I feel confident that you'll know when you get to these moments, they're incredibly obvious and unambiguously bad decisions. Finally, he's just...bland. He barely talks, rarely shows emotion, barely even moves. He slowly walks around and attacks with a dagger, every once in a while saying not much of anything in short sentences. The supporting characters are far more interesting both in terms of the characters themselves as well as the action.

I'm forced to believe this is a group RPG anime written by a mangaka who has never actually played an RPG, which...is bad. At most, he's read about them in manga and is trying to bandwagon onto the genre's success.

I cannot recommend this anime on any level except as a time filler. It's the only reason I haven't dropped this yet.

This is a show that seems written for, and by, children.

The characters are one-dimensional, with each simply having one characteristic they're supposed to excel at, and that's their entire character, other than their blind loyalty for Ars.

Ars, the main character, continues his lackluster performance from season 1 where, despite the entire show being premised on him A) being a reincarnated adult and 2) having a unique ability to "appraise" people, neither of these characteristics is ever used properly and in fact in almost every episode they aren't used at all. Ars is less a MC and more an annoyingly naive walking camera so we ... can watch the other characters in the show do his job for him. He almost never makes any real decisions other than to "trust" his companions, never leads his forces, never does much of anything except give incredibly generic ra-ra speeches. He could be replaced with a moderately limited sound board of "I believe in you" phrases and the show would not be much different. In fact, he could be removed from the show entirely without much difference. Because he never provides any meaningful leadership or uses his reincarnated memories at all and virtually never uses his ability, when he does use his ability it's almost always for no reason and doesn't affect the story, and because the only times he's actually affected the story is to find a handful of super-characters which other forces have equivalents to WITHOUT his ability to find people, it's arguable that Ars adds literally nothing to the show at all.

If you're here for military strategy instead of isekai, prepare to be disappointed as well. The animation of battles is some of the worst I've ever seen, with a combination of slide-show graphics and entire armies represented as badly drawn groups of 3-5 people. The "strategy" from the "s-class" strategists invariably ends up to be blindingly obvious to anyone who isn't an idiot, almost always coming down to a variation of "more people defeats less people" or "what if we...attack harder? ZOMG." or "let's not just attack with 100% of our army and leave the entire rest of the country undefended." Who could possibly have thought of that? Every once in a while they'll pull something which is supposed to be strategic, but instead really feels more like unexplained omniscience and luck, AKA plot armor.

The voice acting is fine and the character design is fine, at least as long as the scenes don't have many characters and/or they aren't moving. That's it. That's the only redeeming quality of this show.

This is a terrible show and I don't understand how it's getting its rating.

The art is OK. The characters are OK. Saya stands out as having a combination of toneless speech that somehow nevertheless conveys emotion in a way that is kind of hilarious. Unfortunately, the MC has the least entertaining character in the show, with abilities that really come down to 1) hit people with his sword and 2) hit people with his sword + some sparkles. Almost every supporting character has much cooler abilities. The worldbuilding and story are completely half-assed and inconsistent.

And yet, I ended up watching all of both seasons without forcing myself, which means I pretty much have ... to give it a 6 instead of the 5 that my brain thinks it deserves, even though the primary plot device of the entire show, the powers/weapons the MCs use, don't seem to have any internal consistency or ever get explained properly. So if you're hoping to eventually figure out why sometimes Luxes seem to give power and sometimes they seem to take power...no answer. If you're wondering why Ogre Luxes even exist or how they apparently have their own consciousnesses? No answer. Why do Ogre Luxes require compatibility with users but robots can use them? No answer. Why do some characters have awesome powers while some just hit things with their Luxes as if they're regular weapons? What do the MC's stances even do? As far as I can tell: nothing, everything looks the same, he just wins after saying their name for some reason. (though I find it hilarious that we find out in a flashback that he just says their names out loud because Saya told him it sounds cool) Why have one faction created AI and robots but only uses them for what effectively UFC tournaments? Why is it considered fair for giant super-powered 20 foot tall super robots with impenetrable shields and laser cannons to fight 13 year old children? No answer. In what possible universe could taking away the MC's powers and inflicting multiple days of crippling injuring on him if he tries to defend himself be considered "protecting" him? No answer. Why does their entire society appear to revolve around this one fighting tournament? No answer. Why do all of the female voice actors huff helium before saying their lines? No answer. Why is the male robot a mini-gundam while the female robot is just a girl with cosplay gloves and boots? Because boobs, obviously.

But if you turn off your brain, you can find you've watched the entire thing pretty easily.

This show can't seem to decide what it wants to be. It has a story/worldbuilding that it set up, but every time that worldbuilding conflicts with generic anime tropes, they go with the anime tropes even if they make no sense in the show. Instead, we have...whatever the hell this show is becoming, a show which tells us that humanity is at war with 4 races who have essentially wiped out/enslaved the entire human race, but who Kai keeps befriending every time he runs into a character with boobs. I get it, actually defeating the other races is not where the story is going, ... but if the story doesn't work with the worldbuilding, then you should have written different worldbuilding. It's not like it wasn't under the control of the author. The MC befriending enemies just because they're kawaii is stupid, though not exactly surprising for anime, I suppose. Having multiple races become buddies and instantly forget decades of genocide the moment a single duel is over is nonsensical even for anime.

The story also sets itself up with Kai's journey to victory being "if you can defeat each race's hero, they'll be defeated, so if you defeat all 4 humanity is saved." Why this would be true when the entire rest of each genocidal and super-powered race is still there and perfectly capable of continuing to defeat humanity in the 99.9999% of territory where Kai isn't personally present is not explained, but the worst part is that we fairly quickly discover that each race has multiple hero-level characters (and why wouldn't they), so Kai's victories don't actually even do what the original plan told us they would and actually remove all the enemy heroes...and yet the story doesn't change at all. He still has to defeat one and only one of each hero. Just forget that the races still have all their forces and plenty of heroes to step into the role immediately after, OK?

And don't worry too much about how strong anyone is, or how magic works, or how weapons work. Sometimes Kai is superhuman, sometimes he's just a regular human with a literal plot weapon. Sometimes his plot weapon can rewrite reality, sometimes it's a worthless paperweight when the show would prefer some other character to have a chance to save the day. Magic? It just does whatever the author wants, apparently, with no logic at all as to its power, limits, or mechanics.

Mediocre at best. Watch if you have nothing better and are OK being equally frustrated and entertained.

If Game of Thrones was a Chinese anime, it would be this one. Unfortunately, that's true for the last season as well. Like GoT, the last season of Soul Land get's kind of dumb and feels rushed. Overall, still worth watching, however.

Don't be tricked by the beginning. The beginning is fine, don't get me wrong, but pretty generic. Good guys win, plots happen as expected, classic OP MC stuff.

There are nearly 300 episodes, and once you get deeper it, the plot gets really good. Twists you don't see coming, intrigue and death can happen to anyone, red-wedding scale surprises that ... take a plot you thought you saw the destination for and dramatically changing it, and all really well done in a way that all the actions and plot points make sense, instead of feeling forced or stupid.

It's just really good. And yes, it looks like it's animated out of a 2005 MMORPG game engine, but A) you get used to it, B) it has some advantages in the sheer depth of environments and people they're able to put on screen, and C) it does get a little better each season.

Watch this show. It's one of those shows that once you start, you start forgetting to sleep and not wanting to go work so you can just binge the entire thing.

This show is a strong meh. The animation is good, the acting is good, the plot is terrible.

1. The MC is an isekai who acts like a child instead of a middle aged man. It genuinely feels like the writer forgot that his MC is supposed to have the mind of an adult. This can be very frustrating, because the MC constantly acts immature and makes stupid mistakes of the type a child would make.
2. The MC has one defining ability and uses it horribly. The MC's one defining ability is to see any person's stats and instantly know their capabilities. ... A smart/wise MC would use this ability constantly to optimize his military, administrative offices, and at least offer guidance to his people generally. Instead, the MC pretty much only uses it to find literally less than 10 S-class people, and in many episodes he never uses his ability at all. The MC's focus on essentially making a team of heroes rather than methodically working through everyone in his region (he's had a decade and his area isn't that large) to me reflects more of his acting like an immature child and going after the shiny, exciting tactic instead of doing the boring but useful work that would be simple for the standard office worker whose mind he's supposed to have. There is even an episode where he is straight up asked to find more capable people by the governor, so you think to yourself "OK, here it is, his ability is finally going to come into play, right?" Wrong. He has someone ELSE do the one task that his character is literally designed around. Why? Why would the author do this? Just to annoy me?
3. Mireille is a horribly written character and 2/12 of the episodes in this season are devoted to horrible writing so she can be a main character. The author first goes out of his way to make Mireille incredibly unlikable to both characters in the show and the watchers, then does a two episode redemption arc which essentially boils down to "if I win this one game, everyone has to like me despite literally none of the reasons no one liked me before having changed." It's incredibly forced, but even worse, it's incredibly stupid, because the contest is very VERY clearly won by plot armor rather than having Mireille actually earn it. We're supposed to believe that she won by being a super strategist, but instead of her demonstrating any real ability, the other MCs just have their brains turned off for two episodes and act like ignorant morons so that she can win, and then magically everyone forgets that they hate her for numerous reasons which are all STILL TRUE. Her redemption feels unearned and forced, and if anything I might hate her character even more because of it. Well done, author.

This is a well animated, well voice acted, and enjoyable show, with two exceptions.

1. There are no good subtitles available. This seems to be a common problem with Chinese anime. They all have subtitles that seem to be done by mechanical translation and often amount to barely understandable gibberish. It's a lot like official Japanese subtitles from the 90s. This is the same problem Daily Life of the Immortal King (one of my favorite shows) has, and it's very unfortunate.
2. APM (I assume attacks per minute?). They make a huge deal about high APM explaining why Grim and Co. are ... better than everyone else, but that makes no sense in context. MMORPGs are not designed in such a way that action speed matters. At most, pounding 800 keys per minute like Grim does would just make his character spaz out and all his abilities constantly fail due to skill/global cooldowns on even the fastest actions. What's more, if they were going to make up some fake system which DID use APM, the problem remains that what they show in the game does not reflect it. The characters move at a normal pace, attack at a normal pace, nothing that Grim's character does matches the insane speed his fingers are typing. In other words, "APM" is just magic words to explain away how unbalanced the game appears to be, far more than would ever be allowed in real life.

That said, despite the fact that APM is central to pretty much everything which goes on in the game, I would just let #2 go, because so long as you ignore that plot hole, the rest of the plot works fine. The big reason why I can't fully recommend is that the horrible subtitles make the show very difficult to understand at times.

Every (good) show has worldbuilding. Every show does NOT use multi-month long exposition dumps to perform that worldbuilding. This anime appears to be taking advantage of the goodwill that it built up in prior seasons to do literally nothing for nearly two months worth of episodes. Entire episodes, no, multiple episodes, where the characters don't even leave their seats. Whole plotlines that are simply recounted as scouting reports instead of show to the viewers. At the rate they're going, what is to stop them from simply turning the entire season into reports? Oh, you thought it was building ... up to Rimuru vs Hinata? Just kidding, here's the after action report of their fight, that's just as fun, right?

This might have the most infuriatingly stupid OP MC I've yet to encounter. If you're looking for a show about a character powerful enough to destroy gods, but too stupid to turn on his abilities so he regularly gets defeated by starter-level enemies, this is the show for you.

But don't despair, it also has no plot and boring characters!

Luckily, as with any terrible Isekai, you can always fall back on the humor...which is nonexistent.

An if you're here for the harem aspect of isekai, better hope you're a lolicon. The MC pretends not to be a pedo, while opining on how a ... 13 year old girl's chest feels, or getting seduced by a naked 11 year old, or kissed by a tree child, or watching two 8 year olds shower, etc.

Visually fantastic, this anime falls down HARD on the story. It looked so good that I really wanted to like it, but I just cant. The idea that the very concept of evil (what the show calls malevolence) can be physically defeated just doesn't make any sense.

The enemies in the show are the manifestation of high levels of malevolence, IE bad emotions cause malevolence, and if too much malevolence builds up it manifests into a variety of evil creatures. The problem really comes from the next part, which is that the MC can defeat these creatures to eliminate malevolence, even ... though nothing has been done to actually resolve any of the bad emotions.

In other words, let's say you have a personal tragedy and are feeling sad. In this show, your sadness becomes a monster. Fine, sure, I can roll with that. What I can't roll with is that when some random hero rolls through town and defeats the monster, what, now you aren't sad anymore? How does this work? Further, this whole system creates a society in which the heroes are forced to be ludicrously naive goody-two-shoes, because anyone who deals with problems with a solution that isn't rated PG results in more malevolence. The story seems like it was written by a small child who doesn't understand that evil is not a tangible thing which can be defeated to make everyone live happily ever after.