Like everyone else, Lent received his gift at 15. But his gift stood out, not just for being unique, but for being S-rank. Rather than fighting, casting spells, or doing anything directly, his power allows him to lend mana to his party members. At first, he was admired for his gift, which led to him being asked to join an adventurer’s party with Misa and Guy. However, over the years, they forgot the source of their increased mana pool and that they were supposed to return the mana. This frustrates Lent a lot, because receiving back the mana is an inherent part of how his magic is supposed to be used. After they found other means to gain mana, they finally decided to kick him out of the party. Could this be a decision they’ll come to regret?

This first episode was so generic that I had trouble seeing the point of it. We can already glean from the title that we’ll get a typical first episode where the protagonist gets mistreated by his party members, but it kind of drags on for too long here. The only thing I can think of is that this helps build up more resentment towards his former party members, so I guess this series might lean more into the revenge side of the “kicked out of the party” genre. His party members are utterly vain and callous, without any redeeming qualities. Meanwhile the protagonist is impotent and spineless. This one-dimensional writing doesn’t bode well for any future characters introduced in the upcoming episodes. The “lending” part of his mana-lending ability is hinted to be the thing that makes his ability stand out from any other buff-type magic, but we’re not given enough reason to care about that. This is one of those situations where a two-episode premiere would have helped, but as it is, I’m not interested enough to come back for another episode next week.

Magic Repo Man is Streaming on Crunchyroll.