One day, the white mage Lloyd is banished from his party led by a great hero. He then happens to accompany an S-rank party on a quest by chance. At that time, no one knew that the hero's party would collapse and Lloyd would gain fame. He's actually an extraordinary support magic user who's unaware of how he'll eventually become peerless.

This is the story of that time Madoka Kaname was reincarnated as an adventurer in another world. Well, not really, but I can't be the only one who thinks the pink girl looks just like her if she were aged up a few years, right?

In any event, Scooped Up by an S-Rank Adventurer is another entry in the ever-increasing subgenre of "kicked out of my party by an idiot who apparently doesn't understand how my class works". Lloyd, a white mage, ie. THE HEALER, is unceremoniously removed from his party by Allen, a hero who thinks much too highly of himself. Only part of the episode is about Lloyd's adventures with Allen's group, however; most of it's actually focused on Lloyd being trained by his mentor, a girl who seems to mean well but is also from the "tough love" school. By the time Lloyd runs away to the city, he's more than earned the respite, and I'm frankly surprised he didn't do it sooner. Of course, this all seems to be part of his mentor's plan, because she's got a guy reporting back to her that he's started the process of hooking Lloyd back up with Allen's party. Which makes it seem like the pamphlet about the city that Lloyd just happened to find was a plant, and that she intended for him to leave at about this point all along.

Watching a premiere like this one is an exercise in consistent but infuriatingly vague irritation. The show is so bland, unoriginal and fundamentally lacking in meaningful artistic perspective that all one's brain can do is play Spot the Plagiarism and try to figure out precisely where you've seen these exact same character designs before. Or these exact same worldbuilding details. Or these exact same story beats. Or these exact same abilities. Or these exact same musical cues.

See? There I go, doing it again. It's almost an automatic response at this point. Of course, the worst part of the whole ordeal is that the elements being so flagrantly borrowed are themselves terribly faded and warped photocopies of original elements that may as well be ancient history by now. I don't care if this isn't literally the hundredth anime I've seen where some nothingburger potatoboy specifically named Lloyd is given superhuman abilities and the self-awareness of a sea cucumber--as far as I'm concerned, they're all named Lloyd, and they all got kicked out of their adventuring party after being trained in the art of heroing by Sexy Merlin. Even the completely different series in this same season that I reviewed just the other day, where I went out of my way to make fun of the main character for being named Dennis? He too is now Lloyd.

In a case like this, where the show isn't even pretending to give a shit about bringing anything new to the table with its characters, or setting, or big-picture story, the only way you can attempt to measure its quality is by the entertainment value of its individual episodes. So, is this single episode worth a portion of your finite time on this planet? I dunno, maybe? This Lloyd variant has bluish hair instead of being another bargain-bin Kirito, so there's something you might not have seen recently. Oh, and they fight a minotaur in this one, instead of, like, a dragon or a goblin. Minotaurs are fun, right? Also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that there's a Waifu Girl with pink pigtails, and the one with a blonde ponytail has, like, a faint trace of pink highlights going on, I think, and even Lloyd has little pink sparkles in his eyes, so if you like the color pink, you've got maybe 10-15% more of it here than the average random light novel adaptation.

Also, the scenes of Not Madoka training Lloyd are unnecessarily mean. She gingerly doles out praise before cruelly demonstrating how much more powerful she is than Lloyd, and it's no surprise that his self-esteem is so low that he believes Allen's bullshit about him being of no use. We can see that Lloyd is buffing the other members for all he's worth, but Allen and most of the rest of the party can't be bothered to notice something so understated. And since Lloyd's mentor barely ever told him he was doing a good job in any meaningful way, he's got no sense of his true strength. Is this an attempt to paint being humble as preferable to egotistical? Possibly, but it doesn't make the episode any more engaging.

Yeah, I've got nothing more for you on this one, folks. I'll be moving right along to the next new show, thank you very much.