Anime News Network·Japan·Tuesday, October 13, 2026 at 12:15 PM UTC

SSS-Class Revival Hunter Was The Worst Premire I Saw at NYCC 2026

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SSS-Class Revival Hunter is a series that feels like it is taking some of the most interesting elements of other standard wish fulfillment series, and presenting them in one of the most obtuse ways possible. The story follows a young man named Gongja whose overwhelming character trait is that he is jealous of a jerk on TV who is blessed with incredible powers. That's it, and if you think that I'm being too harsh on this guy, the show itself actually uses how pathetic he is as a legitimate plot point for why he deserves to get broken abilities that act as the inciting incident for the rest of the show. I'm not kidding when I say that there were audible gaps and groans when the camera pulled back, revealing just how much of a pathetic obsessive loser that this guy is. I can't tell if this is supposed to be funny or if the show is really trying to relate to a very specific demographic.

But what is this broken ability that Gongja ends up unlocking for being a petty little weasel? Well, it's the ability to copy the skill of anybody who kills him, but the trade-off is that the skill doesn't actually bring him back to life, so it's kind of useless. If only there were an ability that would allow him to circumvent this weakness? What's that? The jerk that Gongja is obsessed with just happens to have an ability that lets him go back in time a full day every time he dies? Wow, that's so incredibly convenient it might just work as the premise for an entire show.

There is a right way to do edgy and over-the-top power fantasies, but this definitely isn't it. The problem with this premise is that it's trying to get me to care about a character who I have no reason to think deserves any type of fulfillment. I don't know anything about this guy outside of the fact that he is jealous of a talented individual who just happened to be one of the biggest jerks on the planet, but it's not like said target of jealousy was hiding the fact that he was a terrible person either, so that doesn't even work as some kind of reveal that completely shakes up Gongja's worldview. He was just literally at the wrong place at the wrong time, but considering how well it works out for him, it's just another convenience that eventually will build up to his ultimate power fantasy. There's nothing here for me to really get attached to or engaged with. There's no character that I want to follow, and the actual narrative progression feels so forced that it's sending my critic brain into a drunken fury. Of all the premieres that I watched at New York Comic Con, this is the worst.

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