I honestly have no idea how a show manages to both succeed and fail at the same time. It’s like a PhD student who has mastered quantum physics and yet is unable to write in complete sentences.
I Parry Everything is about a guy who wants to become an adventurer. He has basic abilities, but they are supercharged to absurdity, making him stronger than everyone else. But by being dumber than a box of bricks and having the communication skills of a blobfish, he has managed to end up at the bottom of the adventurer totem pole as an F rank despite outclassing literally everyone. On its own, the protagonist being unaware of his own OPness can be an entertaining light parody of the power fantasy genre. But this is just not the way to do it.
My main critique is the dialogue. Nobody here knows how to talk, people. Lines of conversation are both spoken and internally monologued, but the things that are internal are what the character should be goddamn saying. This leads to the dialogue dragging because of characters thinking something and then repeating themselves out loud. Other times, they speak first and then think to themselves a piece of information that would completely shatter the illusion that the MC is someone of no ability.
Speaking of which, whenever anyone compliments the MC for his actions or feats, they absolutely never question or point out how truly ridiculously strong he is. He just does something OP, they say he should be rewarded, he says it’s nothing special— then the conversation repeats a few times. Nobody clarifies or approaches the conversation differently when there has been an apparent misunderstanding. Every bad line of dialogue is doubled with a side of dumb and dumber. A misunderstanding or two can add a bit of spice to a story, but a kingdom full of contradicting misunderstandings is just dumb. Especially when the red flags are everywhere. I know the joke is supposed to be that he's so good at parrying that he parries people even in conversation but its executed poorly.
There was one point in the story when the MC takes on a quest with his requisite female sidekick, and the guild master clearly announces that she is of a much higher rank than him. At this point, we know she assumes he’s some kind of experienced adventurer badass, which should mean he is of a higher level (she never asked). Instead of questioning this unusual information that was spoken right in front of her, she’s just staring off into the distance. Eyes blank. Head empty.
When the main character isn’t involved, things aren’t any better. When the evil enemy emperor said he wants to go to war with our kingdom just because, I shit you not, an advisor runs up to him. This is someone you would assume holds their position because of some skill or experience that would be valuable for advising this ruler. The advisor says, “Please don’t go to war.” And the emperor was like, “Nyo >:( .” No further reasoning was provided from anyone. Flawless communication, honestly.
If you thought the dialogue sounds bad, just you wait to hear about the flashbacks. I’m pretty sure every episode had flashbacks. The show has this intense need to explain anything that’s important to the plot as a flashback the moment it’s introduced. If Chekhov’s gun is setup and payoff, then these flashbacks are Chekhov’s sticky note. Just slap them onto the story to explain things nobody cares about—things the story never bothered to set up. We literally get a flashback to talk about a side character’s power to summon light shields and unpack her trauma with that ability. Oh, and the show thought it was so deep when, in the flashback, the shield she summoned was used as an allegory for her distancing herself from others because its such a special power. So profound.
The one positive I want to mention is that the animation is pretty good, especially for the OP. I don’t know what productions are smoking when stories that fail every basic rule of writing are given the decency of a proper animated adaptation. That’s just the world we live in.
In conclusion, the show is a workable concept with decent animation but terrible dialogue. But I didn't hate it in general. It tried to have fun but it was just bad at it. It managed to accidentally make me laugh a few time but it was a catastrophe everywhere else.