So far almost all the screen time has been spent with our main quartet, Laios, Chilchuck, Marcille and Senshi.
We met some orcs, and Kabru's party has had two short minisodes. Farlin has also been around in flashbacks. But aside from that, the cast is still quite small.
The OP teases that the eventual character count will rise well past two dozen, but I though it might be fun to facilitate some discussions based on what we've seen of the main group so far, before the next episode introduces several more significant members of the cast.
Tough question. In ensemble shows like this, it can vary for me depending on the story/episode. If I had to pick a character that I have been enjoying the most, it is probably Marcille. Between how expressively she is drawn and the great VA work to go alongside, it has been great.
I think the character that I am most interested in is Laios. He can be really weird sometimes. He has a tendency to kind of forget what he is doing or get easily sidetracked or off on some tangent. You could see this all the way back in episode 1 when he was busy thinking about how hungry he was instead of focusing on the fight with the dragon. Similarly, this has happened in a couple other fights they have had, where Laios is kind of standing around, thinking about some nonsense while his party continues to fight. This tendency to go off on tangents (often monster food-related), is at odds with what should be a high priority for him, saving his sister. I just feel like there is more to Laios that we haven't really seen yet. Or....maybe he is just kinda weird that way.
I have seen people elsewhere online compare Laios to being neurodivergent. I don't really have much firsthand experience with neurodivergence, so I can't really speak to the comparison. However, I do find it interesting that people are connecting to an anime character in that way.
Laios is definitely a bit of a scatterbrain, despite being quite competent, and at times very intelligent. Monsters to him are like trains or monster trucks to a kid, endlessly fascinating.
I suspect he and Falin have been a two for one deal for a good few years, and that they kind of complete each other in a way that we can't see, as Falin isn't around.
He hasn't made any lethal mistakes yet, aside from the one at the start which might be explained away by the hunger the entire party was feeling at the time. That time, his focus got derailed by "this isn't going well" while the time he fought the living armor he was actively figuring out the situation and only slightly delayed applying what he learned due to his enthrallment. Everyone has screwed up at least once by now, with the rest of the party making up for the mistake to keep them alive.
We do also see Laios being an effective party lead a lot, his mediation of the emotional tension between Marcille and Chilchuck on the second floor. His instant decision for the guys to be a diversion while Marcy hits the Kraken with magic. Snapping Chilchuck out of the trance induced by the mermaids (which didn't affect Laios at the same distance, due to his shittier human hearing).
He seems to do his thing without even thinking, and while the rest hardly consider him flawless, each time things go wrong they very clearly organize around him to deal with it.