A kid with the power to turn trash into trees beats you with environmental justice while making you laugh at jokes that actually land. The real hook is that Ueki isn't trying to be the strongest, he's trying to be good, and the show trusts that difference enough to build an entire tournament around it. Every opponent has a power so specific and weird it feels like someone actually thought about what junior high students would do with reality-breaking abilities, then gave them reasons to care about something other than winning.

Kousuke Ueki is a middle school student whose homeroom teacher, Kobayashi, turns out to be one of 100 God Candidates competing to rule the Heavenly World. Each candidate grants a special power to a junior high student on Earth, and those students battle on their behalf. The winning student earns a blank talent, which can be filled with any ability they wish, while their candidate becomes the next God. Ueki receives the odd power to turn trash into trees. Neither he nor Kobayashi cares much about the contest at first, but Ueki is pulled in to protect himself and his friends from other chosen students. After seeing people around him misuse their powers for selfish ends, he follows his own sense of justice despite the worries of his classmate Ai Mori. Along the way he faces skilled power users such as Seiichirou Sano, Rinko Jerrard, Robert Haydn and Hideyoshi Soya, and he starts fighting to win rather than just to survive. The series mixes supernatural action and adventure with comedy and drama.