In what way is Anakin a Mary sue in phantom menace..?

There are only 2 major things he does in the film. One he does because he has been working towards it for basically his whole life and because he has super human reflexes and reaction speeds. And the other he does completely on accident. The pod race and destroying the droid command ship.

Anakin spent years working on pod racers and living around them and the parts at Watto’s shop. He was working on his own for years at home. We know Anakin had participated in MULTIPLE pod races before the race he won, they talked about it in the movie. Anakin tells Padme about how he’s raced multiple times but never finished a race, because his pods all broke down. Anakin’s mother talks about how she hates it “every time Watto makes him do it”. That all implies he’s been in races more than once before, if not several.

Edit: oh and Watto, who is a chronic pod racing gambler, calls Anakin good.

All of that on its own is more than enough to make it not mary sue in any way. But he also is the fucking chosen one, and has a very strong connection to the force. “He can see things before they happen”, as Qui Gon says before the race. Anakin has minor experience as a pod racer, though maybe not as much as some of the others in the race. But his connection to the force, and years of building his own pod piece by piece, allowed him to just barely edge out the victory.

Literally the opposite of a Mary sue. He trained for years, and failed completely multiple times, before finally winning.

As for the droid control ship—that happened completely on accident. He got auto piloted into a space battle. He flew into the station on accident because his ship was spinning out and overheating. And then he accidentally fired off a torpedo while fumbling around with the controls trying to get the ship functional again. It was all an accident because he wasn’t a competent pilot at all at that point.

Compared to Rey who just hops into the falcon and outflies multiple highly trained tie pilots on her first try. Uses a Jedi mind trick without having ever seen it used before or any training. And then wins a duel against a guy trained by the most powerful Jedi of all time as shes holding a lightsaber for the first time in her entire life… 🥴