Banished From The Hero's Party, I Decided To Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside Episode 11 - Two Danaan's and One Sour Sage

Banished From The Hero’s Party Episode 11 finally explains what was going on when Rit ran into Danaan earlier in the series. Admittedly it was a small moment and not the most significant thing happening but it is nice to have that kind of continuity in a series.

So turns out there’s two Danaans running around. One is actually the demon that ate the hand of the real one, meaning the real one only has one hand which at least makes them relatively easy to distinguish. It is always considerate when doppelgangers give you some kind of obvious visual cue as to who is who.

Not that it really matters when the demon version is just with Ares, who has finally arrived in Zoltan, and Ares doesn’t need much incentive to trash Red’s shop or to try to get Ruti to go adventuring with him again. I have to wonder just how delusional Ares is and he isn’t done yet as Banished From The Hero’s Party decides not to kill him even after he throws Red into a wall right in front of Ruti.

He does at least finally get stabbed though Ruti makes sure he can heal the damage.

Banished From The Hero’s Party has finally brought all the players togehter.

Part of me wonders why Ares is so obsessed with accompanying the hero on her mission. Since Red left the party that mission has been miserable and full of bad food and failure. Surely even Ares has to realise at this point that even if he wants to accompany the hero, others are needed to ensure success.

Then again, he doesn’t seem like the most reasonable kind of person and given he’s pretty much listening to a demon (one he knows is a demon) by the end of this episode I guess we can’t expect much in the way of logic from him for the foreseeable future. Ruti should have given him a bit more damage to content with. Maybe then he wouldn’t have time to come up with silly ideas like the one he’s now contemplating.

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Meanwhile, staying true to its strengths, Banished From The Hero’s Party decides to simply lay the cards on the table with Ruti’s friend explaining to Red what she’s been doing and Red deciding to accept Ruti’s decision and lending a helping hand to ensure it doesn’t land her addicted or going on a rampage. He’s like every nice older brother in anime wrapped into one caring package.

Even Ruti was a bit taken back by Red simply accepting that she’d decided she didn’t want to be a hero anymore.

The two have a talk about it and Red explains he was trying to find a way to diminish her blessing even after leaving the party but he hadn’t succeeded and it is just great to see two characters that actually listen to one another and try to respect what the other one wants.

Again, surprised that Banished From The Hero’s Party ended up being that anime given earlier episodes were pretty vapid and yet they’ve kind of snuck the character development in underneath what seemed like fairly unremarkable story telling and the pay off at the end of the season is actually kind of worth it. It doesn’t elevate some of those earlier episodes given they felt pretty pointless but it at least makes me feel happy I kept going with this one.

So with everyone either at the old elven ruins or on their way there, I guess this is where we’ll have whatever climax this story is going to throw at us? Here’s hoping Banished From The Hero’s Party can end on a high note. I enjoyed the opening even if it felt pretty average and the mid-season was watchable but not remarkable so a decent enough ending will work to bring this one to a close.

You can read my full thoughts on Banished From The Hero’s Party here.

Images from: ‘Banished from the Hero’s Party, I Decided To Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside‘. Dir. M Hoshino. Studio Flad and Wolfsbane. 2021