Episode 3 of Banished From The Hero’s Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside reminded me firmly of the fridge magnet I was given as a work gift one year. As the final scenes of this week’s episode show, nobody in the hero’s party really paid enough attention to the value Gideon had until he was no longer there.
Fortunately for Gideon/Red now that he’s not doing all the things he used to do, the other members of the party (outside of the clearly shady Ares) have realised just how much he contributed. Unfortunately, that means one of them at least is on a hunt to find him and that really is just going to interfere with his quiet life in the countryside and honestly Red seems to be having a great time running his apothecary. It would be kind of sad to see that interfered with but I doubt Red is going to leave his sister in danger.
But that’s kind of jumping right to the end of the episode of Banished From The Hero’s Party where we get the smallest of snippets with the hero’s party and honestly perhaps the most interesting moments in the series are these sequences watching the hero’s party just kind of sucking without Red around. The rest of the episode, while fun and fine, is just kind of generic fantasy.
Banished From The Hero’s Party struggles to make an impact.
That’s potentially underselling it.
Banished From The Hero’s Party has some good detail in its world building with the blessings slowly getting explained and unpacked, different political agendas, even a shady black market in medicine and there’s plenty of potential plot points for future episodes.
It’s just the story is so content to just watch Rit and Red play house, sell cookies, and generally be nice people that it is sometimes hard to remember that all these other things are going on.
Seriously, this episode has Red waking up and seeing Rit lying on the bed in her night clothes with her wonderful anime assets more or less falling out and all he does is quietly blush and we transition to the upbeat but very forgettable opening sequence. It’s just kind of a nothing opening that we’ve seen similarly done before and it really doesn’t add much as an opening as it isn’t even really part of the story that unfolds.
We then see the two plan their day including buying Rit a bed in town, getting Red’s medicine approved and negotiating her salary. About the only thing that really disrupts this pleasant day of fantasy shopping is that Red overseas Tanta getting beaten by another boy in the street and intervenes and we get an exposition dump instance of kindly adult explaining to children about blessings.
I don’t buy for a moment that the kids didn’t already know the information Red gives them but it was kind of nice for the audience to get a bit more of an understanding about this whole blessing system given it was pivotal in Ares telling Red he didn’t belong in the hero party.
Banished From The Hero’s Party continues to be this pleasant affair and honestly as a slice of life it works as it is pretty relaxing to watch. The small bits of greater story and world building just kind of help to keep my interest (as long time readers know I get bored fairly quickly with slice of life when I’m not hooked by a great character) and really there’s little to complain about outside of this story being a little too beige.
Three episodes in and I’m pretty happy to commit to finishing this season of Banished From The Hero’s Party. I’m not expecting it to be great but I suspect it will continue to be pretty relaxed fantasy viewing and at least this fantasy isn’t an isekai so none of the usual reborn tropes are applying. I don’t dislike isekai, there’s just so many of them and sometimes its fun just to be a fantasy without the isekai trappings.
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
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Karandi James