Shin no nakama ja nai to yuusha no party wo oidasareta node

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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Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

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Banished From The Hero’s Party may be the most lacklustre of anime that I picked for my initial watch list this Fall season though being lacklustre isn’t actually the same as being bad. It is more that stories of adventurers, even retiring ones wanting a quiet life in the country, have become common to the point where unless it really sparkles it is difficult for a story to stand out from the crowd. And so far, this one hasn’t.

Where episode one spent a lot of time on setting up Red’s position in his village and explaining how he managed to build his shop, episode 2 decides to build a back story between Red and Rit through a series of flashbacks about a situation that might have been interesting to watch if not played out in this manner.

Banished From The Hero’s Party has all the right ingredients but still fails to really inspire.

I’ll be clear up front: I hate flash-back episodes in TV series. Where the characters sit around and reminisce about event and basically it is used as an excuse for the writers to take the week off while they reuse old footage.

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Banished From the Hero’s Party uses this format except that we’re seeing flashes of scenes that have never existed because we’re at episode 2. So someone decided the most exciting way to tell the story of a Princess battling to save her kingdom from a demon army was through a series of recollections by two characters sharing tea.

I finally realised through watching this that the reason I hate flash-back episodes isn’t necessarily because they are lazy. Clearly Banished From The Hero’s Party saved nothing by doing this as they had to create each and every scene. I find it tedious to watch because the outcome is already sitting in front of us with the two characters casually chatting over-tea.

More than that, Rit hadn’t been around long enough with Red for a real desire to learn how these two characters met to have built up. And actually, despite showing it, I’m still not entirely sure why Rit is so hung up on him. If anything the flash-back actually made it make less-sense. I mean I guess people have ended up admiring someone for less than what Red does, but honestly none of this really played out particularly well.

There are however two important new revelations given to us in this episode.

The first is that Rit in the grand tradition of anime stalker girls is going to move in with Red. Apparently he get lets little say in because apparently agreeing to letting her work in his shop was an invitation for her to invite herself firmly into his home and plant herself there.

The second was right at the end and will potentially be significant later for Banished From the Hero’s Party. Largely because we get to see how the hero’s party is at the moment and the new member Ares is introducing to the group. This was one awkward greeting scene no matter how you look at it and it is hard to decide who the most suspicious person in the setting is.

Otherwise, all we really get from this episode of Banished From The Hero’s Party is that Red’s business is so far not going well, Rit uses swords that look kind of cool but seem functionally awkward, when Ruti the hero does her hero thing she ends up looking like a villain, and all things considered Red is probably better off not in the Hero’s Party.

Still, it wasn’t a particularly exciting episode and I kind of hope this one picks up in episode 3 or I may end up consider replacing it in my watch list.

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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Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

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Hey look, it is a light novel adaptation that isn’t actually an isekai. It’s just an adventure, fantasy, slice of life with the ridiculously long title: “Banished From The Hero’s Party, I Decided To Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside”. It doesn’t get any shorter in Japanese: Shin no Nakama ja Nai to Yuusha no Party wo Oidasareta node, Henkyou de Slow Life suru Koto ni Shimashita.

Is Banished From The Hero’s Party Worth Watching?

This opening episode is actually decidedly unimpressive with a lot of the main character’s, Red, inner thoughts being delivered through a rushed inner monologue that is kind of dull to listen to. No offense intended to Ryota Suzuki, the voice actor, who has a large range of characters under him (some of which I’ve loved). Here however I found Red’s drone quite dull and given the sheer volume of inner dialogue it kind of made the overall episode feel a little flat.

Outside of that, this episode is pretty much an establishing episode complete with flashback sequence as to the moment Red was more or less told to get lost from the hero’s party as well as his current quiet countryside life as he collects herbs in order to save up money to open his own apothecary.

Now one could be forgiven during the flashback sequence for wondering why Red doesn’t just call Ares out on being a complete jerk, except clearly Red had a number of personal insecurities anyway and Ares’ accusations just sent him into panic mode. Clearly though, if Red had taken some time to talk to the rest of the hero’s party perhaps the issue could have been resolved, but then we wouldn’t have the set-up that we do so let’s just nod and accept this and move on.

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Banished From The Hero’s Party doesn’t waste any time in demonstrating that this is going to be a fantasy anime with some fan-service. Rither from the opening scenes and then the OP there’s a decided focus on a certain blonde female’s assets as she bounces around the screen. That said, the female character in question doesn’t actually appear until near the end of the episode and so most of this episode does actually set up Red as a valued member of his community as he fetches some herbs to save a friend’s child.

I do appreciate that this isn’t an isekai because at least our main character isn’t using game mechanics or pulling out random knowledge from our world to give himself a power-up. That said, Red was a member of the Hero’s Party and now that he’s living in a back-water he kind of is overpowered by default. Still, given this is setting up a slice of life, it kind of makes sense because they don’t really seem to be going for a fighting anime here.

The drama in episode one of Banished From The Hero’s Party comes from the quest to collect the herbs to save the child. Adventurers aren’t supposed to be in the mountains because there’s been a dangerous monster spotted there. Red ignores that and heads in anyway, only to discover the idiots hunting the creature have set fire to the forest (bright move). Undeterred, Red goes about completing the mission before returning home (though an encounter in the forest will probably come back to bite him later).

Banished From The Hero’s Party isn’t exactly going to be thrilling watching by the look of this first episode but there’s also the potential for it to be quite fun in its own way. I’m hoping now that they’ve dumped the backstory on us they ease up on the rushed internal dialogue and the rest of this episode was very easy watching even if it wasn’t amazing. Whether the slice of life elements end up making this one feel a bit dull or whether this stays entertaining remains to be seen.

I’ll definitely check out another couple of episodes and see how Banished From The Hero’s Party goes.

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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Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

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