Banished from the Hero’s Party

Far away from the reaches of demons and war, near the borderland of Zoltan, D-Rank adventurer Red lives a normal existence. Through perseverance and hard work, his dream of starting his own apothecary and peaceful life in the countryside finally came true. Abruptly, Red gets a live-in partner and assistant named Rit—the princess of Duchy Loggervia and an adventurer herself—who gives everything up to join him.
Although honest, kind, and loved by all, Red has a secret shared only with Rit: his real name is Gideon, brother of Ruti Ragnason, the “Hero” and a former member of her party. Ares Drowa, the “Sage,” kicked Red out of their party after their war against the Demon Lord after deciding he was weak and insignificant. Now, even though Red has left the Hero’s party behind by assuming a new life together with Rit, his past has yet to let go of him.

Anyone who has seen this anime can probably agree with me when I say that Banished from the Hero’s Party or Shin no Nakama ja Nai to Yuusha no Party wo Oidasareta node, Henkyou de Slow Life suru Koto ni Shimashita, was not a good anime.

At first, I was optimistic. I say that because the story wasn’t something I’ve heard about before. A character within a fantasy world, wanting to live an ordinary life. A life that didn’t involve everything fantasy in the world we’re in. I wanted to see how that sort of thing would play out. How would this ordinary life that Red wants to live play out? Early in the anime, we find out that Red leaves his past life, the “Hero’s Guild” he was once part of because Red thought that he would be a hindrance to his (Ruti) sister, whose Divine Blessing was ‘the Hero’s Blessing,’ which basically meant that her destiny was to slay the Demon King. Alright, that sounds interesting enough. Now the next question is, in what way will Red’s past sneak upon him? How long until his past comes running back, turning into something he could no longer ignore?

Low and behold, a story that I thought would be interesting turned out not to be. The story wasn’t something I found to be particularly entertaining. Maybe it’s because of the genres that it was classified as on one of my favourite websites, MyAnimeList.net. When you’re given Adventure, Fantasy, Romance, Slice of Life, you would think that you’d see adventuring in a fantasy world. Which was something I expected but ultimately, that didn’t happen. Instead, I had a character who stays in one town for most of the episode.

Furthermore, as main characters, Red and Rit are probably the weakest characters I’ve seen in a while. In my opinion, there wasn’t really much to them. Their personalities weren’t anything special. In fact, everything about Red and Rit felt pretty normal. Which I guess fits the anime because we had two characters who wanted to live normal lives together. One thing I disliked a lot was how obvious everything was for them. What do I mean by that? It was evident from the start of the anime that Red and Rit were supposed to get together. There wasn’t a gradual build-up to their relationship. It just happened, which annoyed me the most. The biggest thing that I thought Banished from the Hero’s Party lacked was character development.

Another thing that I thought was fairly annoying was that the one interesting character (Ruti) was a supporting character and wasn’t really someone we saw until the very end. This emotionless and overpowered character with a brother complex was someone I thought was pretty interesting. Ruti was someone I wanted to learn more about when they finally introduced her towards the end of the anime. But, unfortunately, I thought it was a little too late.

Ultimately Banished from the Hero’s Party was an anime that had a story that didn’t interest me, characters that weren’t interesting enough. As a result, the anime just wasn’t worth watching and is one I won’t be recommending. Which is unfortunate.