Review of Banished From The Hero's Party, I Decided To Live A Quiet Life In The Countryside
This show is an artificially injected breath of fresh air in the fantasy world genre that's become so over saturated with echi and isekai shows nowadays. The show follows a man who, after being convinced he was a burden to the hero's party due to the other members of the party surpassing him in combat, leaves the hero's party in secret and begins a simple life in the corner of nowhere. *Spoilers* In that corner of nowhere, with one side of the kingdom being the known world border, an endless mountain range, another side being the sea, and the other two borders being marshlands, Sir Gideonbegins his life as Red. A low ranking adventurer who refuses to take on combat jobs in order to avoid drawing attention to himself. Instead, he uses the common skills granted by his blessing of The Guide to effectively find and harvest herbs.
His life begins picking up when he's forced to forage for a rare herb during a forest fire in order to save the child of his friend from becoming blinded by an illness. His friend offers him any reward he can grant, and with that he finally brings his dream of owning an apothecary to reality. Shortly after, a woman named Rit, someone whom Red knew from his life in the hero's party, appears at his shop and decides to retire from being an adventurer in order to live a life with Red and run his shop with him.
While all of this is occurring, especially near the beginning of the show, many episodes are half taken up by flashbacks used to give contexts to relationships or situations. As well as this, at the end of each episode the story turns to the present day hero's party to show their situation without Gideon, which, surprisingly, is not an ideal situation, with the man who convinced Gideon to leave the party trying to control the other party members by filling Gideon's previous roll (that being a strategist and mediator of normalcy among the odd extremes of personalities the members of the party all bear, as well as the person who keeps the Hero herself grounded).
*End Spoiler*
Despite telling you a bit about the story, I'm not spoiling anything too extreme, just the first three or four episodes, so feel free to read my summary even if you do care for spoilers, it has nothing about the end or anything close to the end of the series.
This show is about a man who tries to leave everything behind, but while living his dream is eventually forced to confront his past in order to protect the people he loves, not just from external forces, but from themselves as well. There's no world saving, no grand adventure forged by destiny, and no demon lord the protagonist defeats. The show is all about being able to live the life you want and create a life meant for you, by you, instead of succumbing to the pressures of those around you and slowly losing your ability to live your own life in order to please those other than yourself.
Before I finish this review, don't be fooled, this is, in essence, the same formula as an isekai, it's just that the world the main character comes from happens to be part of the same physical existence as the world he's in throughout the series. It's still a guy who's way more powerful than he should be for the kind of place he's in, and he comes from a completely different "world" than the one he's living in now. So, though not technically an isekai, it contains much of the same elements. Not to say this is an isekai in all ways except technicality, that's not it at all, however, if you happen to enjoy isekai style shows, you will probably enjoy this show as well.
It's really a great show, with a great message, and a great story. There are long stretches of slow parts in this show, so don't go into it expecting a fantasy show like an isekai where the protagonist gains a new ability and has a major battle every two episodes or so. There's only one major fight in the entire show. If you're alright with that then I sincerely recommend this show to anyone willing to watch it.