Review of Banished From The Hero's Party, I Decided To Live A Quiet Life In The Countryside
This anime is a hidden masterpiece! It has the perfect balance of action, romance, drama and mystery, but the central point of this anime is largely misunderstood. It's not about the romance or the action or even the drama - although there's plenty of all of it in the storyline and it's nicely interwoven to keep your attention! No, the underlying theme of this anime is choosing your own path in life. I love the way the anime forces you to register the struggle each character has accepting their current role as something they don't like or want to do, but are resigned to, asa facet of the character.
I love watching the slow realization that, although their god gave them a "purpose" in life, it isn't set in stone. S/he also gave them the free-will to choose what they do with their blessing. They aren't being forced into anything they don't want to do.
I also love the fact that the male MC's rank and blessing are kept a mystery until the very end, even though it's quite obvious throughout the anime that he is much stronger than he pretends to be. I found myself shaking my head at the end thinking "I should have seen this coming! The signs were all there!" Honestly, I didn't see it because I've come to expect a certain outcome with this genre and I was pleasantly surprised to be dumped on my bottom at the end!
The artwork is beautiful and detailed. I admit I'm a snob about the artwork. If the backgrounds don't have as much detail as the characters, it's bad artwork because it's lazy artwork.
At first the character development seemed kind of stagnant, but once I reached the end of the storyline it made sense. In that respect, the writer did his/her job a little too well!
The soundtrack was good. Not the best of the season, but it fit the anime well. I think they did a good job selecting voice actors for the anime as well. I don't know about you, but in some anime the voices just don't seem to fit the characters. Sometimes, I can barely stand to watch anime because the female voices are too grating on my ears or the males sound like girls. Thankfully, this anime did not disappoint in that area!
I had one small disappointment with the anime during the last two or three episodes. The setting went from "historic fantasy" to "Sci-fi fantasy." It doesn't kill the anime, it just seems out of place and adds a layer to the anime that was never brought into play in the storyline. It's not important for story progression or the "lesson" the story is delivering. It just leaves questions hanging about how they lost all that technology- but, again, it's not really important to the story. I'm just being persnickety.
Overall the anime was excellent. Once I completed it and understood the premise of the storyline it went from a great anime to a masterpiece. It takes a lot of skill to weave all the different genres into a storyline and surprise your viewers at the end.
So, BRAVO Studio Flad and Wolfsbane! You produced a masterpiece and should be proud!