Review of Banished From The Hero's Party, I Decided To Live A Quiet Life In The Countryside

This is a fantasy anime with a familiar and presently popular premise: the protagonist of the story is dismissed by his heroic adventuring party for being more of a liability than an asset. Having been dismissed, the main character feels no obligation now to resolving worldly problems and has instead decided to settle in a quiet town far-removed from most walks of life. The premise of the story fails for 2 reasons almost immediately: the setting's hero is the protagonist's sister and never once mentioned her brother being a liability, and the second reason becomes unignorably apparent quickly, and that is that the main character protagonistis far from being a liability at all. Just the opposite, the writing establishes his competency as being head-and-shoulders above most of the rest of the cast. When working with this information one cannot help but cast doubt upon the narrative, regarding it as little more than being forced and not at all persuasive.

The writing overall is bland, fluctuating from slice-of-life to having interludes of stakes and plot, which does little else but create dissonance in the tone of the show. You have nothing to expect from episode to episode. The viewer is not given anything to look forward to and because of this lack of promises and commitment to any overarching themes or ideas dissuades an audience from becoming invested in any of the characters or the things they are doing. There is a climactic ending which was rushed and haphazardly introduced seemingly for the sole purpose of saying the anime had a peak it climbed. The show is trying to accomplish too much and, as a consequence, ends up accomplishing little well.

The animation is fair. It has some elements of CGI which are done as tastefully as could be expected for the scale of what is being animated.

This is an unremarkable fantasy anime that does not have anything substantial going for it. It has a bushel of interesting ideas included in its writing but these all suffer from underwhelming execution. It is disappointing as the anime has enough visible effort put into it that one cannot help but speculate how differently it may have turned out had it taken its time with its themes.

As it stands I cannot recommend this anime to anyone who values their time.