Living the easy life in the middle of a life-and-death struggle
From the Dark Continent, a horde of demons have conquered half of the other continents of the world in only three years, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. When humans turned to the gods, they responded by endowing them with "Divine Blessings," with which they began to turn the tide of the war.
One such person endowed with a Blessing is a young girl named Ruti Ragnason. Endowed with the most powerful Blessing of all, the Hero, she is tasked with defeating the Demon Lord, and to aid her quest other warriors have been assembled around her, among whose ranks is her older brother Gideon, bearer of the Blessing of the Guide.
However, as Gideon's Blessing grants a high initial level and not much else in the way of martial or magical ability, he began falling behind both his sister and their comrades-in-arms. In the end, one of their party members dismissed him from the party, taking all his equipment away save for a cheap bronze sword. Heartbroken, Gideon distanced himself from the battle with the demons and settled in the frontier town of Zoltan where, under his new identity as "Red," he uses the knowledge he learned throughout his adventures to run an apothecary.
Of course, it wouldn't be long before Gideon/Red's past catches up to him in the form of Princess Rizlet of the Duchy of Loggervia, a part-time member of the Hero's party three years ago. Having also retired from the battle with demons, she is now content with her new, humbler identity as the adventurer "Rit," and when she and Red meet again in Zoltan, she wastes no time settling down as his assistant, even as they rekindle an old romance.
Together with their new friends, Red and Rit aim to live a slow life in the frontierlands... even as they realize that, one way or another, the war with the demons will never stop knocking on their doorsteps.
Banished from the Hero's Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside (真の仲間じゃないと勇者のパーティーを追い出されたので、辺境でスローライフすることにしました, Shin no Nakama ja Nai to Yūsha no Pātī o Oidasareta no de, Henkyō de Surō Raifu Suru Koto ni Shimashita), often shorthanded as Banished from the Hero's Party or Shin no Nakama, is an ongoing October 2017 novel written by Zappon, published by web novel site Shōsetsuka ni Narō, turned into a Light Novel series illustrated by Yasumo and published by Kadokawa Shoten under its Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko imprint since June 2018, and licensed in English by Yen Press starting September 2020. In addition, it has a manga adaptation illustrated by Masahiro Ikeno published under Kadokawa's Monthly Shōnen Ace imprint starting May 2018 (and also licensed in English by Yen Press), as well as an anime adaptation directed by Makoto Hoshino for Studio Flad and Wolfsbane starting October 6, 2021.
On October 31, 2022 it was announced that the anime will receive a second season. It is currently scheduled to begin airing in January 2024.
Banished from the Permanent Red Link Club, These Tropes Decided to Live a Quiet Life with TVTropes:
- The Ace: Gideon and Ruti are this. Ruti's blessing makes her absurdly powerful and capable of mowing down groups of enemies single handedly. Gideon is a lesser example as while he's extremely capable, he still falls short of the other members of the Hero's party.
- Adapted Out: The main plot of volumes 6 and 7, the arrival of a Veronian ship in Zoltan, are absent from the anime adaptation. Some elements of it are present, such as the solstice festival and Tisse dispatching a rogue assassin, but the main plot is dropped in favor of Van's arc starting volume 8.
- Advanced Ancient Humans: Or ancient advanced elves in this case. The setting of the last few episodes of the first season are elven ruins that suspiciously look like a sci-fi lab or fortress, complete with panel walls and flooring, elevators, artificial lighting, and even what looked like a stasis tank. Whether this is a case of ancient Magitek or the elves formerly having an absurdly futuristic SF-level civilization is never expanded upon, and none of the characters comment on it.
- Always Chaotic Evil: Subverted or zigzagged with demons, since although they still act demonic, they are revealed to actually worship the same god as humans, and thus consider the Demon Lord a heretic for going against them.
- Anti-Grinding: Blessings are levelled up by killing other beings with Blessings (the Church's explanation for why evil Blessings and monsters with Blessings exist is so that those who have them can be killed to strengthen good people's Blessings). But there is a diminishing returns factor involved that means that only by killing Blessings of comparable or greater strength than one's own Blessing can a Blessing be strengthened. Which means that even among those who actively seek to improve their Blessings, they will generally plateau at whatever strength level is typical for the monsters of their region unless they decide to move on to areas with stronger opponents.
- Because Destiny Says So: A recurring theme in the series is how one's "Blessings" shape people's lives. Having believed that they were granted onto each individual by the gods (hence why they're called "blessings"), it's commonly believed that one should live one's life on the whim of one's blessing, even if it contradicts with their desires or ambitions outside of that. Many of the antagonists of the series either do what they do because they believe they are destined to do it according to their blessing, or resent their blessings to the extent that they'll go to whatever lengths to subvert it. Gideon and Rizlet have a more nuanced opinion on the subject, seeing blessings as just a single part of a whole person and people have options on how to live with them.
- Blackmail Backfire: The Thieve's Guild tries to blackmail Rit with revealing her whereabouts to her family in Loggervia, with the implication that she'd be ordered to return home or be disinherited. Rit promptly responds that she doesn't care.
- Blessed with Suck:
- The Blessings system is a double edged-sword. On the one hand, it can grant a person incredible powers, but on the other hand, it also controls their characters and influences their actions. There are many people who detest their Blessing as it has caused them huge amounts of grief. This is especially true for those of the higher class. Rit's Spirit Scout Blessing makes it hard for her to settle down with Red, as it forces her to try and save everyone around her. It also gave her a desire for personal freedom that made her something of a Rebellious Princess.
- Gideon/Red, the Guide of the Hero Party, was also their Crutch Character, blessed with a high initial level and not much else; once his comrades-in-arms began racking up kills, he Can't Catch Up, resulting in his expulsion at the hands of Ares.
- Ruti has it worse. As the Hero, she is endowed with monstrous strength and endurance, at the cost of most of her humanity. She can't sleep, eat, or feel anything. Worst of all is that it also strips her of her free will and forces her to do things she hates. Such as having to save anyone no matter how evil or cruel they are and is unable to lift a finger towards anyone who doesn't aim to hurt her directly. It was why she couldn't kill Ares despite how much she hated him for driving Gideon away.
- Church dogma states that the reason for villainous Blessings is so that people with heroic Blessings can kill them for experience. Which is a pretty awful fate for anyone unlucky enough to be born with one who doesn't choose to embrace villainy.
- Central Theme: Should the circumstances of your birth, such as the family and talents you were born with, decide who you are and what you become? Ruti's blessing of the Hero makes her both destined to and compels her to save the world, even as she grows to hate doing so. On the smaller scale, Ademi's Bar Brawler Blessing makes him quick to anger and prone to violence, neither of which are good qualities to be a guard like he actually wants to be.
- Deconstructed Trope: The Fantasy Character Classes which are common in fantasy stories are shown here in a much darker light. People are given Divine Blessings upon their birth. They can't really choose what class will be bestowed on them and must live with regardless of what they want personally. There are some lucky people who like their blessings but for other people whose blessings don't match their personalities, such as wanting to be a guard but having a class called "Bar Brawler", a.k.a. people who causes ruckus in the bars for sake of it and frequently get guards called on them, or didn't really want the whole thing to begin with, such as Ruti and her Blessing of the Hero. It could be a detrimental issue for a person's whole life. Classes also frequently have impulses that come with them that can affect their day-to-day lives. Tisse's Assassin class make her wants to kill anything, and Rit's Spirit Scout make her want to save people and makes her crave freedom. As for other people, some of them will try to justify making their whole reason for living following their assigned roles, others be damned.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Godwin is the alchemist who crafted the Devil's Blessing drug and who is perfectly willing to use explosives on his own men to trap the protagonists. He openly acknowledges he's a villain by most standards. However, for precisely this reason he absolutely can not stand villains who have deluded themselves into thinking they're the good guys. Despite having been a coward when dealing with the confrontation with Ares in the ancient elf ruins, he ultimately aids the protagonists because the opponent's insistence that he's the one in the right just pisses Godwin off.
- Incapable of Disobeying: All people within the setting receive Divine Blessings. These blessings give an individual special abilities of varying strength, but also carry impulses that drive a person to act in accordance with their blessing. The degree to which this is true varies depending on the person, their affinity with their blessing, and the strength of the blessing itself and can cause issues for those whose desired lifestyles conflict with the compulsions of their blessing. For example, village boy Ademi wants to follow in his father's footsteps and join the town guard, but his Bar Brawler blessing makes him prone to anger and quick to violence, qualities that would hamper such a career. A major plot element is a drug, Demon's Blessing, that can be used to weaken one's blessing and, by extension, weaken its impulses, but causes the user to go berserk when the demon whose blessing is being used to weaken the original blessing instead overpowers it.
- It's All About Me:
- Queen Leonor lives solely for her own pleasures. When told that she is destroying her country and that she'll leave no legacy behind, she replies that she doesn't care: all that matters to her is living her life how she wants to live it in the present, what happens in the future after she's gone is irrelevant.
- Thanks to a religious upbringing interpreted rather strictly, Van sees the world through a lens in which everything exists to support the Hero and his quest, either by fighting alongside him, providing resources, or dying so that he or his companions can level up.
- Jerkass Gods: The Almighty Demis is heavily implied to be this considering the story goes to great length to show just how stifling and harmful his Blessing system is, especially since he never seems to hand them out to the correct people, as seen with how both bearers of the Hero's Blessing turned out to be terrible in the role.
- Memorial for the Antagonist: After his defeat and death, Ares receives this from the protagonists, who attend his funeral and show sympathy for how his blessing had corrupted him into a Tragic Villain, despite his being a total Hate Sink up to that point who he didn't show any remotely good or redeeming qualities when he was still alive.
- Meta Power: Ruti's Devil's Blessing — "New Truth" — gives her power over other blessings. Instead of using it on others, she uses it to suppress her Hero Blessing so that she could live a normal life.
- My Master, Right or Wrong: Lavender is completely this towards Van, even when he commits truly-atrocious acts, instead of recoiling in morally-expected disgust/horror, she instead acts as if it's a wonderful act her "master" has accomplished.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Early on, a B-Ranked adventurer is sent to dispose of an owlbear near Zoltan. The adventurer's method of dealing with it involves lots of fire, which spreads, resulting in the destruction of most of that year's supply of a valuable medicinal herb, which was growing in that area. Had Red not been there gathering some despite the order to avoid the region until the owlbear was killed, at least one person would have died from lack of medicine.
- Nominal Hero: The second designated Hero, Van, is this, through and through. He doesn't care at all for showing proper respect to those who are merely showing menial courtesy towards him and merely barks in rage whenever he receives something he didn't ask for, such as food. He also doesn't care one bit about who dies fighting for him as he has some very twisted "heroic values" such as him saying that those fighting for him are expected to die in the name of "Almighty Demis". Quite the laser-focused (and unremorseful) hero.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond:
- Red's progress as an adventurer petered out around level 40. This made him weak by the standards of the Hero Party once they hit their stride, but in Zoltan, a level 15 monster is a crisis, so he's incredibly overpowered for the region despite his shoddy equipment.
- Albert is a B-rank adventurer with the Champion Blessing who feels stifled by his time in Zoltan, constantly picking fights and conspiring to turn it into a warring nation as its King out of the belief that he is destined to do great things. Thing is, B-Rank adventurers are very common and Red (who was considered the weakest combative adventurer of the Hero Party) managed to defeat him with barely any effort. All of this implies that if he ever actually left Zoltan, he would find himself hilariously outclassed.
- Out-of-Character Alert: When Ares tries convincing Ruti that her brother left the party of his own free will, she immediately sees it for the lie that it is. It's when he tries weaseling his way into replacing him as her Living Emotional Crutch does she show emotion for the first time (in this case, blind fury) and punch him so hard it blows a hole in his side, caking the wall behind him in his blood. While she heals him right after, he is left visibly shaken from the experience.
- The Poorly Chosen One: One has think that the Almighty Demis is a pretty terrible judge of character considering both of the individuals who received the Hero's Blessing turned out to be the worst people who could've gotten it. Ruti never had the desire to be a hero in the first place and was tortured by the Blessing's refusal to let her deviate from the path of defeating the Demon Lord, and Van turned out to be a psychopath who used the Blessing as an excuse to kill anyone he didn't like.
- Removing the Crucial Teammate: Played with. Gideon was the Hero party's Crutch Character who was inevitably outstripped in combat potential by everyone else to the point that he was legitimately holding them back in combat. He was also The Heart who kept the party's social dynamics running smoothly and without him, the party starts falling apart from internal conflict.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Unable to cope with Ruti's Sanity Slippage and Ares's condescending behavior, two members of the Hero party left with one intending to search for Gideon. Yarandrala leaves having come to suspect that Ares had Gideon killed, while Danan goes in search of Gideon after realizing how badly his absence has affected the group.
- Sequel Hook: The anime ends with Yarandrala meeting Godwin, who tells her that Gideon/Red and Ruti are in Zoltan, prompting her to reunite with them.
- Slice of Life: Most of the story is dedicated to Red and Rit living their days in peace in Zoltan, with occasional forays into the struggles of a Hero Party bereft of Red and the fallout of his expulsion.
- Slow Life Fantasy: Exactly like it says in the title, D-Rank Adventurer Red was exiled from the Hero's party during her quest to defeat the Demon Lord, so he opens up an apothecary in a small village and dedicates his life to making medicine and running a successful shop with the A-Rank adventurer Rit. Though Red appears weak due to his D-Rank status, he's actually a Genius Bruiser that easily defeats even B- and A-Rank adventurers with little effort. While at his village, he constantly gets drawn back into conspiracies and conflicts involving the demons and other villains, but he remains adamant that (despite his strength) he will not get drawn back into the human/demon war and just wants to live with Rit in peace and quiet.
- Social Climber: The son of a minor aristocrat, Ares wants to marry Ruti to gain more political power. In the best case scenario, he could even become a king! This was why he drove Gideon away and why he keeps trying to gain Ruti's favor despite her making it quite clear that she hates him for driving Gideon away. Ares also acts friendly with all the social elite his party meets, be they nobles or generals.
- Their First Time: The season 1 ending shows Red and Rit finally consummating their love for each other and losing their virginities with each other as they make love throughout the night.
- There Was a Door: When Red goes to the ancient elf ruins, he finds that the door inside has been smashed through. He knows exactly who did it, and laments that they could have just used the mechanisms to open the door normally, something he knows they're capable of since they had gone through such ruins together before.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: While Gideon is a natural-born soldier, he, at least from his point of view, thinks he is sub-par compared to the more accomplished members of the Hero party. However, he did not take into account that he was the most capable and vital of the group, having being looking after them, cooked for them, handled information gathering etc. This is how Ares drove Gideon away. This comes to bite him and his party as Ruti is too depressed to be any threat against the Demon Lord and the party had to work much harder without Gideon.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The higher a Blessing is leveled up, the more it influences the personality of the person holding it. People with weapon related Blessings become uncomfortable without their weapon, Priestly Blessings make one more inclined to disapprove of any talk or actions opposed to Church dogma, etc. Most people don't improve their Blessings to the point where it significantly changes who they are. Unfortunately for Ruti, the Hero Blessing compels her to seek out and kill stronger and stronger monsters, which levels up her Blessing, which strengthens the compulsion to go questing for more monsters to kill, and so on. By the time she enters the story as a character, she's practically been reduced to a body being propelled by the demands of her Blessing, and she hates every minute of it (at least as much as her Blessing allows her to hate, given that the skills granting her immunity from emotion-altering effects suppress her natural emotions with them). What reveals the true evil of Queen Leonore is the revelation that she has a common, low-impulse Blessing, that she's never leveled once in her entire life, meaning that every bit of evil to her name was done of her own will.
- Why Won't You Die?: When Red and Rit are sent hurtling down an elevator shaft in the ancient elf ruins, they survive by virtue of Danan being at the bottom and using one of his techniques to send them flying back up. This inexplicable occurrence causes Ares, who had attempted to kill Red to remove his influence over Ruti, to wonder why Red can't just die already.
