The biggest chip this anime has on its shoulder is its style. The Banished Court Magician Aims to Become the Strongest has moments of storytelling and lore that show their potential, had they not been buried underneath the usual bout of standard fantasy anime tropes.

Here's what you get with Banished Court Magician: fight scenes that play out too much like RPG boss fights, dungeons that are indistinguishable from one another other, an arrogant prince whose elitist attitude leads to his comeuppance, a girl on a quest for revenge, characters with dead parents, and the big obvious thing, a main character that was tossed aside like yesterday's half-eaten cheeseburger. Alec Ygret is like so many fantasy protagonists that have come before him, in that his mildly interesting backstory is his substitute for being bereft of personality. He does blend in nicely with his former adventuring squad, Lasting Period, and their ability to remain honorable and loyal to each other provides a few heartwarming moments. It's standard fantasy anime fare that's so non-confrontational that it's easy for the watcher's eyes to glaze over and think the anime appears shallower than it really is.

Regarding the anime's fights looking too RPG-ish in nature. Despite decent art and animation, the choreography and pacing feel stale and non-fluid. Characters normally scream out their attacks, bonk enemies with them, and then said enemies attack back in a very turn-based manner. One fight between Alec and a guildmaster has the two exchanging loudly-screamed taunts that ring out with the same cadence as two kids hurling insults at each other during recess. Another fight involves a dullahan whose CG-ness proved to be a bit rough on the eyes for me.

What really dampens things is the soundtrack. It's filled with so many emotional cues that are so annoyingly direct and hyperbolic in nature. When a fight becomes exciting, the score swells with symphonic fortissimo that sounds so stock and artificial, and it just does not stop until the fight is done and over with. Conversely, more somber scenes are tinged with dirgey-sounding pianos that try so desperately to drown the viewer in forced melancholy. It almost feels like the score is talking down to the audience, as if the viewers are too tone-deaf to understand what's going on. It doesn't help that Banished Court Magician's dub sounds lifeless and flat, either.

The story goes that Alec learned two valuable things from the Banished Court Magician Eldas at a young age: 1) to cast magic (obviously), and 2) to never actually become a court magician, lest he be banished like Eldas. Later in life, Alec becomes a court magician for the kingdom of Galdana in the hopes of changing the system from within. I assume that Alec put in a lot of effort into getting his courtly position, since the anime says that he mustered enough strength to make it to the sixty-eighth level of a difficult dungeon despite the odds. Maybe this and more are explained further in the original light novels, because here in Banished Court Magician's anime, Alec gets fired from the court within ten minutes of the first episode. Flashbacks and expository dialogue in the present are there to espouse Alec's previous accomplishments, although they don't provide too much. By chance, he gets back together with his old squad, and together they all set out to go on new adventures to become stronger together.

The first half goes down rather smoothly (albeit imperfectly) with its dungeon crawls, boss fights, and the subversion of the classic “tiny weak character gets chased around by a big ol' chungus of a beast” bit done in so many other anime (minor spoilers: said weak character is actually a trickster whose fragility is feigned and part of his battle strategy). The biggest missed opportunity, however, goes to the underground arena fight between Alex and Galdana's royal prince, Regulus. The fact that the anime decides to gloss over Alec's working relationship with the classist prince weakens the climax of Banished Court Magician's first half. Prince Regulus can't handle the fact that a commoner like Alec is stronger than him; a more focused treatment would make way for stronger characters, maybe some commentary regarding class conflict and whatnot. But since it's not, Regulus's personality is made paper-thin; a crass, insecure snob who pouts like a child when someone less privileged than him exceeds his talent and ability. Plus, considering how Alec wanted to change the court's system from within, maybe being on the pursuit of such a goal would have led to a more interesting, albeit antagonistic, relationship between the two. Alec could have been the idealistic, naive antithesis to Regulus's cynical, classist traditionalism, and the clashing of ideals could have been the catalyst to Alec's banishment.

The second half is where Banished Court Magician simultaneously (and paradoxically) picks up while being dragged out. The goal now is that Alec is shanghai'd into retrieving a core from another dungeon, and along the way, gets swept into a young girl's mission to exact revenge on a villainous rando who killed her mother. It feels a bit more focused on the first, and unlike with Regulus, the anime devotes a good amount of screentime to the girl, Olivia, in an arc that spans across six or seven episodes. Her arc is riddled with mystery that's resolved by a twist at the end. It's not terribly complex, but it's more development than we get out of Alec's arc throughout Banished Court Magician's twelve episodes. The drawback is that Alec, his cohorts, and Olivia are forced into fights that aren't terribly involving, all leading up to a classic case of a final boss battle that's dragged on for a bit too long.

None of this is to say you should outright give up on Banished Court Magician. Even if things seem skimmed over here, there are enough loose ends for a second season to tie up. If Banished Court Magician's sole job was to sell me on the light novels, then it succeeded in spades.