Banished from the Hero's Party

Episode 6

It's no exaggeration to say this episode is just packed to bursting. We have Red and Rit going on a date, a drug turning people into axe murderers, our first look at Ruti's back story, and several little slow-life bits in the middle to keep things light. However, despite the scattershot nature of the episode, if you pay close attention you might notice that, in the broadest strokes, this is a story you've seen before: It's basically a Spider-Man origin story.

We all know the phrase: “with great power comes great responsibility.” It's the idea that when you have the ability to do good—to help others—it is your civic responsibility to do so. Like Peter Parker, Red may not be the strongest person in the world, but compared to the people around him, he might as well be invincible. However, in Zoltan, he has become focused exclusively on his tiny life and burgeoning romance.

It's clear from the start of the episode that something is very wrong in Zoltan with all the drug overdoses and crazy axe murders going on. Red clearly has the ability to play detective and figure out how everything is connected, yet he chooses to ignore the crime. Even when Rit brings it up, her own Blessing calling for her to act, he doubles down on it not being his problem anymore. The life of adventuring is behind him. Now he just wants a slow life running a shop with the woman he loves.

Of course, this isn't to say that Red is completely self-serving or anything like that. After all, he has chosen a new way of life based around making medicines that save lives. However, it is an undeniable fact that, even aside from being an adventurer, he could be doing so much more. Red has literally every common skill maxed out. Fighting abilities aside, we see that Red is a capable doctor. He may not know the ins and outs of the human body like someone with the doctor blessing, but his first aid skill can tell him the right medicine for the job—even when the illness is unknown. And given that he can make the vast majority of medicines, that's an amazingly powerful combination.

The problem Red now faces is that, somehow, despite losing his place in the world, he has managed to find happiness. He is against anything that could drive him back towards his old life and so lives as a shadow of himself. But like with Peter Parker, fate does not look kindly upon those who have the power to help and choose not to. And so the episode ends with the doctor carrying Red's friend's blood-covered son—the latest victim of an axe-wielding attacker—to Red's doorstep. This is Red's Uncle Ben moment. The crime he could have stopped has now hurt someone close to him. Now the question is whether he continues hiding in his happy little world or stands up to protect his new home from the evil attacking it.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• The conversation where Rit and Red admit their feelings for each other felt very realistic to me. There were no sweeping confessions, just two people acknowledging that romantic advances are appreciated and accepted.

• I like how fanservice is handled in this show overall. We, the audience, are not “peeping” on Rit or unduly sexualizing her. Every bit of fanservice on screen is her knowingly showing herself off to get Red's attention. It's fanservice that furthers the plot and characterization (even as it titillates all you horn dogs out there).

• Rit is not doing well when it comes to her blessing. As Red talks about in this episode, even if you're not directly going against your blessing, you will get more and more uneasy as time goes on. So when confronted with an act of obvious evil—Albert killing a member of his own party when capture was an option—it takes everything in her being to resist her blessing and not murder Albert in the street.

• I think Ruti thinks she just made her first friend in Tisse. (She just laid bare her tragic existence to the assassin, after all.) I also think that Tisse has no idea that's what just happened.

• Man, Ruti's blessing is so tragic—she's robbed of everything that makes her human. She doesn't eat or sleep. She can't feel pain or pleasure. Worse yet, her blessing came to her young so she was unable to even be a child. And the topping on this shit sundae? The only thing she's ever wanted, her brother by her side, has been made impossible twice: in the past because of his blessing and now because of her own.

• Is there any possibility that Danan's new traveling companion isn't pure dag nasty evil?

Banished from the Hero's Party is currently streaming on Funimation.

Richard is an anime and video game journalist with over a decade of experience living and working in Japan. For more of his writings, check out his Twitter and blog.