This Week in Anime

Is The Faraway Paladin Worth Watching?

Jean-Karlo

WELP. Nothing to do. Let's get to it. NEET dies, gets resurrected. He was a sadsack in our world, he's a prodigy in a fantasy world. You know the drill.

Yeah. Full offense to isekai as a genre, but Faraway Paladin is basically a poor man's Jobless Reincarnation only the protagonist wasn't a total creep. Turns out, when you take the perv-angle out of Jobless Reincarnation, you're left with a really boring show, as opposed to a boring show with a gross protagonist.

In a way, it ultimately doesn't matter. Even Will up there seems to forget he's from another world; this feels like Negima! where the show is billed as one thing when it starts but becomes another thing the author truly intended to make. So where Faraway Paladin is supposed to be an isekai, it slowly sheds that to become a boilerplate fantasy. After a few episodes, Will even stops dropping random Earth-slang.

It just makes me wonder "Why bother?", but the demands of the market are what they are. I was there when every show needed a maid or little sister or a creature voiced by Rie Kugumiya for whatever absolute cornball reason. To Faraway Paladin's credit, there is some pathos over Will regretting how his relationship with his Earth-parents went. Evidently, they died sometime before he bought the farm and he never stopped regretting how he never seemingly did right by them. It informs his decision to really value his relationships in the fantasy world. It's one good scene.

So yeah, about that. Because Will is such a stick-in-the-mud, the show makes up for it with his cool fantasy foster-family. Blood is a 🎵 Skeleton Warrior 🎵 (doo-doo-doot-doot~!), Mary is a mummified priestess, and Gus is a ghostly magician. They spend their days teaching him the ways of magic and swordplay alike. Blood is a good sitcom dad, Mary is an Anime Mom™, and Gus is a gruff old coot who just aches to feel coin in his palms once again. Between their lessons, fun shenanigans happen. We get to see Will grow from a young child to a young man of 15 summers.

There's also stuff involving the gods of their world. As it happens, there are multiple gods with extremely-on-the-nose names, like Mater the Earth-Mother or Blaze the Fire God of the Smithery. Will's parents, like everyone else in this world, had pledged to their own gods but became undead after they struck a deal with the evil God of Death, Stagnate, in order to watch the seal binding a powerful demon king. As it turns out, Will's family adopted him after a gaggle of demons tried sacrificing him in a bid to free their master.

It ties into things later. When Stagnate comes knocking to claim Blood and Mary's souls, Will is blessed by the light goddess Gracefeel, whom he forms his pact with. Gracefeel's blessing is another hax power that Will can call upon on top of his top-tier swordplay and spellcasting, but she's also a goddess who has largely been forgotten by the masses. So in a way, Will isn't just being a healer-by-proxy: his powers are also to remind people that this goddess even exists.

The anime also makes a point that the stronger the blessing or the more-ambitious your pact is, the more crap will be thrown at you. So right from the get-go, it's established that Will has an uphill to climb.

Yeah, but you don't start Dark Souls by godmode-ing Gael, just sayin'.

I'm being bitter, so to be absolutely fair to Will: he only fights an Echo of Stagnate. And even though Blood had just given him a weapon that is not only strong enough to kill God Echoes but also heal his wounds while it causes damage on top of having another Goddess giving him the nod, Will doesn't quite one-shot Stagnate's Echo. It ultimately takes a concerted effort between himself, Mary and Blood to actually banish him.

There's also a nice bit where Mater steps in to give Mary a last-minute blessing—significant because Mary making a deal with Stagnate and becoming undead cursed her with catching on fire every time she prayed to Mater. Mary spent 200 years continuing her rites towards Mater and she didn't even expect to be forgiven for making a deal with one of her patron's sworn enemies, she was just carrying out her duty even when she thought her goddess had turned her back to her. Game recognizes game.

"Good on paper" is right, because Faraway Paladin is so boring otherwise. The presentation is absolutely workmanlike to a fault, the music is generic "folksy-fantasy" fare with the weird Scottish twist that so many isekai use, and it's so ungodly slow. It takes five episodes to get to Will starting his journey in earnest. You could have done that in three, I feel.

I like that idea—start backwards. Establish that Will is supposed to be some omnipotent hero and paladin of Gracefeel in the future, but the show is about his humble origins as a kid raised by a trio of Undead who has his first wet dream because his Skeleton dad got him drunk and made him go peep on his Mummy-mommy.

"You don't understand, Will's Oedipus complex is important writing", the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 134,982 pages of heated debate on the merits of mummy-loving.

Eh. He's no Deedlit, but we gotta make do, I guess.

Menel is comedically tsundere for Will, especially since Will saves him from being executed by an angry mob. It helps that Will does Menel a favor by liberating his village from invading demons.

There are some nice bits between Menel and Will when Will helps the undeadening villagers pass on in comfort, since it took Menel too long to find help. See, this is the kind of thing I could do more with: less of the attempts at grandiose storytelling and more of Will doing good in the world by being a good person.

Yeah, part of helping the village also includes helping Menel say his good-byes to the woman who raised him. It's a very tender scene, for all his bluster Menel can't really bear the thought of losing the only person who loved him. Again, this is the kind of thing I like: Will using his religious blessing to ease the pain of people dealing with day-to-day stuff. You could make a really fascinating slice-of-life about a priest just being a source of comfort for the village around them, like the witches in Discworld.

It's not just Menel who gets a lot out of Will's services—Menel's appreciation makes him the first person Will truly connects with that isn't a caretaker in some capacity. So they're both each other's first friend.

I'd forgotten about that scene, lol Catch Menel in his upcoming appearance in the next season of Interspecies Reviewers.

I don't wanna think about whether Will will make a beeline to the brothel with all the Undead women. Because I know the answer is "Yes, he would."

Zombieland Saga would change his life, he'd pledge his soul to Stagnate on the spot I bet.

The Hobbit Bard there is Bee, and she's... kinda the best character of the show? But also generic in being such a bubbly, happy-go-lucky little bundle of joy. I wanna love her but she's like Store Brand Dr. Pepper instead of Dr. Pepper. But she's better than her companion Tonio by virtue of having some personality; Tonio is just a "hawker", which I think is supposed to be some kind of merchant.

There's a good scene where Bee recites an epic that winds up being about Blood, Mary and Gus's deeds back when they were alive. As it turns out, they were particularly famous heroes and there's even a living half-elf waiting to repay a debt to Gus. Mark that as a side quest, I guess.

By the way: at this point in the story, Will still isn't a paladin.

It's not enough that Will is blessed by a forgotten goddess, has purifying powers, has a magic spear and a God-killing sword and can cast high-level magic like it's nothing—he can choke out a wyvern with his bare hands.

Will killing a wyvern lands him the attention of the local prince, who decides to get Will knighted. This puts Will in the sights of the local bishop, Bagley, leader of the local temple. Bagley looks like he exists as "Ugly Bastard"-tag fodder, but he's actually got some depth to him. He understands the politics of his position, while also being genuinely devout to his patron. He thinks that guiding faith is less about showy acts of magic and more about actual guidance, hence why he allows his underlings to deal with the people while he hangs in the wings to handle the administrative side of things. He has divine powers, but he knows he has to play Bad Cop for the sake of things getting done. On top of cheapening the grandiose divinity of his God, using his blessing openly would just make people wonder why someone like him was given a God's favor. It's fascinating to hear Bagley talk.

No, folks, it's not a famed boss from Demon's Souls, it's just this Aragorn-looking fellow. He's apparently a famed adventurer in his own right, and Will recruits him as hired help for his mission to purge the Beast Woods of demons.

I support this halfling fujoshi and I will help man her stall this upcoming ComiKet.

...Menel, why do your smallclothes look like bloomers...

For my part, I've legit had more fun joking about Will's necro-Oedipal complex or his upcoming experience with Elf Bussy than I actually had watching Faraway Paladin. This stuff is some unmemorable fantasy. And I don't wanna pretend I'm some hoity-toity type; one of my favorite fantasy anime is MAOYU, which exists purely to make fun of Maoh being endowed with skills in Macroeconomics (which comes with having really big knockers). But Faraway Paladin is dry and slow and doesn't even have the courtesy to be particularly flashy about itself. That Will is a decent stick-in-the-mud is a small favor when even that isn't enough to make this stand out as a show. Twelve Kingdoms is right over there, folks...

Some real "They truly are Spice and Wolf!"-energy. Gyeh. Also, the show only just made Will a paladin in the (at the time of this writing) most-recent episode, episode 10. So even if this show goes two cours, that's almost half of the show where your titular Faraway Paladin is just Faraway.