English Dub Review: Banished from the Hero’s Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside: “The Amber Bracelet”

Overview: Rit (Dani Chambers) reminisces about her last adventure with Red (Aaron Campbell) before they reunited and ran an apothecary. 

Our Take: To close the gap between past tsundere Rit and that of the present incarnation peacefully running an apothecary shop with Red, the series contains laying that through the flashbacks it has maintained since the beginning. Overall, they have been well executed in showing our leading couple’s budding feelings for one another and change of character. However, this time around it takes a more direct approach in trying to explain Rit’s personality shift and dreams with Red explained through her heart to heart with a friendly and flirtatious elf in that of Yarandrala. It’s heavy-handed in its execution in the contrived dialogue that is supposed to explain away development rather than any actual organic character building over time. Hopefully this is not the extent of how Rit became her playful self and will be given actual dedicated backstory episodes to flesh out her change of heart. 

Action is not at the forefront of this series as the focus has always been that of Red adjusting to his new life with Rit and that of the Hero Party transitioning without him spearheading the group. However, when it does transition to fight scenes it’s a shame it’s filled with nothing but stills and, in this particular case, poorly drawn ones during Rit and Ruti’s infiltration scenes. But it’s not devoid of any substance as we get a closer look at Ruti’s more violent side, most likely on account of her blessing to an extent. It’s this twisted part of the hero that will make her inevitable encounter with Red all the more exciting as he seemingly views her with high and warm regards. 

Ares seems to be more comedically bitter than ever based off of what’s been established about their playful banter in this episode. With that in mind, it makes his more antagonistic shift in choosing to cast out Red feel even more odd and out of character. It also makes Red’s decision to leave even more nonsensical and unwarranted with how much it’s reiterated how he’s relied upon by his sister and the rest of the hero party and just for the sake of the plot and more cliché hero worshipping by comrades. 

There is also side plot throughout of clashing thieves and adventurers guild that want Rit to stop her quiet life with Red and continue her adventuring for ridiculous reasons that are unsubstantiated in that of a possible retaliation from her. It serves no other purpose than for more reassurance of Rit’s conviction of her love and loyalty to Red. But that’s beating over a dead horse at this point because it is just reiterating what we already know at this point and continuing to go around in circles. Rit and Red’s shyness and loving nature amongst themselves is quite cute but their romantic relations benefit a hell of lot more if they were to both just come to terms with their feelings by now, stop beating around the bush like these types of plots like to do, and step up the pacing by fully committing to each other.