Warning: Spoilers for The Banished Former Hero Lives as He Pleases episodes 1 and 2
Almost everything about the new isekai anime The Banished Former Hero Lives as He Pleases feels like a cliché, but the unique relationship between the eponymous Allen, who’s ostensibly happy about how he’s living, and a character named Akira quietly serves as a brilliant deconstruction of the wrongly summoned hero trope, even though nothing of the sort actually happens. Truth be told, many aspects of the first two simultaneously released episodes follow this same approach to give The Banished Former Hero a unique flavor.
Of course, Allen gains incredible, unrivaled magical powers after getting executed for being weak in the same capacity at the end of his former life. And, naturally, his new magic is incalculable in his second life, which therefore results in him being wrongly underrated.
Both of these developments are staples in isekai series, especially since Allen gets “banished” from something, irrespective of the fact that it’s not from the hero’s party. However, what’s so refreshing is that Allen’s powers transcend that world’s celebrated hero – Akira.
The Banished Former Hero Lives as He Pleases Defies Expectations
Produced by Studio Deen & Marvy Jack; based on the original series by Shin Kozuki
Most anime fans are well-aware of the trope where the protagonist is mistakenly assumed to have been wrongfully summoned at first only to later transcend the power of the one whom everyone believed to have been the true hero. The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent explores this in full and has so far only alluded to it in The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic. It was also subverted earlier in Let Me Check the Walkthrough First, since the mistakenly summoned protagonist ended up being actually much stronger than and had to train the true hero.
However, The Banished Former Hero Lives as He Pleases sees Allen reincarnating into someone who gets to start their life from the very beginning. More impressively, Akira and Allen’s paths unexpectedly diverge by episode 2, whereby Akira takes on the less heroic path, unlike Allen, who suddenly adopts the role of hero. This unintentionally subverts The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent‘s plot, where the “fake” hero initially gets forced into the heroic track, while the protagonist and unrecognized true hero takes on less distinguished paths before slowly oscillating onto the glorified battlefield.
The Unintentional Trope Twist Is Actually a Well-Established Pattern
The Banished Former Hero plays with many traditional isekai tropes in an inventive way
What’s truly remarkable is that The Banished Former Hero Lives as He Pleases’ unintentional subversion of the wrongly summoned hero trope therefore makes its many more formulaic approaches feel fresh. Like most Isekai protagonists, Allen wants to live “the slow life”, but feels compelled to become a hero. However, because he’s taking over Akira’s role, it doesn’t feel like a cliché.
Truth be told, the twist in The Banished Former Hero Lives as He Pleases is subtle but has a massive impact on the series’ overall delivery. This is true of many other aspects of the series. Both the manner in which Allen is killed in his former life and how his new life complements it to his benefit are nothing new, but the artistic rendering of the scenes along with Allen’s odd and almost disturbing reaction to how he’s killed give it a different perspective. The same can be said of the small, yet fascinating subversion of the eponymous blacksmith’s race in the second episode and the allusion to where one of the series’ villains most likely comes from that upsets a massive twist in isekai. The Banished Former Hero Lives as He Pleases might feel like one massive cliché, but it’s clearly not, and just subverts formulas quietly.
The Banished Former Hero Lives as He Pleases is simulcasting on Crunchyroll.
Watch on Crunchyroll
