I’ve really grown fond of the banished troupe in anime. Plus, it honestly adds a little more variety since I’ve been focused on so many isekais. So, looking through Crunchyroll, I came across one that caught my interest and decided to give it a try. Our story stars Alec Ygret, who was taught magic at an early age and became a court magician, only to be quickly banished. In his banishment, he reunites with a party he was part of at an academy and sets his sights on new goals and adventures.

The story here is solid, but it has both good and bad qualities to it. Starting with the good is the world’s development. A huge part of the reason behind Alec’s banishment stems from flawed worldly norms. These norms promote prejudice, and not only that, Alec’s situation wasn’t the first like it. The story establishes that others were treated the same way for the same reason, and I’ll be vague so you can explore this for yourself.

Further world-building is established, where it clearly lays out explanations for the dungeons within the world that people explore, the guilds that explore them, and the way magic works in the world. There’s a lot to love about the world built around the characters. Another great part of the story is the sense of mystery. The story slow leads information about the mysteries behind both Alec’s mother and his mentor, and it’s easy to get invested in them because the characters are fun to watch.

The problem with the story is the pacing. It starts off jarringly fast, to the point where I stopped early in episode one to see how many minutes had passed. Within about five to six minutes into the first episode, Alec had been trained, said goodbye to his mentor, grew up, and was banished from the party. Other parts of this episode and episode two fill in some gaps of this, but really, the first part of the episode could have been two episodes easily. Honestly, they really should have been. The story relies heavily on attempts to do emotional gut punches. Alec was clearly traumatized by his experience as a court magician and inspired by his mentor. While we do get emotional experiences that work, these emotional gut punches have their punches pulled a bit by this rushed pacing.

Another problem is that it does have a great hook in the systemic problems that led to Alec’s banishment. Then proceeds to abandon all mention of them about halfway through the season and starts to tell an entirely new story. While I did enjoy the direction the story went, it also felt like a lot of work to set up a good story was wasted with this shift.

The characters are very interesting as Alec is not entirely overpowered. While he is clearly the most powerful character in his party, he’s also still dependent on others to win the battles, and that’s nice. It establishes party dynamics and the characters of his new group, Lasting Period, all work well together. The cast is full of interesting characters, and while not all of them hit the mark, many of them do. One standout in particular is the person who banished Alec in the first place. He does go through a lot more character development than any other person in this role in this genre that I’ve seen so far.

The combat is a lot of fun to watch. The magic, in particular, is beautifully animated and paired with exciting music. The hand-to-hand and weapon combat falls in comparison, but at the same time, you’re not watching a show about a magician for the melee. Even then, the fights are still entertaining; you just notice the difference in quality between the two, and it takes some getting used to.

Overall, this is a solid show. The problem is that this is a good show that could have been a great one. It has a lot of amazing elements to it: mystery, world-building, great characters, and more. However, its pacing and sudden abandonment of strong story elements hinder its potential. I’m still hooked enough to watch another season if we get one, but I wouldn’t place it high on my list of shows to come back to.