Here we are with another "banished from hero's party" trope with my thoughts. I've caught up with the 44th chapter on a different manga site, but since my main go-to is mangadex, I'm most likely going to forget that this series will have updated chapters, so I might as well put this on hold indefinitely and write down my thoughts so far.
To start with, honestly nothing special with the story. Pretty generic for a "banished from hero's party" story. Nothing really especially unique. But hey, personally, I don't mind generic stuff, so this isn't enough to get me to drop the series. Just wanted to point out that this is just a simple adventuring story with potential harem and nothing much else.
Other than the genericness, this series has its ups and downs. At the beginning, my opinions of the story were pretty low, and that's mainly due to the MC Ariake (will be talking more about that later). Towards somewhere in the middle of the 44 chapters, I started to enjoy it a bit more. While generic, I honestly did somewhat enjoy Ariake and Colette (probably my favorite character for this series) going around to different towns and fixing them up. And then came the end of the 44 chapters. The Imperial Duel in of itself was great, with Lacrie getting some nice payback. But there's something that once again lowered my opinions of the story... And that's where I talk about the MC Ariake.
So, Ariake. Smart, strategic, tactical, caring towards his team, qualities that I liked in Ariake. I love me an MC that has a smart strategic mind and makes good use of it.
Now what did I not like about Ariake? What's his biggest flaw? Well... he's a caring dumbass. TOO caring and naive. Almost as if he's ignoring the flaws in a lot of people, especially the hero party. He says its because he views himself as the parent of the hero party who are like children (and how accurate he is when the hero goes "waaah waah waaaaaah"), but I'm a bit on the fence with that viewpoint. I can go on and on about how this side of him causes him to make things unnecessarily more difficult than they had to be. But if I were to put this in a simple way without spoiling any specifics of the story, let me put it this way:
Have you guys read/seen My Hero Academia? Yes? Now you know how Midoriya Izuku is always saying that Bakugo would make an amazing hero and still sees him as his friend, despite Bakugo constantly bullying him for like almost 10 years? Yup. That's pretty much Ariake's major flaw right there, except minus the Bakugo-redemption comparison cuz this story doesn't have that. Enough said.
Otherwise, if anything, what I liked about this story is Colette. She's a pretty great side character all things considered, and she always says what we tend to think about with Ariake. Constantly pointing out that he's too kind for his own good and seeing that there's little to no hope for the hero party. Also willing to decimate anyone who tries to talk shit about Ariake, except she doesn't with Ariake playing the "straight man" of the duo. Not bad. Some of the other side characters are pretty neat. I especially liked when Lorelei wanted to rejoin the hero party, but ended up realizing how shit and disorganized they really were without Ariake.
Overall, not too bad of a story following the "banished from hero party" plotline. Not great, not terrible. Has its ups and downs, but nothing to write home about. Not enough to make me drop this, but also not too eager to look forward to future chapters. If you're looking for something exciting or unique, this series may not be to your liking.
6/10; A generically alright series with nothing major to write home about, some interesting moments and side characters yet a large flaw with the MC's caring naivety.