

I feel like this show had some interesting ideas going for it but there were several subplots that just didn't work for me.
Earlier on in it I may have given it an 80 or higher, but by the end I felt like 70 was becoming generous.
The main couple is great, probably one of the more satisfying ones I've seen in a while, and definitely the highlight of the show. Red is a very solid protagonist, especially when compared to all his competition of generic brown hair dude in the fantasy anime scene. He is resourceful and kind, and the reasons he was "banished" from the heroes party made sense, I feel like everyone has doubted their worth in group settings.
The plot overall was fun early on. Red and Rit work off each other well and they integrate into the town in a believable and enjoyable way. Red helps the townsfolk but he never feels like some op dude who pulls solutions out of nowhere for every issue, in many ways he's just another member of the community there to help out.
It starts to fall apart for me ones they add a bunch of arbitrary plot contrivances and weird character motivations to create conflict for the sake of conflict. I wish it had kept more to the SOL aspects but it started adding conflicts that didn't make sense for the location they were in. Zoltan is repeatedly described as a sleepy and unassuming frontier town with no strategic value and so few resources bandits don't see it as worth their time. So it felt very contrived that several conflicts arose in Zoltan when the instigators had no reason to be there, and that's not even mentioning that by sheer coincidence:
It was above par for fantasy anime, and as a sucker for SOL I appreciated it being present, but I feel like the premise had a lot more potential than the execution and was carried by the duo of Red and Rit. Had it leaned more heavily on the SOL side of the premise it would have been an easy 80-90, but as it stands, the story and supporting cast (as good as the townsfolk were) left much to be desired and Red and Rit deserve a better plot. The way their relationship develops is still immensely satisfying, but the rest of the show feels like a distraction from that rather than helping to build it most of the time.
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