3 Episode Rule is a series in which I watch the first three episodes of a new anime and decide whether to stick with it or drop it based on those three episodes alone.
Bloody hell. What a title. I know that’s kind of become the gag now with these light novel adaptations, but jeez. For the duration of this post I’m just going to call the series “Quiet Life”. You’ll get what I’m talking about. This isn’t the first time this series came up on my blog recently either, as I talked about it when I spoke about Video game mechanics in anime especially in regard to the manga for this series.
This really feels like it should be an isekai, but it isn’t. It’s a pure fantasy series, one which seems to heavily base its power system on a very video gamey like source. Or maybe it’s closer to D&D. Either way, in the world of “Quiet Life”, everyone develops a “blessing” during their adolescence. It’s easily compatible to hoe Quirks work in my hero academia, although the blessings people receive in this series are all based around classic fantasy archetypes.
Fighters, Mages, Rogues etc. Although because this is a Japanese fantasy anime, there is always a Hero and always a Demon Lord. Our hero Red, formerly Gideon, is the elder brother of this generation’s hero Ruti. His blessing is “Guide” which, in the manga at least, gave him a starting level of 40, as opposed to everyone else’s 1. This meant he spent his early life as the strongest fighter in the world and a vital part of the heroes party.
Eventually though, after year’s of battle, his companions started to catch up to him, their class based skills starting to outpace his raw level. And so, unbeknownst to the rest of the party, the wizard Ares targeted Gideon’s insecurities and forced him out of the party, making him believe he was just holding everyone back now they’d become stronger than him.
And so, Gideon retreats to a quiet, uneventful corner of the world and took on the identity of Red, planning on gathering herbs, opening an apothecary and living a quiet and peaceful life as far away from the hero’s life as he possibly can. As you’d expect, that makes this a pretty slow paced and peaceful slice of life kind of series.
I mean, obviously, this is a fantasy world with creatures like Owlbears on the prowl. So there is about to be some fighting here and there, but despite Red’s apparent weakness, he’s still more than a match for pretty much anything he’ll ever encounter in this quiet corner of the world… I don’t want to spoil things too much, but this is so full of tropes at this point that is goes without saying…
Red is actually amazing and highly skilled in many things outside of plain combat. Which is why people end up becoming attracted to him, even in this desolate corner of the world. In the second episode he reunites with Rit; an adventurer and princess from a kingdom he met and fought alongside during his time in the hero party
Which is where the bulk of this show goes from here. It’s a romance between Red and Rit. Showing how they met in flashback before arriving at the point now where Rit shows up at his door and demands to work with him in the Apothecary, also retiring from her life as an adventurer.
It’s cute and sweet, and forgoes a lot of the excruciating build-up to romance that is rife in most anime. They meet up and pretty much already like one another right from the get go based on their shared past, so we can get right into the married couple wish fulfilment that Japan wants to push onto all it’s shut-in otaku. I sure know it works on me.
And so we spend most of our time watching Red and Rit building their life together and building their business as an apothecary in a small village though a little bit of hard and a whole lot of isekai style life hacks. Red with his ability to be good to great at pretty much everything thanks to his maxed out common skills and Rit’s negotiation skills that come from being a high rank adventurer of prestige and also a princess of a nearby kingdom.
On the periphery of the story though, we still happen to revisit the heroes party and their quest to defeat the Demon Lord. Which ends up being a little different the typical hero’s story than you might imagine. Ruti, Red’s younger sister, may be the hero, but she has this weird Kundere meets Yandere vibe going on to her.
She has this dead eyed look to her that seems to unnerve everyone around her. Even her own party members, and they’re big, seasoned martial artists, paladins and assassins. At the end of the third episode, events set these two worlds to collide again, with a member of the hero’s party tired of Ares’s posturing decides to go and find Gideon again. Because while he might not be the strongest fighter anymore, he brought so many other vital logistical and strategic gifts to the table.
Gifts the rest of the party, as a gathering of meatheats sorely lack.
Verdict: I like this, but it might struggle to keep my attention
As I alluded to before, I have been enjoying the manga for this one, so I was pretty surprised to see that an anime adaptation pop out of nowhere. And they went and kept the title too. The mad lads.
I really enjoy the manga for the slower pace and sweet building romance between Red and Rit. With so many other, louder and flashier anime coming out this season that I’m still prepping to watch, I have to really wonder if this one is going to be able to keep my attention. It’s not a lot to speak of in terms of quality of animation and gets by purely on the characters and the sweetness of the story for me.
As of right now, I intend to try and keep up with it, but maybe not week to week. Time will only tell if the sweetness of Red and Rit will keep me engaged when I’ve got demons, mechs and magical symphony girls to distract me as well this season.
A Richard Wood Text Adventure 