The Newspaper Run By Dreams

I've been watching 真の仲間じゃないと勇者のパーティーを追い出されたので、辺境でスローライフすることにしました (shin no nakama ja nai to yūsha no pātī o oidasareta no de, henkyō de surō raifu suru koto ni shimashita, "Because I was banished from the hero's party for not being a true comrade, I've decided to live the slow life in the countryside", Eng: "Banished from the Hero's Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside") because it's not an isekai but the background is very similar, because they're both drawing from the same well.

In Banished, everyone in the world is born with a 加護 (kago), which Weblio defines as:

神仏が力で衆生を守り助けること, "The protection extended by the gods and the Buddha to all living things"

but the English subtitles translate as "Blessing." Now when I first heard that, I thought back to that passage in Tanakh:

"See, I have called by name Bezalel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah; and I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise skilful works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones for setting, and in carving of wood, to work in all manner of workmanship. And I, behold, I have appointed with him Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan; and in the hearts of all that are wise-hearted I have put wisdom, that they may make all that I have commanded thee."
-Exodus 31:2-7

But it's not, it's literally RPG classes. You are Assigned Fighter At Birth and it makes you want to go punch things. Seriously, it's a plot point that if your 加護 relates to fighting and martial prowess your personality changes so you become more likely to reach for fighting as the first tool to solve problems.

Now, there are some cool worldbuilding side effects that result from this. We're told that 加護 are assigned completely randomly with no regard for the parents' 加護 or the child's station in life, so the son of a farmhand can get the 加護 of the shōgun and the daughter of a woodcutter can get the 加護 of the archmage, but by the same token, a princess can get the 加護 of the thief. It makes me wonder how hereditary nobility even developed in this world--surely they'd have some kind of caste system that your 加護 sorted you into, right?

Well, maybe that comes into play late in the story, because I'm not that far in, but at the point I'm at we've learned that the reason the main character left the hero's party is because his 加護 is the 導き手 (michibikite, "Guide"), and you might think, "Oh, so he's good at tracking or wilderness survival or-" but you're wrong. The effects of that 加護 are basically "You gain +30 levels when it manifests but you can't gain any extra XP", so his 加護 is literally that he's the overpowered tutorial character you get in the early parts of the RPG but who eventually leaves your party, either because the story makes them or because their stat growth is low enough that relying on them too much will eventually handicap you.

And that's why I'm writing this post, because even in a pure fantasy series it's just based on video game tropes. Anime like KonoSuba literally have people carry their character sheets in their pockets and Banished isn't that bad, but it still has a character that people in the discussion I read kept referring to with a Fire Emblem term because it's such a well-known character type over there. And I think the reason for all of this is that people don't read the original sources. The author of Banished did not grow up reading classic fantasy, they grew up playing video games and reading books inspired by video games (specifically Dragon Quest and games based on it), the same way that modern D&D designers did not grow up reading Fritz Leiber and C.L. Moore and Robert E. Howard, they grew up playing D&D and reading D&D books and modern D&D reflects that--it's based on D&D, not on pulp adventurers. The biggest problem I have with isekai series--and maybe with Banished, we'll see--is that they'll often set up a really cool background and premise and then go absolutely nothing with it in favor of relying on standard video game tropes. Even Frieren, as good as it is with its exploration of mortality, is still like, "Oh, we need a priest so we have a healer" at one point.

And it's easy to look at the development of fantasy in Japan and say, well, that's just how it is, since they got their idea of elf-dwarf-orc fantasy not from The Lord of the Rings, but from Dragon Quest, which got it from Wizardry. But there are plenty of old Japanese fantasy series like Escaflowne or Magic Knights Rayearth that don't rely on video game logic. Hell, Record of Lodoss War is literally based on a Sword World tabletop campaign and it still doesn't have characters talking about their classes and levels! This is a modern development and while I occasionally look at one of these series and think about playing a game in that setting--I'll admit, Banished reminds me a lot of how Earthdawn took a lot of D&D tropes like classes and monster-filled dungeons and levels and worked an explanation of them into the world--but I'm getting a little tired of this popping up everywhere. We'll see if Banished does anything interesting with it as the series goes on.

If anyone has any recommendations for recent Japanese fantasy that's not based on That Summer the Writer Spent Playing Dragon Quest III (or worse, reading books by people who spent a summer playing Dragon Quest III) let me know.