Alec Yugret is a mage who dedicated himself to support magic to help out the crown prince and his efforts to clear out dungeons. One day, however, the prince suddenly fires Alec from his role as the court magician, declaring that someone who only knows support magic is useless. Now jobless, Alec is contacted by his old magic academy friend Yorha Eisentz, who asks for his help to once again venture into dungeons.

Y'know, in concept, I actually do like the idea of the "kicked out of the party" trope as the start to a story. After all, there are so many routes to go down. And yet, the problem with the subgenre (as far as anime goes) is that it almost always seems to take the same damn route. Is it ever about a guy who quits the party because he realizes he truly is a liability and then goes on to find new and creative ways to help people without being on the front lines? Nope. Is it ever about someone who's an arrogant ass and is rightfully banished from the party, only for his subsequent story to teach him the errors of his ways and help him find redemption? Of course not. 99% of the time, it's always about an overpowered guy helping his party in unseen or underappreciated ways that his companions somehow see as useless and a reason to give him the boot. Then he finds a new group who sees his true worth and he gets his revenge indirectly on his old party when they suddenly start to fail and realize all he actually did for them, and that's of course what The Banished Court Magician Aims to Become the Strongest seems to be as well. You know you're in trouble when even people on MyAnimeList are complaining about it being redundant.

But despite being about as bog-standard as possible, the story itself isn't even told well. I constantly felt like the show was deliberately withholding information just to get to the next plot point faster. It starts simple enough with a rather interesting relationship between a young boy and an expert magician with some seeds of mystery that could be interesting. However, not only is this done extremely quickly, to the point where I don't get as emotionally invested in this relationship as I think the show wanted me to, but the disgrace that this magician feels ends up becoming the emotional crux of our main character's entire journey. That would be fine if the premiere actually bothered getting into any genuine worldbuilding, but it really doesn't.

Alec wants to become a magician in order to change the profession from the inside because he believes his mentor was wrongfully banished, but we don't know exactly why he was banished or what exactly is wrong with the magicians system. Alec gets banished from his party, but it comes off more like his party being a bunch of dicks that were always secretly looking down on him. Maybe the message is supposed to be that firm divide between nobility and commoners? Maybe the scene where they kick him out of the party is supposed to feel forced and unnatural because they're just looking for an excuse to get rid of him and they legitimately have no genuine reason? I can't tell because the show isn't giving me a lot of information or context for how this works or how we're supposed to view our main character.

Alec is apparently one of the most skilled magic prodigies of the past few years and even seemingly broke a world record, but they get on his case because he only seems to use support magic, even though we clearly see he's able to do more than that. So why didn't he just use other types of magic when he was doing these intense dungeons? Did he just not want to upstage the prince? I don't know, because as already pointed out, the show doesn't give me a lot to go off of. Hell, what information was Alec trying to pass on to the king? Why does Alec refuse to use his true power even after becoming a solo adventurer? What the shit was "You haven't found your original state, have you?" supposed to mean?

This makes the climatic battle of the episode a total mess. Yorha makes it seem like Alec using magic is a huge deal, a major character moment for him, and that them being in a party together should be seen as a big exciting thing. She even literally states how excited she is to take Alec to the Adventurer's Guild. The music swells and the animation gets all flashy, and...I have no idea why I should care. I don't even really know how Alec feels about the prince at this point--I don't know if he feels emotionally betrayed or just let down because he failed to reform the royal court like he'd hoped. I don't know how he feels about magic or his old magic school companions, other than that they seemed to get along. There's this message at the end of the episode about trusting your teammates, but it doesn't feel earned because it's starting a bunch of plot points while failing to follow through on them. Even if the idea is that these are supposed to be things that get developed throughout the show, it still acts like it's coming to definitive emotional conclusions about them. If it wanted to be a setup episode, it should've spent more time establishing the world and these relationships. If it wanted to have an emotional payoff, it should've focused on one idea.

Just about the only real compliment I can give to The Banished Court Magician at this point is that it has the decency to inject some pleasant, warm colours into the exterior shots that take place in the evening. I guess I can also appreciate that the tone of the show is aiming for light and breezy instead of miserably edgy--if that's the alternative, I suppose I'd much rather have blandness. Maybe if this one can get its shit together within the next couple episodes, it might stand a chance in my books, but I know better than to get my hopes too high.