Shin no Nakama ja Nai to Yuusha no Party wo Oidasareta node, Henkyou de Slow Life suru Koto ni Shimashita
Banished from the Hero's Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside

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Contrary to ManosP1's review, I think this manga is fantastic and completely underrated. The story is a little slow and most certainly not action-oriented, but that's something you can gather even just from the title. This manga is, in my opinion, a subtle yet adorable romance in the context of a fantasy setting. The real focus of this manga is on relationships, especially the friendship/romance of Red and Lit. Their romance actually moves forward at a wonderful pace, not too slow and not too fast, unlike a lot of other manga that string you along for 100+ chapters, only to end in a mere confession ... or kiss. Instead, both of these characters are honest about their feelings from the moment they come together. Without giving any spoilers, I will also say that these two actually advance their relationship beyond just liking each other and working together.

As for the "lack of explanation" about divine protections and skills, I don't really know what ManosP1 was talking about, it seems like they maybe just didn't read enough chapters to get to the explanation. I will say, the manga doesn't give an ELI5 explanation like a lot of other fantasy manga. However, it still makes it pretty clear how things work: a "divine protection" is one's specific role in life, as chosen by the gods. For example, Red's divine protection is "guide," meaning it was/is his job to protect lower-level heroes until they are strong enough to protect themselves. As for skills, the way they work is much like a video game, in that you can increase a skill whenever you level up; "common skills," are just that, skills that anyone can level up. These include mundane things like cooking and fishing (though only to an extent). "Intermediate skills" are similar in that anyone can acquire them but they usually are only necessary for adventurers or people with a higher level, such as "first aid" or "brewing." "Advanced skills," on the other hand, are skills only available to certain roles/divine protections. For example, someone with the divine protection "chef" would be able to increase their cooking skills beyond just the common level. As well, someone that is a "hero" role would have powerful swordsmanship/magic-based skills available to them.

The reason Red sees himself as weak is that he has no advanced skills to choose from (his divine protection of "guide" doesn't offer any) which means he has a limit to how helpful he can be, unlike his sister or the other adventurers who can continue to grow in power indefinitely. Especially since he was in the most powerful adventuring party in the world, he reached a point where he felt he was no longer needed and was only a burden. However, what this story tries to show us that even if his abilities aren't god-tier when it comes to combat or magic, he is still heroic because he is kind and caring towards those around him. As well, though he may not have any advanced skills, his experiences adventuring and his smart-thinking ( to combine the common/intermediate skills he does have) show just how versatile/helpful he actually is.

Overall, I recommend this manga to those who like realistic, straight-forward romance that doesn't beat around the bush, drown you in ecchi, or rush into things. However, I would not recommend this to anyone who wants another power-fantasy, harem manga where the OP hero just obliterates everything in his path and somehow attracts people to him without having done anything to deserve it.

The series title is a little absurd but absolutely don't let that put you off. This is a great read that will surprise you with its depth and intrigue. Whilst the classic ingredients for a typical shounen fantasy are here (demon lord, strong mc, levelling up, etc) this story takes a somewhat different approach that works very well focusing on the typical "off-screen" antics of a herb store away from the main action.

That is not to say the hero-vs-demon lord storyline is completely ignored. The "main quest" activity not only progresses in the background but it stays relevant to the mc without becoming the primary ... focus. This grants a slower more comfortable story allowing more appreciation for the world, circumstances and relationships to develop. We're granted time to experience those antics that seem so out-of-place in the more typical grandiose story - events such as solving local mysteries, developing new things and cute relationship moments.

It's by no means a hugely complex and deep plot but contrary to how the title may suggest, there is a decent amount of drama and some interesting conflicts with the ever present threat of the Demon Lord still making its presence felt throughout. Underlying this is some great relationship and personal dynamics with mature attitudes and logical decisions. Best of all, it has clear and sweet (but not excessive) romance thread which is really endearing to see.

All of which is delivered with decent humour, good pace and a surprising amount of action. The art is clean, the dialogue coherent and character emotions portrayed really well. As something of a veteran of the genre, I was pleasantly surprised by this. Initially thinking it would be a bit of a light boring read before bed, the series has truly captured my interest and become something where each chapter is eagerly anticipated.

This manga inspired me to write a review because it's so close to being decent, but falls flat on a bunch of fundamental levels. It kept me reading almost out of sheer frustration.

The biggest sin this manga commits is massive exposition dumps in nearly every chapter. It feels like the manga is never finished explaining things to the audience; explaining who characters are, explaining the boring power system, explaining what some magic item or potion or whatever MacGuffin this issue revolves around. This is a flaw that pops up a lot in manga adapted from light novels, instead of portraying the details ... of the world through the visuals and story they just drop blocks of text directly from the novel onto the page. The worst part is almost none of it is important, you can skip over 70% of the text in this work and still understand everything perfectly.

We are constantly reminded that despite how strong and cool the MC is, he is totally fine with living anonymously and running his humble store while others do the important monster fighting stuff. The thing is, this is really boring. It's a boring motivation and it plays out in a boring way. We get to see the characters basically just dicking around for 50 chapters straight; making random potions, training, effortlessly beating bandits/demons/other completely toothless threat. Occasionally we're treated to entire chapters dedicated to exposition dumps about the dull power system or some other worldbuilding element that never really matters in the greater story. A more competent manga would have the herb gathering element be interesting and engaging so we are more invested in that than the battles, but no. The depiction of potion making and store ownership is simultaneously incredibly shallow and very boring fleshed out with exposition dumps.

As if to tease us, the boring apothecary plot will randomly be interrupted by flashbacks or cutaways to action scenes where characters are fighting actual threats. These are illustrated well but never actually play out in full, they will often feature a single panel of action with 3-4 giant exposition boxes describing what happened in the battle. In a better manga I'd think this was a gag because it's such a lazy way to portray a fight. I don't know why these chapters exist, it's clear this isn't a battle manga, it's like the author is worried he's losing the teenage action loving crowd and wants to throw them a bone occasionally.

So what is the content if the actual events are so meaningless? The main draw of the series is the relationship between the MC and his girlfriend and how they deal with the various disruptions to their idyllic shopkeeper lifestyle. The slice of life dialog and romance is by far the strongest writing in this manga, if it committed more to being a romance/comedy manga I'd probably view it more favorably. But alas in a baffling choice of priorities the romance is usually sidelined in favor of keeping up the pretense that this is a shopkeeping/battle manga. The romantic progression is glacially slow and usually just amounts to the two saying some trite thing like "you look pretty today" and a panel of her blushing. This does improve further in, so if you're reading for the romance you might as well just skip through everything else as the context barely matters.

So yeah. Mid tier art, glacially slow but charming romance progression, well written but overly wordy dialogue, shallow combat, boring plot. Overall a very unenjoyable read with occasional glimmers of decent writing.