If I had a nickel for every anime that I watched this year that involved a person getting kicked out of their party, so they went on to open a place where they do what they did in their party, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice. Yes, this is in reference to The Brilliant Healer’s New Life in the Shadows. I will release my full thoughts about this show eventually, but just from this episode, I feel like Welcome to the Outcast’s Restaurant! did the “person getting kicked out of party and opening up place connected to their old job” thing better than The Brilliant Healer’s New Life in the Shadows did it.
Basic overview of the episode: During a mission, the enemy that a party was facing ends up getting aggravated, so Dennis (our main character) ends up using a skill to scare it off, as he thought that was what his captain, Vigo, wanted him to do. It turns out to not be the case, however, as Dennis ends up getting kicked out of the party. Bidding his old life behind, Dennis goes out to open a restaurant. This ends up in him purchasing Atelier from a slave trader, and getting her all cleaned and proper to act as a server in the restaurant. At the end of the episode, the restaurant officially gets opened, and they get their first customer…a person in a suit of armor.
Now, obviously, there’s a lot more detail that I could’ve gone into, but I think this review would be at its strongest if I don’t go into extremely heavy detail. But there is one part I will get into a bit more detail about, and is the exact reason why I decided to bring up The Brilliant Healer’s New Life in the Shadows by name. I have a lot more certainty about what sort of dynamic Dennis and Atelier have compared to the dynamic that Zenos and Lily had.
For those who have never watched The Brilliant Healer’s New Life in the Shadows, Zenos saves Lily from death after she got beaten up by slave traders that were trying to sell her. He ends up buying Lily, but never truly proclaims her as “free”. And with the fact that Lily kept proclaiming that she wanted to be Zenos’s wife…yeah, I felt kind of iffy about Lily as a character.
And then there’s Welcome to the Outcast’s Restaurant!. While we don’t have confirmation at the beginning of her time with Dennis that Atelier is truly free, at a point where she asks Dennis what she should do, that’s when Dennis says she can do whatever she wants because she’s free. Yes, he’s having her work at the restaurant, but Dennis has made it clear to Atelier that if she wants to leave, she can.
And that’s what ultimately made me love Welcome to the Outcast’s Restaurant!, just based on its first episode. Yes, you could argue that this show did the bare minimum, but I prefer this clarity compared to The Brilliant Healer’s New Life in the Shadows.
I was vibing to both the opening theme and the ending theme as they were playing, and it felt to me like they were better than average. And while the animation isn’t anything too flashy, it’s still perfect for this show, as it seems it’ll have more of a focus on cooking.
…dang, I should’ve done the cooking thing for my “if I had a nickel” joke, not the “getting kicked out of a party” thing. Then again, there are less similarities I could draw between Food for the Soul and Welcome to the Outcast’s Restaurant!, so maybe me calling out how I prefer Welcome to the Outcast’s Restaurant! over The Brilliant Healer’s New Life in the Shadows was a blessing in disguise.
I’ll be sticking around to watch Episode 2 of this series, and I have a pretty good feeling I’ll be sticking with this shows for the remainder of the anime season. Whether or not that ends up being the case, however, is something that we’ll all find out together!
ADDITIONAL POSTS ABOUT WELCOME TO THE OUTCAST’S RESTAURANT!:
Sara Talks Anime 
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