Healer Girl

While idol shows are extremely popular, we haven’t got many, if any musical anime. This makes Healer Girl one of the most unique shows I have seen in a very long time as well as one of the most enjoyable. An absolutely lovely hidden gem of Spring 2022. Musicals are not something I’m usually into. I normally find the random breaks into musical numbers to be cringe and uncomfortable to watch, so for a show to make me love that really speaks volumes to the writing. Unlike live action musicals, Healer Girl actually takes a pretty intuitive approach to incorporate the acts into the show. Insteadof the girls just randomly breaking out singing ala High School Musical, music is used to heal people in this world. In addition to regular medical personnel, so called Healer Girls are brought along to ensure the successful outcome of operations. The songs that are performed are always accompanied by beautiful visuals, lovely animation and of course some really amazing vocal talent, making them a treat to watch. As with any wholesome and cozy show, the characters are the biggest sell of the show. Each and every girl in this show is waifu material and generally loveable. Personally, I fell in love with Reimi from the moment she appeared on screen. By far one of the best girls of the year. The other girls all have unique backstories and bring something different to the table creating an awesome experience. As I said before, Healer Girl was easily the most slept on show of the season and it’s a shame. It really was such a nice way to start the week and lived up to its title by offering some nice healing after a long weekend. I will really miss the girls, performances and that gorgeous art style. Healer Girl gets 10 notes out of 10.

It's been so long since I last smiled while watching every episode of an anime. And to think this was the anime that made me do that... I'm smiling again just thinking about it. Now, before I review this anime, because I am 100% sure that a lot of people skipped this series and wrote it off as "generic moe sol anime but with healing", I just wanna say that technically you're not wrong for thinking that. What I'm trying to say is that this anime is not for everyone. If you hate music anime, then this isn't for you. If you hate female protagonists thenthis also isn't for you. Are you still here reading my review? Good. Now let's start breaking down why I think this is the Best Anime this season (and possibly the Best Anime this year). First, is the plot. It's not the strongest plot out there ngl. It even started pretty generic with the protagonist (Kana) showcasing her abilities, as well as the concept of this whole show. Healing via Singing. This type of concept is not unique to this anime, but it's definitely the first series to dedicate a whole anime just for the concept alone. And I have to say, they handled the healing via singing thingy pretty well. There's not a point in this anime where the girls healed someone via singing and broke my immersion, because the singing ability is still grounded in real-life rules. For a simpler explanation, the singing is strictly for helping the patient lose their pain or calm their nerves. In other words, they're like a band-aid and an anesthetics in one package. They're not like the go-to solution to every pain and disease, no. That job still goes to doctors, and the Healer Girls are mostly there to assist the doctors. These things are so simple yet so effective to make the world feel believable in my opinion. And that is this anime's strongest strength. Another one of its strength is the pacing. Each episode have perfect pacing that perfectly handles the conflicts in that episode. My only complaint is how in a certain episode in the latter half, they kinda f*cked up the whole sequence of cuts with present and flashbacks which is kinda confusing. Other than that, it's all perfect. Then the characters. The characters here are all interesting and likable. Sonya is definitely the Best Girl for me. But all of them are all good girls that deserve headpats for how hard they work. They each have their development throughout the series which makes their growth a joy to watch. And their interactions with one another and how different they are from another person are also fun to see because it shows how they aren't just one-dimensional cardboards that can be replaced with anything. They're not complex and full of nuisance kind of characters, but they are still well-written characters. The side characters as well are memorable characters that had some kind of impact on the story and the characters, whether it's to develop them or to further the world-building of the series. Let's move to the animation department. It's amazing. This is probably the best animation that I've seen that is not ufotable, kyoani, wit, or mappa. This is just that good. Its fluid with its every movement, and it barely has off-models in each frame. The art is also very consistent which is always a plus in my book. The direction too is pretty well-done. There are always meaningful and interesting shots, as well as a beautiful sequence when the girls start singing. It's just a joy to watch. Then lastly, the music. I'm not someone to be considered when talking about music, but I know good music when I hear it. And this anime has plenty of bangers in its catalog. The ost, insert songs, opening, ending... all of them are so good. And that's to be expected from a music anime. But this is just so great, definitely up there with Love Live music imo. Overall, I just love how solid the foundation of this anime is. It has a strong concept that greatly integrates with irl mechanics that keeps my immersion from breaking. The cast is strong and full of interesting personalities. The animation and music departments are all top-notch. It's just an anime with minimal flaws, and that's why I think that this is the Best Anime this season. (9.6/10)

Healer Girl is a show with an interesting premise that doesn't do nearly enough to capitalize on its unique premise, leading to a fine, but otherwise forgettable Slice of Life/CGDCT show. The initial premise of songs having these fantastical properties to heal would make for a wonderfully original show, and yet the girls hardly do any healing outside of a handful of episodes. The majority of the runtime is spent doing typical CGDCT stuff like school festivals or summer vacation stuff. i.e. going through the motions without doing anything special. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but when you're me and you've watched aton of the stuff, it all ends up blending together and the one thing that would have otherwise made this show stand out just doesn't do enough. So, what? The girls do end up singing a lot, but most of the healing is delegated to emotional healing, i.e. singing songs to make people feel better, as opposed to actual healing, which as I said only happens a handful of times throughout the whole show. There are plenty of other shows where the main cast also sing to make other people feel better in one-off episodes, so already the defining feature, the very core of the whole show is rendered moot. Then again, maybe I'm being too harsh. I really like the MCs and the songs are really well done, particularly the OP. But at the end of the day Healer Girl is an unremarkable, if nothing-wrong show that never tries to exceed expectations or to stand out in a genre swamped with many other similar shows. But hey, they'll sing a song and make you a bit happier, and isn't that all that matters? No. No it doesn't. 6/10

One thing I really love about anime is that in Japan, pretty much anything goes. People could make anime and manga for pretty much anything, from simple, slice-of-life stories with little to no conflict, or they can go balls to the wall wild and come up with the absolute craziest premises you can think of, and Japan would have no problem putting them on TV. I mean, where else can you find an anime about a general from imperial China being reincarnated into modern day Japan and helping a girl pursue a music career? Or a show about a bunch of buff dudes using sentientmonsters named after famous songs and bands to fight each other across generations and family trees? Or about a guy who fights crime while his head is literally a chainsaw? Or a show about a spy, an assassin, and a mind-reading child becoming a fake family in order to fulfill a mission sanctioned by their government? So the fact that Japan just recently made a cute anime about high school girls using singing acapella as a means to heal peoples' injuries and have it be treated as a valid medical pursuit, along with basically making it a musical at points, should be just as fun and interesting, right? Ehh...Healer Girl is fine for what it is, but it stumbles a lot in terms of how it handles its premise and many other things. Me saying that Healer Girl is about high school girls singing as a means of healing people medically is not an exaggeration. Basically, three young women—Kana, Reimi, and Hibiki—work at a medical clinic in a small town as apprentice healers alongside their famous mentor Ria. In this world, singing and music can be used as medicine and has been officially recognized as a valid medical pursuit. Kana in particular is eager to become a healer after having been saved by one as a child, and is determined to follow in their footsteps. But so far, she and her friends are trainees and still have a lot to learn before they can earn their licenses. They also have to deal with a rival healer from another clinic, Sonia, who is determined to beat Ria at her own game, and their own personal flaws if they want to grow as healers. So...yeah. Healer Girl is basically an anime musical in the vein of Sing a Bit of Harmony, complete with characters bursting into song at completely random times, even when it's not needed. I mean, when your whole premise involves having magic healers work side by side with surgeons, pharmacists, and traditional medical doctors, and leaning very heavily into the musical themes, it's kind of inevitable. Now, the premise by itself is actually pretty interesting, and Healer Girl does manage to do things with it, from showing the main trio actually learning the ins and outs of healing with song, having them actually partake in singing while an actual surgery is going on, the limits of what they can do at their current level, and so on. Plus, Healer Girl also manages to smartly avoid going the pseudoscience route in the vein of "You can cure cancer by singing!" by empathizing that healing with song isn't without its drawbacks, and that even in the show's universe, advances in medicine still can't cure everything. On that note, I can definitely respect Healer Girl for going all in on its premise and having a more nuanced, holistic approach to health care. The colorful, smooth animation also helps with this, making for some great visuals and imagery...though, whose bright idea was it to have the main girls have two-colored hair? It just looks weird! Of course, that doesn't always mean Healer Girl sticks the landing, and if you couldn't tell by the rating, there's lots of areas where the show really stumbles. For one, Healer Girl as a show is extremely cheesy, treacly, and saccharine. The whole show is a bright, candy colored piece of fluff where any and all conflicts are resolved pretty easily, leaving it without much in the way of tension, and any resolutions it does offer are pretty anticlimactic. The middle section especially suffers, with the sports and cultural festival episodes being the most egregious offenders, what with having the characters sing-talk for 80% of the former, and somehow being able to flawlessly play instruments while wearing full body animal costumes in the latter. Both were completely ridiculous and really dumb. There are also times when Healer Girl seems to have very little regard for following its own rules. In one episode, when the main trio sing to soothe a surgeon's nerves, which has all the complexity of your typical Disney fairy tale wave a magic wand and get your happily ever after, they sing in a closed room, but in another episode, the girls sing WHILE in the operating room, not wearing any masks or scrubs or anything of the like, just three feet away from the surgeons and the operating table. Uh, hello?! Did the staff behind this show just forget that hospitals have strict hygiene rules, especially when surgeries are being conducted?! Say what you will about Gray's Anatomy, at least that show didn't feel the need to have surgeons and nurses not wear scrubs and masks while in the operating room! I'm pretty sure anyone who doesn't wear masks or scrubs while in the operating room would get fired for putting a patient's life at risk for infections if they did that. Basically, at times Healer Girl goes all in on its premise, but also makes serious missteps and undermines itself at times to the point where your suspension of disbelief is broken and you can't take the story seriously anymore. The characters by themselves are perfectly fine. Nothing groundbreaking, since they start off as pretty blatant archetypes at first, and their character development is pretty predictable as well. Most of the side characters don't really do much, with Shinobu being the biggest victim of this, though I do appreciate that the anime put in the effort to give Sonia more depth to her over making her another typical alpha bitch stereotype. If there is one thing that the show does manage to nail, its the chemistry between the main trio. By themselves, Kana, Reimi, and Hibiki are pretty stock standard, but their interactions and banter do feel genuine and organic, and they actually feel like a close-knit group of gal pals who do everything together and truly cherish each other...though Reimi's whole exaggerated, obsessive, crush-like worship of Ria is pretty creepy and annoying. Plus, the show also gets some points for having plenty of adult women as respected leaders in the medical field. But as it stands, the characters have about as much depth as the cast in every Love Live series ever, which is to say...not much. Plus, for a series that banks itself on its music, the actual songs are pretty...dull. I mean, I liked most of them, but many of the songs are the exact same boring acapella ballads but with different lyrics, with very little in the way of variety. On one hand, I could understand not wanting to have the healers sing or play heavy metal music during an operation on a patient, as that'd probably ruin a surgeon's concentration to the point that they'd put their patients' lives at risk, but nowhere does the series make any mention of this in-universe. Every single song is just plain generic, well sung as they are, and feel copy-pasted from other ones that came before it. It says a lot that the actual background music feels more inspired than the actual songs. Then again, I do listen to the opening theme song a lot, so I'm a complete hypocrite, and other shows have done far worse than Healer Girl has, so I don't want to be too hard on the show. Basically, Healer Girl is sweet, saccharine, treacly, nice and fluff. Nothing groundbreaking, but nothing really bad either. It stumbles a lot, but it does have its heart in the right place. Healer Girl as an anime is perfectly wholesome, though doesn't have much to offer than that, but it could be a great anime you can use to get your preteen relatives into anime for the first time. The show feels like it was made specifically for girls, so it'd be a nice gateway anime for your daughter, kid sister, niece, or what have you. It may be a little too overly sweet and sugary for me, but Healer Girl is better than most if you're into anime about cute girls singing wholesome ballads and want a nice musical to bop your head to. Also, can you believe this is directed by the same guy who directed Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and Kurau Phantom Memory?