Doctor Elise: The Royal Lady with the Lamp

If you are looking for a medical show, this is not it. If you are looking for a period drama/romance, this is not it. If you are looking for a villainess/reincarnation story, this is not it either. This show squanders its many ingredients and shows no signs of life throughout. There are not many medical anime shows out there (to my knowledge), so I was really excited for this one. Unfortunately, the medical aspect is seriously lacking. I am not a medical professional so I cannot comment on realism, but I can say that the medical problems and solutions feel very simplistic. Elise makes some observations,rattles off medical terminology like she is reading off of Wikipedia, identifies the condition, proceeds to administer treatment, and then the patient is fine. The whole process is very “A to B to C”, like a detective finding a bloody knife on a corpse, taking fingerprints from the knife, and then arresting the culprit by matching those prints. It may be true that all the details are indeed accurate, but they make for dull viewing. Elise is 100% correct in her diagnoses right off the bat and 100% successful with her treatment; there are absolutely no uncertainties, complications or mistakes. Even a genius doctor like Elise should not be able to see and predict everything, unless she has the all-seeing eye (like in Parallel World Pharmacy), and it would have been satisfying (and expected of a doctor) to see her adapt to unexpected developments and even learn new things. There are no other doctors that provide much help or insight, either; Elise does it all herself. Everything is neatly wrapped up in a matter of minutes, and there is no real challenge or tension. I cannot shake the feeling that very little thought was given to how doctors actually work and what they go through; what is important is that Elise healed them, and that is it. An interesting twist to the medical aspect is the setting, which looks like 19th century Europe. I was curious about how Elise, who has knowledge centuries ahead of the times, would deal with the outdated science and culture. The show does almost nothing with this, except having other characters marvel at Elise’s knowledge. To my (untrained) eyes, most of the facilities, tools, and practices look basically the same as the modern-day ones, and Elise never has any real difficulty producing results or convincing others. I expected some doctors to not even understand what she is talking about, but that is never the case. Also, Elise never really makes an effort to hide how she knows so much, and everyone just accepts it and moves on. The patriarchal nature of the field of medicine at the time is very weakly hinted at but is not a factor in Elise’s career. There are so many missed opportunities to create some interesting challenges for Elise. This shallowness extends to the broader, non-technical aspects of a doctor’s work. The biggest pet peeve of mine is when Elise promises her patients that “she will save them,” on more than one occasion. Elise, a seasoned veteran from the modern day, should know better than to say something like this, but I can chalk that up to dramatic flourish. However, the show still does not really dig into so many other topics in this field that are ripe for drama, such as her relationship with co-workers, her relationship with patients, educating people and bringing about change, tackling ethical dilemmas, how she handles the stress, exhaustion and responsibility, and more. The show does not even do a good job of characterizing Elise outside of her medical skills. On top of being a medical genius who can do no wrong, she has no character traits other than how kind and hard-working she is and... how much she likes sweets. She has no character flaws or weaknesses to speak of, and she is constantly validated and praised by everyone around her. The main love interest does not have a personality either, which makes the romance side of things a non-starter. During most of their stock-standard interactions, Elise is barely even aware of him. Other characters get little to no characterization and have almost no impact on Elise’s journey; they either stand around in awe of her talents or feebly try to hold her back before they are steamrolled or are won over. The show also tackles palace politics, centered around Elise’s status as a noblewoman and the prince’s fiancée, but these developments turn out nonsensical and only a mild inconvenience in the face of Elise’s overwhelming genius and kindness. The double-reincarnation setup in the beginning is interesting, but Elise draws so little from her modern-day life that it seems like the only reason for this setup is to impart medical skills on the main character in what otherwise would have been a simple “re-do” story. Also, Elise’s “villainous” past is the source of her desire to help sick people as a form of penance, but this is somewhat unconvincing when her exact crimes are left very vague and have almost no repercussions on the present anyway. The closest comparison to Elise that I can think of is Sei from The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent (also voiced by Yui Ishikawa). Sei received criticism for being an overpowered, bland character, but she at least had a desire to learn, the pressure to grow into her role, and a shy demeanor. Elise is a vaguely likable lead, but her complete lack of personality or quirks fails to make the character very engaging or sympathetic. Yui Ishikawa and the other voice actors simply do not have much to work with here. The music, visuals, animation and direction are barely passable and do little to elevate the lifeless storyline and wooden characters. There are so many things to talk about in this review, yet there is so little to be said about each of those things. Elise is a doctor, but she is so good at fixing everything so quickly that she might as well have been a magical healer. Elise is a “villainess” reincarnated from the modern day, but that ends up such a minor detail that she might as well have been simply an extremely gifted doctor from 19th century Europe. Elise is too bland a character, surrounded by non-characters and non-threats, to develop any sort of romance, drama or intrigue effectively. This show has been a major disappointment, and the more I think about it, the harder it is to come up with any redeeming qualities. The most positive thing I can say about the show is that it is good-natured and inoffensive. It also deserves some recognition for tackling the topic of medicine in the first place, which I would like to see more of. If you are starving for anything medical/healing-related, you may get some enjoyment out of this. If you’ve completely run out of wholesome, female-led romance/dramas to watch, this may pass the time. Otherwise, this one is an easy skip.

Gekai Elise is one of the more original isekai, or should I say, “reverse isekai”, in recent years. What makes this one cool is that Elise is given another shot at life in her original world AFTER being isekai’d to Earth. This allows her the unique experience of combining both her original life’s knowledge and the medicinal skills she gained on Earth making for a really fun watch. Now, there’s going to be some party poopers who say the show isn’t accurate or realistic in its portrayal of some medical stuff and to that I’ll agree, but it’s ultimately anime not grey’s anatomy. I’m not watchingthis for 100 percent accuracy. The fact we’re getting a show that handles medicine and doctors in a somewhat realistic manner in a fantasy world is so cool. I’m so used to healing magic or fantastical herbs being used in the treatment of patients, but to get a story that relies on legitimate surgery and medical analysis to treat people is a treat. While not a doctor myself, my sister and several other family members are and we had a blast watching this together. Elise faces a lot of challenges in her original world due to her awful personality before her reincarnation as well as the sexist nature of the medical field. Like in the real world in the 18-19th centuries, medicine is a male dominated field and she struggles to gain acceptance of her peers, even having to disguise her noble background for a time. She also has to convince the king that she’s better suited to be a doctor than his son’s fiancé. This plot point I thought was a little dumb because these surely aren’t mutually exclusive.. but I enjoyed seeing her prove both he and the kingdom as a whole wrong, earning the respect of royalty and established doctors alike. It’s a small cast, mainly focusing on Elise, her fiancé, his brother and her mentor, but I did enjoy them for the most part. I actually think the little brother, Mikhail got fleshed out a lot better than the fiancé. If I had to pick a criticism, it’s that Linden needed more screen time. I understand it’s a long running Manwha, so for these 12 episodes he probably just wasn’t a big character in the source. But it does feel a little odd because you can tell the story wants him to be important, and you just can’t quite care that deeply about him yet. Speaking of Manwha, Gekai Elise is part of a great trend of Manwha adaptations. It seems surreal to be getting this many lately and I love the diversity that they bring to the medium. Different types of writing and settings are really what we need. There’s so much cool stuff coming out of Korea lately. The art in the show looks really good. You can tell the author was heavily influenced by traditional shoujo art. The animation isn’t the best, but it rarely is in these villainess shows so that’s no shock. Overall, the production is solid from top to bottom. Gekai Elise is just really fun to watch. Yea, the story isn’t too developed right now, but just seeing Elise save lives and break through social barriers, with a tinge of romance was more than enough for me. I can’t get enough of strong independent female characters who are determined to make their dreams a reality and this is one of the best of the bunch. Gekai Elise gets a very strong 8, out of 10.

Everything is fine, but the writing is crazy bad There is a scene where a fire started inside a theater and our main character, Elise (of a very high ranking family, second only to the imperial family), tells some nobles not to breathe the obviously toxic smoke. Well... the show, out of thin air, pulls a nobles vs commoner girl cliché, and they start ranting about how they are nobles and superior and she is no one to tell them what to do, all this while breathing the smoke and coughing. It was so absurd that had me laughing, however, the other times this happens are not sofunny. The show is filled with these moments where clichés happen without any regard to the story. Most of the times they are small things, like a character saying some line that doesn't make any sense, however, sometimes they are major event that heavily steer the plot and that's very frustrating. I suggest you watch this anime only if you have high tolerance for bad writing.