Healer Girl

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 a ... ton 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 sentient ... monsters 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?

It’s a solid slice of life anime. Easy to enjoy given the easygoing tone, wholesome themes, and some character that carves out a niche for itself within the genre.

Note that if you hate musicals (for some reason) you may have a tough time getting into this one. This is a musical through and through, with at least one musical number in every episode. How well they connect to the story varies, but I think they do a good job with it for the most part.

The songs are performed well and the visuals have a little more flair than you’d expect given how the rest of ... the show looks. That isn’t to say that this show looks bad, but it’s in a bit of a different style that may look cheap compared to higher budget anime.

If you like slice of life shows, I’d say give a couple episodes a shot. You can tell the people behind this anime actually cared about it so it has some charm to it. No biggie if it’s not your thing.

Disney Pseudoscience.

Healer Girl is a fun, slice-of-life, moé shows about three high schoolers pursuing a medical career by becoming “Healers”, doctors(?) who can heal people using only the power of their singing voice.

Well-animated and very colourful, there's a lot to like about this anime. The core three apprentices Kana, Reimi and Hibiki have excellent character chemistry from beginning to end and their interactions are both charming and amusing. The fourth poster healer Sonia who is Kana's more experienced healer classmate is very underutilised which is probably for the best because, in all honesty, her presence can get a bit insufferable.

The singing is notable ... because it’s not just tied to their jobs as healers. The three of them can just burst into song over literally anything and the animation is so crisp and whimsical that you’d be mistaken in thinking this anime was made to be a Disney+ exclusive. It’s cute, charming and sometimes funny as it’s very clear the girls are ad-libbing lyrics. It’s a nice touch.

However, the show is very light on story and actual character development so after a couple of episodes the song-and-dance formula starts to get stale. When that happens you start to think about the actual lore and logistics of a clinic that has a doctor sit and sing (presumably unaccompanied) at a patient with a broken leg before giving out medical advice and the world-building starts to fall apart. The show doesn’t confirm whether or not these singing powers are actual magic or powers so when you watch a literal open-heart surgery scene with girls dressed in white singing at the surgeons you can help but feel the concept has turned a bit stupid. It feels like something Gwyneth Paltrow's company Goop would practice and sell.

Healer Girl is okay. It has a lot of good things going for it, but enough idiosyncrasies that may take a viewer who likes detail out of the experience. What I'm saying is, it’s a very slice-of-life anime.

6/10 It’s Okay *Thumbs Up*