Redo of Healer, or Kaifuku Jutsushi no Yarinaoshi, or Kaiyari, has been an incredibly controversial, yet very popular series.
These light novels have always been in the top 10 best-selling LNs when they are released, and of course, coming from the anime, it's easy to understand that both controversy and sex sells, but from a story perspective, or a writing one, do these hold up?
Surprisingly, they are actually kind of good.
Of course "good" will always apply to people's different standards, there are some hilariously egregious examples of tropes, such as "Protagonist meets character he likes, they die quickly." or some really obnoxious repeating of abilities and skills (which goes away after volume 2, volume 1 being the worst case of that.)
Asides the inherent shock value, the light novel does a great job of explaining Keyaruga and how far-gone he is, there are some surprisingly deeper moments of character-depth, where Keyaruga is faced with the person he's become, being unsure of what kind of person he is, he's fucking crazy, as anyone would be with their entire childhood stolen from them, and they do a great job of writing the depth of Keyaruga and commenting on the cycle of abuse.
The world building and story is where this novel really started to surprise me, I found myself becoming interested, and genuinely getting into the story, when I thought I knew exactly how the novel was going to play out, there were some twists and really interesting plotlines that all inter-connect, this series does a good job of making past events meaningful, and you'll find things from previous novels showing up again and again.
Rui Tsukiyo likes to have this kind of connected universe in his novels, so you'll find references to his other works.
The demon-lord arc sounds like something that could be generic fantasy, but Redo of Healer completely subverts those expectations by adding a bunch of twists and questioning during these arcs, the battle scenes have excellently written choreography, with great explanations of powers, by the way, if you ever thought Keyarugas healing powers make no sense, this light novel series does a great job of explaining everything, and while he's fucking powerful, he's not this invincible person that can do really anything like in the anime, from volume 4 onwards, he will have to fight enemies he can't just use corruption heal on.
While there is a lot of sex and a few sex scenes in a light novel, sex is only like 10% of the series, so you'll get some lewd moments, but also a lot of story and lore, and some cooking too.
The art is really good, usually illustrations of lewd scenes, battle scenes, or big character moments.
Of course, this novel is incredibly controversial, I've not mentioned it, but there's rape, sexual assault, drugging, abuse, torture, it's a dark fantasy similar to Berserk.
The novel, like the anime and manga, does a really good job of making you hate the villains, so while you can't justify Keyaruga's action, you can definitely sympathize with wanting abusers to feel the same victimization they put on their own victims.
Although one of my biggest criticisms, though I guess it's just a character choice, Keyaruga isn't a "good guy", is that Keyaruga eventually starts using sexual revenge on enemies that haven't sexually abused him, usually via aphrodisiacs.
This happened with a Leopard woman in volume 3, and happens with a star rabbit woman in volume 5, one thing I really enjoyed about the revenge in the anime, is that all of his enemies kind of deserved what happened to them, the revenge was EQUAL, although there are some examples where it's just not the case here. But I guess I can justify this choice as the writer portraying that Keyaruga genuinely believes his actions are good, regardless of which enemy he takes them on.
Overall, I unironically kind of love Redo of Healer for the story, I've been told many times this series sucks, only evil incels like it or whatever, but actually checking it out, are there flaws? yeah, but it's really entertaining and enjoyable, and surprisingly has substance, and a pretty great story so far.
It's pretty clear the author is writing Keyaruga as a broken person, and nobody is a bad person for liking a series with problematic elements, it's reprehensible in real life, and Keyarugas actions should never be justified as good, but in fiction, it's a really enjoyable read with a surprisingly engaging story and some really great characters.
I'm halfway through volume 5, so I may make a new review when I've reached volume 10.
I hope this review gave you a new perspective on the series.
