Review of Redo of Healer

This review has mentions to Code Geass and Shield Hero. Those mentions contains minor spoilers about those shows. Am I the only one who realizes how manipulative this industry has become? Before casting Flare Lv99 on this show, let's say something good about it. Because, yes, there are goods things about it. First, should you watch it? Yes, do. You need variety to be healthy. Do, please. No sarcasm intended. I don't know if you will be a better person after watching it, but you won't be a worse person. Fast food and junk food exists. Everyone do it. I do it. Watching this show say nothing aboutyou, it's just another entry in your list, and not the worse entry.

I gave it a 3 in story, but not for the story in itself. Maybe it could be a 6. The problem is the trope its capitalizes on and how manipulated made me feel. The setting had potential. The characters had potential. The world had potential. The species had potential.

There are two tropes that smells to low quality writing. One is the Mystery Box, and the other is the victimization to justify aberrant behavior.

I cannot stand these two. And I usually drop those shows. The second trope can be well done enough to not completely ruin a show. Example, and you may not have realized it, but Code Geass uses a variant of it. Why it works for Code Geass? Because of timing and other factors.

In Code Geass we have enough time to get to love the characters before the aberrant behavior is shown. While the extremely fast pace of Code Geass was pointed by many as something negative, even being so fast paced we still get to sympathize with most characters motivations. Being, in my opinion, Nina the one with the weakest construction. Her obsession for Euphemia is super exaggerated.

Also many can say that Lelouch uses victimization to justify world destruction, and that is not aberrant behavior. Well... while world destruction doesn't have to imply direct aberrant behavior, I'm not referring to the world destruction part. Lelouch actually does aberrant things. He "forces" people to go again their own wills and morals. Why is that different to rapping? Actually, it is not, but it is subtle, because you don't see physical/sexual violence, you don't see obvious aberrant behavior. It's easier for us to see his power and his use of that power as a tool absolutely necessary and well justified by the story.

Also, Lelouch may enjoy when he outsmart a foe, or got control of a resource. But he definitely isn't sadistic. If there is no foe, he doesn't hurt.

In the other side we have this show.

The show tries very hard to justify main character sadistic tendencies. But I don't see it being successful there. It never felt natural or intuitive.

Our Healer has a very broken skill. So far nothing new for us. His healing not only heals more than any other healing magic in that world (no spoilers so far, this is explained in episode 1 or 2), but also transfers the experiences of the person being healed to the healer.

This power is used for many things. Like the Swiss Knife of the plot devices. Don't misunderstand me, I actually like it. And I learned one new trick.

Because he faints each time he uses this power, he got to see a face of the world that he may very well not had seen otherwise. The world may have treated him differently. Well... maybe some big muscular hero would treated him the same. But at least it could be a different story up to that point.

I'm not saying that it is his fault. Everyone on that world need a basic curse to human rights. And we can put some demi-human and demon rights too.

The heal power makes him to the top of society first, it's the reason why the other heroes need him so much, to the point that they cannot just let him go when the task proves to be too much for him. It's the excuse to make him fall to hell, to show us how rotten everyone with a bit of power is in that world, to show us how ugly can things gets for some poor souls.

So far, so good. The problem?

That everything is too artificial. I will enumerate. I will warn you when there are potential spoilers. Also, I won't consider spoilers things revealed in the first episodes. If you don't agree with that, you can stop now.

- How can be all these psychopaths and perverts so close in the same country, in the same city?

- Because of how things are presented, I feel that the purpose is not main character revenge and how he executes it, but to show us that very visually aberrant behavior.

My problem is not with aberrant behavior in itself. I have seen worse. Genocyber... anybody? My problem is with how relevant it appears to be for the show. It's like they say to me "here, take this, we provided a proper excuse, now enjoy the gory hentai, without genitals so we can air this show". Because this show is the most explicit it can be without being tagged hentai.

Again. If it interested you enough to read the reviews, go watch it. At the time of writing this, it scores between 6 and 6.5. That's a fair score. Maybe it is too close to 6.5 in my opinion. You would want to decide by yourself if that scoring is fair.

What good things will you get? Let's speak good again, for me it was a rest of some overused formulas, my principal motivation to stay to very end. I will list them:

- Going as far as you can go with sex scenes (the non gory ones) without being tagged hentai was something I don't remember having seen so far. Have you watched Game of Thrones or Vikings? Well, this show won't harm you. Also, a man traveling with so many women, and absolutely nothing happening between them, do you honestly think that is believably? These shows avoid the obvious and intuitive in this case, only to avoid possible censure and to not end being transmitted at night when most potential viewers would miss it. That's why these shows are very infantile with these topics. Having at least one not doing the same is refreshing. But again, its defect is that when it gets gory it feels too artificial. Do they really think we want to see that?

- Another refreshing aspect, and also related to sex (consensual sex, just in case), is that the main character isn't the typical guy that doesn't get it no matter how the girls try to communicate it to him. No, this guy not only gets it, it seduces them if required. And you can have your opinions on this, but that's how we see that people behave in real world. The absurd infantile behavior shown by characters in other shows of this kind, is not intuitive and really I got a bit tired of it. I always sigh when they do that. I'm not asking for erotic scenes, you can remove that, just show the clock in the wall or something, but please, characters must act as humans. This shows at least tried, the result is exaggerated, far from perfect, but refreshing.

[Somewhat serious spoilers ahead]

- The magic system is better at the start of the show than latter. But you will get some entertainment from it. Our healer has a single skill at the start of the show. A single skill with a lot of potential uses, but not so useful by itself. It requires mastery. This is more intuitive than say the evolving shield of the Shield Hero. The later has so many forms and random powers that you really can't follow what is happening. In this show, at least while they maintain it simple, you can tell why a strategy worked. It's a lot of fun when you can anticipate things, because they have logic, even if you fail to anticipate, as long as you can say "with a bit more thought I would have been able to anticipate it". But then he gains the reverse healing, the transformation healing, all the techniques coming with all the experience transferred from the healed people, and soon it turns to be a very chaotic skill tree and we have our Shield Hero 2.0. My problem with this, is that combat get less interesting. Another evidence in favor of this show being all about the sex scenes, and give you one million excuses so you can watch it without feeling like a jerk.