Review of Redo of Healer

Redo of Healer is basically a hentai in TV format and it’s not trying to hide it. You are watching it purely for the rape scenes as well as for the most extreme depiction of justiceporn. -Take out all attempts to offer the moral high ground to the protagonist -Remove legit reasons for the women to enter his harem -Reduce all the bad guys to nothing more than sadistic rapists -Never use cockblock whenever two characters are about to have sex so they can remain virgins forever In this sense, the anime is the most honest depiction of such a type of power fantasy. Other shows like Akame ga Kill,The Shield Hero, or Goblin Slayer, kinda went that way, but were always holding back from being unapologetic and were constantly trying to make you think the protagonist is heroic and every dubious action he takes is morally justified. Well, not here. The protagonist wants to f*k all the people who messed with him and he does exactly that without caring to justify anything or to come off as heroic.

It’s obviously trying to be as extreme as it can without apologizing to anyone, and it succeeds. At the same time it doesn’t have something people can look back to as a good example of what to do or what not to do in power fantasies. Heck, it didn’t even manage to create a big enough controversy like the aforementioned titles did during their airing, because it had nothing for one side to defend and another to accuse. It is a blatant and straightforward rape fantasy, with nothing else to flavor it. You don’t see anyone defending all those rape hentai games out there for the same reason. No matter how good they are, there is nothing you can say that can make them sound more than what they are.

Although there is a market for that sort of fiction, it is a niche within a niche and Redo of Healer will never manage to have a broad appeal. Aside from how it will be banned and blocked on most sites because of its subject matter, it also doesn’t do something for attracting people of other tastes. Goblin Slayer attracted a lot of D&D players, and The Shield Hero attracted a lot of videogame players. This anime keeps everyone at bay, unless they are already into revenge rape, which is not exactly the most popular kink people have.

And when all is said and done, Redo of Healer just doesn’t give you something to talk about. Its plot and characters are as generic as they get and there is no theme exploration for analyzing it on an intellectual level. The other two series had interesting themes. They were trying to do something with their premises (and failed), which made a lot of people to defend them, because they either liked the theory behind them, or because they found it to be plain cool in a superficial way. This anime has no theme or premise one can ponder about, and although it doesn’t come off as pretentious like the previous two, it also lacks an identity. You can’t set it apart from any other bland rape fantasy, aside from perhaps calling it the first anime tv series that takes that route. And even then it didn’t pioneer anything in the same way Sword Art Online did for isekai and videogame-based settings, because it doesn’t have a mass appeal. It’s a bland power fantasy that leaves you with nothing once you experience it. The same way I feel every time I finish a slice of life episode about some bland moeblob lolis in some generic school setting.