Review of Redo of Healer

Well, this is an awkward one to review, mostly for the misconceptions about it I had going in. Really wish I hadn't gotten into any MAL forum debates about it until the series finished airing... and it took me a while after that to get back to it, admittedly. Right off the bat, saying it here: the plot is a rape victim getting revenge by raping his rapists. This series is "ecchi" in the sense that there are sex scenes that would make this hentai except for the fact that no one's privates are shown, but believe me there is nothing comedic about this series.And both "regular" sex scenes and rape scenes are explicit (especially if you watch it uncensored), so know what you can handle going in.

So, right off the bat, here are the couple of things I was mostly arguing with other people about in terms of this anime, mostly having episodes 1-3 to work with at the time:

1) "This anime isn't misogynistic." And I still stand by that, to be honest. Horrible things happen to people of any gender or sexuality if they also happened to have abused this man, and I don't think it can get much more egalitarian than that. Gender-neutral revenge. The most "misogynistic" thing in this series, in my eyes, is that this happens to be an anime with a growing harem, but that's not exactly what made this series so infamous to so many people.

2) "That the rape scenes depicted weren't sexualized, in that this wouldn't work as power/rape-fantasy porn." And I ... GUESS this still applies? This is the point that grew the weakest as I moved forward because I had only watched the first 3 episodes at the time, in which the brutality of Keyaru's torture methods was at his peak.

And that's the thing... I watch quite a bit of different "fantasy" hentai myself, and I can certainly say that your standard "groper on a train" porn doesn't hold a candle to watching fingers get individually crushed, healed, and then crushed again and again. Like, I cannot see someone looking to this series for the purpose of jacking off. The majority of this plot, especially in the earlier episodes, felt like just watching someone being torn down, broken, walking down the path of revenge, and seeing how dark things would get for everybody. Seeing it all through the villain's perspective, like how Death Note had us follow Light Yagami, except we are dealing with crimes of rape specifically... and rectifying it with more rape.

Which is another aspect people will fight over that I honestly just can't see being so pressed about. The main character is a rapist, yes... but mostly a rapist of other rapists, HIS rapists. No, I don't feel sympathy for this main character's victims... because they are abusers and rapists. It comes down to your individual morality, I guess. But I can't say I looked down on his goal for revenge by the end. In fact, when the anime was over, I was slightly disappointed that his revenge on one of the dudes that raped him, one of the creepiest men you'd ever see, was later on in the series, not to be animated at this point. I was hoping this show would have it all tied up neatly at the end, but I guess it was simply written to be a longer series.

So I can say I was fully onboard with the plot of the revenge train. And to contrast that, the plot of the growing harem was... an odd one, and personally a choice I wouldn't have made, had I been in the writers' shoes. It really plays into a lot of people's perceptions of just being a male power fantasy and wanting to control women... to elaborate, a couple of people in the harem I get because they are brainwashed rapists that he is toying with as a personal form of revenge... the other few members of the harem, though, are women that he said JUST the right words to get them to agree to join him, putting his silver tongue to work. So outside of the "toy" members of the harem, it just seems greedy and extra to have that many women at his disposal. And if any episodes of this series play into the idea of the sexualization of rape, it wouldn't be in the rape scenes themselves, but in the "consensual" regular sex that the group has on the daily. So yeah, I didn't get a hint of that early on, but the bigger the group grew, the more I realized what kind of show this was.

If this were to be purely a dark fantasy explore the psyche of the trauma of a rape victim seeking revenge and how he would just kind of emotionally deteriorate because of that as I had thought was happening, this would be a 10/10 psychological thriller show, no question, and I would probably be unashamed to be its biggest fan. Unfortunately, though, that's not the beast that this series is. But that doesn't mean it can't be enjoyable. So, I accept the fact that this is a harem show. Sex for both pleasure and for torture - that's what this is at the end of the day. The beginning of the series explains what it can in terms of Keyaru's power and the timeline of what's happening, and that was an interesting hook at the start. But at the end of the day, this series wants to give you sex, blood, murder, trauma, all delivered in a way you haven't seen before. The fact that I made the mistake of thinking that there was a legit story buried here in Keyaru's character that I kept wanting to follow him for was in itself the show working its magic, showing a spectacle, a trainwreck, that you can't look away from. If you're the kind of person that can stomach it, it's a great time. Love it for the hot trash that it is.

*Also: Anime America Hot Trash Award, 2021
Hells yeah