Review of Parallel World Pharmacy
tl;dr: An isekai that handles its pharmacy related aspects pretty well but is weak in most other areas. A highly skilled pharmaceutical researcher overworked himself to the point of death. He wakes up in another world in the body of a ten year old noble boy named Falma. And not just any noble but the son of the head of the de Médicis, a family of medical practitioners. Using his knowledge, position, and some special abilities called Divine Arts, Falma does his best to deal with the various medical issues he comes across and to advance health in general. This is very much an isekai where theprotagonist is overpowered. Of course his scientific knowledge being significantly more advanced than anyone else is overpowered in and of itself. But he’s also overpowered in a much more traditional manner in that he has Divine Arts that seem to make him essentially invincible in combat. However, I felt that the narrative for the most part used these Divine Arts very effectively, in that they seem to take a back seat to his knowledge. Him having overpowered combat abilities means he doesn’t have to worry at all about putting himself in physical danger and thus the writing can just completely ignore anything related to that.
His other Divine Arts also compliment his knowledge without superseding it. A lot of modern professions including doctors and pharmacists require the support of a large number of supporting roles. For example, medical diagnosis of many diseases would be significantly more difficult without complex tools made by bioengineers used to perform tests. And the development of drugs often requires a lot of heavy machinery designed by chemical engineers. As such, if the average modern doctor or pharmacist was transported into the past, they would be incredibly limited in what they could accomplish.
Falma has the ability to magically see if others have a medical condition, and though he can’t magically figure out what the condition is, the magic does tell him if he determined the right one. Furthermore, he can magically generate any chemical he knows the composition of. This essentially replaces what he would have access to in a modern setting and allows the anime to focus on showing him dealing with diseases and such. This allows for pretty decent story telling, while also imparting a lot of actual information on drugs and medical best practices on the viewer.
Unfortunately, as the anime progresses the narrative starts deviating from that. The final arc heavily involves Falma dealing with issues directly through his Divine Arts. This feels kind of cheap and contrary to what the focus of the anime was earlier. There’s also a much larger emphasis on just regular old combat between characters using their Divine Arts. But Divine Arts in general aren’t really fleshed out at all so them actually being in the focus like that also feels really random and not that interesting. The final arc also seemed to throw in a cartoon villain for some reason even though it was completely unnecessary. As a result, even though I found the topic of the final arc, epidemics, really interesting, I found the arc overall incredibly underwhelming and my final impression of the anime was pretty weak.
I also found it kind of strange how the anime implemented the isekai aspect. The protagonist wakes up as ten year old Falma, but it doesn’t make clear at all how. Did the original Falma die and the protagonist essentially replaced him? Did he hijack Falma’s body and the original Falma is still somewhere in there? Is Falma his reincarnation, and he just regained the memories of his past life? Or is it something else entirely? It’s not like this aspect isn’t dealt with at all. Rather, in the beginning there are a bunch of details that it feels like are foreshadowing something or other. However, they go nowhere and no solution is provided. I feel that this resulted in Falma overall being fleshed out far less than he needed to be which resulted in him being a pretty flat character. The rest of the cast were pretty lackluster as well. There are a lot of somewhat interesting and somewhat likable characters. But no one is developed enough to get all that invested in.
The art and animation are okay but not particularly great. Design wise, it was actually pretty good early on. However, it got more and more dull as it went on. I think Eléonore is a great illustration of this, in that early on she seemed to get new outfits constantly and most all were pretty good. But as things progressed she got fewer and the ones she did weren’t as nice. I suppose the designs did become more realistic and practical, but that doesn’t change that they’re more boring. The OP and ED are decent enough in terms of the song and visuals. The soundtrack is decent enough but not particularly memorable.