HEALER GIRL

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA MusicHealer Girl: espressivo

REVIEWS

• 

  DekorationXanNex

  95/100
  Healer Girl's strengths and passion pour through in the characters, the music, and the story’s penchant for optimism.

  __focoso (fiery, passionate)__

  Those who might be familiar with the studio behind Healer Girl, 3Hz, or the director, Yasuhiro Irie, might be keen in the precedent that Healer Girl presents. This precedent is another original show but, a show that has probably never been seen before. A musical.

  And I mean “musical” and not “music show” quite literally. As in, the key emotional moments and pivotal character growth happens through song and dance. As in, expect the show to have characters sing during dialogue. Shows like Revue Starlight would be far closer to Healer Girl than idol shows, since Healer Girl is not an idol show. But, the director went on to say he didn’t want an idol show or even a show like Starlight where battle and music was combined. To the utmost ability of his team, he wanted Healer Girl to be one of a kind.

  The result is an incredibly unique show oozing passion.

  This passion permeates prominently in every episode through the expressive characters, the careful selection of music, and the vibrancy of the writing.

  __scherzando (playfully)__

  Healer Girl’s narrative can be sectioned into two components: the world (setting), and the characters. The “plot” isn’t necessarily a big part of Healer Girl, and instead it focuses on developing a trio of apprentice healers through slices of their lives. The world of Healer Girl isn’t too far off from reality, with the only exception being the ability for certain people, “healers” able to physically affect others through their voice. This blends perfectly well with the main trio, Kana, Hibiki, and Reimi, who are apprentice healers.

  These three serve as the core of the storytelling that Healer Girl employs, which, forgoing a larger overarching arc, is about their development and progression as they become better healers and people.

  This can be in the form of literally just training and studying technical terms and practicing harmonics for their healer exams, going out to the country to learn about each other and their goals, and aiding in surgery.
  But no matter what situation they find themselves in, the characters are at the core.

  Kana is an air-headed leader with splashes of genius honed through her hard work. Though, at the end of the day she’s extremely energetic, and provides an atmosphere of lightness and gentleness whenever she’s on screen.

  While Kana might be the leader, it wouldn’t be far off to see that Reimi, who comes from a music family and is very skilled, might be seen as such. Her aura of pride is aggressive, and it shows whenever she’s on screen, even when she isn’t being prideful and just being frenetic. Reimi, just by being herself always seems to take the screen by storm with her presence.

  To balance her energy is Hibiki. She’s the reliable mediator, but also has her own subtle brand of brilliance, being quite humble at the things she’s good at. That often creates for humorous situations as we gradually learn about Hibiki’s varied interests and ability to just pick up on things. While being on the more energetic and light-hearted side like Kana, she doesn’t encroach to feel too similar to her at all.

  All three of the main cast is so colorful in who they are and it’s shown thoroughly. The team’s care in carefully crafting characters made watching and getting into the world of Healer Girl so gentle and welcoming, but also instill a level of energy that made it fun and engaging.

  __da capo (from the beginning) __

  The watch time for Healer Girl for me is quite unique. For each episode of Healer Girl, my average watch time has undoubtedly reached beyond the 24-minute mark. Was I re-watching and analyzing all of the intricate directing, details and dynamic scenes? Well yeah there is a lot of that, especially in the ornate imagery that the show can provide, especially when they sing, as songs often create explosive imagery and metaphor in the show. But I was also rewinding just so I could listen and watch as the songs unfurl.

  The musical selection of Healer Girl ranges from slow, beautiful arrangements that touch upon a layer of sentimentality within the characters, orchestral epics that entice with bewilderment and splendor, and more carefree and silly arrangements akin to taking a vibrant stroll on a sunny Sunday morning.

  The range of emotions and the variance of each song make their inclusion always a pleasure. Even when certain songs are reused in terms of melody, the new arrangements are often different enough that it doesn’t feel unsatisfying. And even more so, when a song is reused, it’s often done with enough purpose that bolsters the narrative and of course the audience’s own excitement of hearing it again. This excitement was a huge part in how much fun I had. After all, each episode gave us a different song, and it was always a treat listening to either something new or seeing a spin on something we’ve already heard.

  This is not even mentioning that these songs often blend into the episodes naturally. The main cast are healers, whose main job it is to sing. This lets the show wave away some of the more silly musical segments that might appear. After all, in a world that doesn’t treat such moments as silly, then why should we.

  If the characters want to sing and give us a musical number while they do something as simple as studying for an exam, hey that makes sense. If the characters want to sing to make each other feel better and to better express their feelings to another, that makes sense. If the characters want to sing to literally heal and mend physical ailment, well, that’s the point of the show.

  Everything, from the characters, to the music, feels so purposeful to what the team envisioned.

  __allegrezza (cheerfulness)__

  I’ve mentioned this before, but the main draw of Healer Girl isn’t exactly in the immediate “plot.” While many exciting events do happen, and there is a good deal of drama for the characters to overcome, the show is also hesitant to dive too deeply into darkness. The emotions are definitely there, and the characters do go through struggle, but it’s not plated in an oppressive way, nor do they dwell too long on certain moments.

  Healer Girl, by every chord of its being, is a positive show. It’s extremely uplifting in how they resolve conflict. For some that might make the episodes feel a little lacking, and it may make the show feel, well, akin to a slice of life. Events may not seem to string together in a larger way. They might meander and literally just spend some episodes messing around and building their friendship more than anything. And yet, at the same time, the show also has a good handful of episodes that really dive deep into the characters, focused on their unique troubles and again, resolving them in a very “Healer Girl” way, with absolute positivity.

  Admittedly, if the show wanted to dial back and really let some of their more poignant moments last, it would have made certain moments stand out even more. But to what they did show, and to the way the show was so stalwart in what it wanted to show, I can’t help but respect the decisions it had.

  It wasn’t that I came back to Healer Girl each week because of its outwardly fascinating narrative or “plot,” but that I was having so much fun following the exploits of the main cast, and seeing how they grow with each other in such a gentle and healing way.

  __al fine (to the end)__

  Healer Girl is a hard show to recommend, only if you don’t like music shows or musicals. But if you have even the slightest inclination for a music show, then I can’t help but wholeheartedly recommend giving Healer Girl a shot. It may not have the high stakes drama, or engrossing writing as other shows within the genre can have, but Healer Girl doesn’t have to be that. It never threw its gauntlets into that ring at all. Instead, it’s uniquely its own show, with an undeniably passionate team shown through the characters, the music, and the story’s penchant for optimism.

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• 

  planetJane

  97/100
  The light of drifting stars fills the sky...

  

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  All of my reviews contain __spoilers __for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.

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  The first thing to know is that Healer Girl was inspired by Symphogear. Comparisons between anime rarely do either work any favors, but for Healer Girl, knowing the name of its stylistic ancestors puts some things into perspective. The Symphogear comparison is merely the most recent in a list that also included Macross and, less centrally, G Gundam. Ostensibly, these are strange bedfellows for what is at its heart an iyashikei series / sometimes-musical. In practice, it makes perfect sense. Like in Symphogear, the music in Healer Girl is not a background element; it’s diegetic, and the very source of the protagonists’ abilities itself. I’ve taken to calling this sort of thing the “dynamic music” genre, perhaps you have some other pet neologism. In either case, understanding that the music is not just a plot element but what the entire work is built around is key to understanding Healer Girl at all. It’s not a complex series, but there is stuff going on here beyond pretty songs. Take our protagonists. Three young girls; Kana (Carin Isobe), Hibiki (Akane Kumada), and Reimi (Marina Horiuchi). For the majority of the series, they serve as interns at a clinic run by their teacher, Hibiki’s cousin Ria (Ayahi Takagaki). A clinic, because as Healer Girl quickly establishes, in its world, the power of music is literal. Carefully-applied musical treatments can literally heal injuries, soothe sickness away entirely, and aid in surgery. This sort of there-is-power-in-the-song thing is something idol anime have been flirting with for years but never really commit to. (A personal frustration of mine.) Part of me enjoys Healer Girl just because it has the stones to actually dive into this idea. At twelve episodes, it doesn’t have the time to answer every question I had (I really want to know what healing music looks like around the world, but the show sadly doesn’t really go into it), but maybe it doesn’t need to. From that central premise, Healer Girl builds a few strong, simple metaphors. Healing music as art is the easiest to understand, and effectively renders the series as a defense of itself. Taken through this lens, the anime is a series of iterative exercises; how much can art really help with? In the first episode, Kana sings a song to a boy who’s scraped his knee to take the pain away. Just three episodes later, the girls assist in a surgery where someone nearly dies on an operating table, and they face the truly harrowing experience of possibly failing to help someone. Much like conventional medicine, healing music definitely has its limits, but also like medicine, it certainly helps. Is this Healer Girl‘s argument, that art can heal the world, if not by itself, at least in a supporting role? It’s a strong reading, and I do think that’s at least partly what the series is going for. Consider also the show’s actual music. A lot of people—including myself—initially assumed Healer Girl was going to be an idol series, and it is true that there is an associated idol unit, the Healer Girls themselves. But, if we consider it a part of this idol anime lineage, it’s a highly unconventional one, at least for 2022. In style, the Healer Girls are a lot closer to forgotten ’90s American soft-pop sensation Wilson-Phillips than anything presented in, say, its seasonal contemporary Nijigasaki High School Idol Club. More to the point is the presentation; the titular healer girls don’t really dance, and their songs are not performances. They’re tools. And learning how to use those tools forms the show’s other main theme; the passing of knowledge and love from one generation to the next. Much is made of the girls’ relationship with their mentor Ria, a well-developed character in her own right. Reimi has a cute, one-sided crush on her, and much is made of her incredible skills. (Which we finally get to see in action in episode 9.) Over the course of the series, Ria guides the girls through simply being her pupils toward being healers in their own right. In the show’s finale, it implies via paralleling that Kana may herself one day take students of her own. It’s rare to see teaching and imparting wisdom treated as something beautiful and graceful, but that just makes appreciating it when a show can properly pull it off all the more important. And look, all this writing about what the show means, and I’ve barely told you anything about why you might want to watch it! The simple truth is that, like most of Studio 3Hz‘s productions, the show is just damn good-looking. It’s beautiful, colorful, wonderfully vibrant, almost a living thing itself, in a way that is truly rare and all too easy to take for granted. That vibrancy makes Healer Girl something to be treasured. Naturally, it translates to the soundtrack as well; Healer Girl is at most half a musical, but enough of the show is sung—including incidental dialogue, in some episodes—that if you enjoy that medium, you’ll like Healer Girl as well. And on top of that, it’s simply fun to watch. Rarely are anime fans starving for some classic slice-of-life antics, but Healer Girl‘s are a particularly well done set thereof. The show is very funny when it sets its mind to it, and not working in that mode 100% of the time only renders it more amusing when it does. There’s even a pastiche of an old, old slice of life trope, the obligate “high school rock band” episode—episode 7, here—that’s been sorely lacking from most modern anime for a whole generation at this point. I have to admit, seeing one in this day and age made me nostalgic, so I suppose that’s another emotion that Healer Girl can effortlessly tap into. Because of this kaleidoscopic emotional approach, Healer Girl‘s characters feel truly alive as well, even comparatively minor ones like the girls from the rival healing clinic (of course there’s a rival healing clinic), Sonia (Chihaya Yoshitake) and Shinobu (Miyu Takagi). And, of course, we should discuss Healer Girl‘s visual ace in the hole. The girls don’t merely sing; the world changes around them as they do, a literalized, visualized version of the consensus fantasy-reality created by the most powerful music here in the real world. But in Healer Girl‘s universe, it can change the world in a truly direct and immediate way, and these bubbles of magic are called image songs. Episode 9 is the best showcase of them, where we see Ria greatly aid a surgery with hers; she influences literal events by manipulating abstract visual material within the image song. In doing so, she herself is a metaphor for the real impact of art in our own world. It’s a curious, but justified little thematic mobius strip, something that impressively never feels pretentious or self-impressed. Healer Girl knows what it’s doing, maybe that’s why there isn’t a weak episode in the whole thing. The only real tragedy about Healer Girl is that its strongest moments are those where it instills pure awe in the audience. And that, unfortunately, is not something I’m truly able to replicate in text format. You will just have to take my word for it, that my jaw dropped more than once throughout the show, that I teared up a few times, and that several episodes—particularly episode 5 and the latter half of the finale—left me frustrated, although in a strangely positive way, over my inability to fully convey their emotional impact in mere words. You will just have to see it for yourself, and if you haven’t, I again strongly recommend that you do. If there’s justice in the world, Healer Girl will be a watershed moment. But even if it inspires nothing, even if this artistic lineage ends here, I find it impossible to imagine that it will ever lose its potency as a work unto itself or, indeed, as a healing tool. There is often a desire—spoken or not—in seasonal anime watching culture for something to get “another season.” Healer Girl, however, was clearly crafted with just these twelve episodes in mind. That renders the show small, certainly, but it does not rob it of its power. In a way Healer Girl is like the over-the-counter medical records mentioned in the first episode. It will soothe your sickness if you let it; simply rewind the tape and play it all back again. One more time; if you feel it, it’ll heal you.

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• 

  Treepy

  90/100
  A light-hearted healing experience.

  Kindhearted, powerful songs heal the world. These are beautiful miracles sung by humanity.

  Shows with "Heal" in their titles don't really have a very good track record, so I was reluctant to give this a shot at first, but seeing its main focus on Music and being made by Studio 3Hz, I decided to give it a try. And from the very first episode, it definitely felt that this show had the potential to become something special.

  The concept of Healer Girl is fairly straight forward - it's a show about girls that heal, through the power of music. My first thought was that this show would be done in some sort of fantasy setting, so it was a nice surprise seeing that these elements were actually incorporated into a modern, normal life setting. Though simple, finding an original and unique concept used in a music anime was a nice change of tune.

  At its core, this is a slice-of-life about cute girls striving to chase their dreams, with each of them having their own motivations for choosing the path of becoming a healer. The three main characters have good chemistry with their own unique personalities and quirks complimenting each other. The rival and supporting cast have also been fairly fleshed-out, albeit less than the main trio.

  For the main focus of the show – the music. Combined with the voice acting, they have all been done phenomenally. The seiyuus present a very convincing performance on both spoken dialogues, and song segments especially (also worth noting that the main 4 are the ones that sung both the OP and ED), they are all definitely very talented both as singers and voice actresses. From the incorporation of singing in fun casual conversations à la musical theatre, to the more serious choir-like healing sequences, it definitely feels that you – as the viewer, are also being soothed by their melodies as they sing. Without a doubt, it is the strongest aspect of this anime.

  The art and animation are fairly well-done, especially during movement or dancing sequences which flow naturally. Backgrounds are nothing too special, but it gets the job done and even has the opportunity to shine in certain scenes such as the healing sequences. As for the main character designs, I quite like their color schemes, it fits the characters’ personalities well.

  If there was something I felt that the show was lacking though, it would be the lore and worldbuilding. I think it would've been nice to see a full explanation of the concepts of healing through music, such as explaining how certain songs get healing properties, or rules and limitations needed to make them work. This would've made for a more immersive experience, but has only been teased in little snippets of dialogue. Aside from that, my biggest peeve with this show was the episode where they switch the opening and ending song without changing the animation, then showing them play instruments through big ass animal costumes. But despite its flaws, I think the story still wrapped up and concluded nicely.

  Overall, the comedic, serious, and musical moments of Healer Girl all work together to offer an enjoyable experience, and watching it feels much like drinking a nice blend of coffee that fills the cup of a slow Monday morning. If you’re looking for a light-hearted, comfy, feel-good show, and are a fan of cute girls doing cute things, definitely do give this one a shot.

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