If you’re the sort of person – like me – who takes a peek at the reviews or ratings for an anime before deciding whether to commit to watching it, then you might be immediately put off by the patently low opinion people on this site seem to have for Don’t Hurt Me, My Healer!. Even the most bland, asinine comedy series usually just about scrape a score of 60 percentage points – this show plunges through that barrier easily with room to spare.
You may be tempted to think that’s because the anime is just plain bad, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and there may be many who agree with that assessment of this anime. However, as someone who did actually enjoy the series for the most part, I feel the irresistible urge to embark upon the thankless mission of defending it from its critics. If that means drawing the vociferous disapproval of those who despise this show’s crude yet oftentimes brutally effective brand of humor, then so be it. But if even one person who reads this review ends up changing their mind about this anime, then that will be more than fine with me.
(Ratings for each aspect of the anime are given in brackets.)
Premise (2/5): Like any comedy anime worth its salt, Don’t Hurt Me, My Healer! has no long-winded and complicated narrative twists and turns to keep track of. The backdrop is simple, the plot is simple, and the climax and resolution are simpler still. A good-for-nothing adventurer in a faraway fantasy world is joined by a foul-mouthed dark elf girl in his quest to… well, it’s not even clear what his goal even is, aside from making a living. Along the way, he’s joined by a sentient mushroom, a bandit-turned-ghost, a cat-eared maid, and all manner of monsters and critters who help him fulfill his role as the quintessential laughing stock, all while he’s subject to an unrelenting barrage of vitriol and haranguing by his diminutive companion. And that’s all you really have to know about the story.
Could the background of the world around them have been expanded on a bit more? Of course. Did it really matter that there was no such elaboration? Not really. It’s a pretty standard, cookie-cutter fantasy setting in any case, and if you add that to the fact of the show’s purely absurd and comedic nature, it means that while absolutely nothing about the premise stands out to viewers, there’s nothing inherently horrible about it, either. It’s just as average as you can get, and then some.
Characters (3/5): The setup of the cast’s two main protagonists is that of the classic comedy double act. Alvin is the useless, unbearably weak (and apparently extremely ugly) excuse for a knight who serves as the straight man or tsukkomi to the incessant flurry of jabs and jibes from his comic or boke partner Karla, the narcissistic, rude, vulgar little dark-elf "healer" who has no idea what healing actually entails, and who takes the definition of “no filter” to another level, even in times of grave danger. This is, again, nothing new – such pairings are ubiquitous throughout many forms of media, even beyond the realm of anime. What does set Don’t Hurt Me, My Healer! apart, though, is the unprecedented and oftentimes embarrassing degree of vitriol that Karla launches against Alvin, inadvertently or otherwise, which forms the foundation of the show’s attempts to make viewers laugh. Whether people do actually laugh, however, is a different matter entirely.
Questions of humor aside, there’s a pretty good variety of characters to go around, from the talking mushroom Altargaia – who unexpectedly turns out to be the smartest of the bunch despite his penchant for mindlessly chasing butterflies – to the cat-eared-maid-uniform-clad ghost Ryoko, the former specter of a haunted mansion whose ability to bend space and time is used to ferry the others to wherever they need to go. The mobs encountered by the fledgling party also deserve a special mention – never before have I seen such a friendly, well-meaning group of creatures which, in another fantasy world, would well have been feral, mindless beasts to be slain by gangs of gallant adventurers in shining armor. Makes you wonder why they’re being hunted in the first place, though that’s another story for another time.
Ultimately, although there’s not much to speak of by way of character development, there’s a nice spread of personalities and quirks to go around. And for any decent slapstick show, that’s just about good enough.
Audiovisuals (3/5): In keeping with the very average nature of the show as a whole, there’s really nothing good or bad to say about the audiovisuals. The character designs fit each character’s (and monster’s) personas well – for instance, Alvin gets a simple steel armor set with a nice red cape, while Karla gets a suspicious outfit more reminiscent of that of a flight stewardess than that of a holy woman. The visual devices usually seen in comedy anime, like heads exploding, souls leaving bodies and so forth are all there, though they can be a little restrained for a series that leans so heavily on its ridiculousness. The animation can get a little choppy - particularly in the battle scenes - but its overall quality is some distance above the mean, which is more than can be said about a lot of anime nowadays.
Meanwhile, the soundtrack is passable, if not at all noteworthy; the opening and ending themes are cute, catchy pop numbers with fittingly conflicting and confusing visuals to accompany them. The voice acting is probably the stand-out point, as it really does sound like the voice actors and actresses are having fun with their roles, which carries well into their performances. Even so, hearing Karla’s latest deadpan delivery of degradation followed by Alvin’s angry rebuke for the nth time can get tiring at times, despite the quality with which they’re conveyed.
Execution (2/5): Some may call it squeezing all the juice out of a lemon; others may call it beating a dead horse. All slapstick comedy shows are expected – even encouraged – to rehash the same jokes over and over again, and Don’t Hurt Me, My Healer! does not disappoint in this regard. It's a loosely-structured show with barely any sense of progression, and while that allows for some narrative liberty, that freedom is never really exercised. With the exception of some occasionally heartwarming moments where Alvin and Karla acknowledge the fruits of their partnership, this series is 4 hours straight of unbridled, unending, one-sided abuse, with little or no reprieve in the way of anything remotely substantial or meaningful.
Why, then, would anyone bother spending time with this, let alone actually enjoy themselves while doing so? In a world where overpowered male main characters and light-speed power creeps reign supreme, why voluntarily tumble to the bottom of the food chain and follow some hapless wannabe whose only acquaintance is the nail in his bruised and battered ego’s coffin?
The answer, as with most things, is that it really depends on who you’re talking to. There is no more point in asking why one might prefer one flavor of ice cream over another than there is in asking why one might like this show but not others. A lot of people don’t like this sort of humor, and it’s admittedly not executed in the most interesting way – even I got bored at times and wondered if I ought to just drop it, like so many others before me had done. In the end, though, I persevered, and I’m reasonably happy that I did. Because overall – for me, anyway – it was a lot of fun.
It’s not special or outstanding by any stretch – in fact, it goes out of its way not to be. But Don’t Hurt Me, My Healer! is a pertinent reminder that the world is an unreliable critic, and that if something looks interesting to you, you should just go ahead and watch it without caring what other people think. Who knows, maybe that leap of faith will turn out to be worth it in the end.
Just don’t fall into any pit traps.
