What’s this?
Isekai’s “burnout adventurer comedy” centers on two adventurers: the hopeless swordsman Arvin and the sarcastic dark elf healer Karla, who seems to have more of a talent for annoying people than healing. (from the manga)
Don’t hurt me, my healer! is based on Tannen ni Hakko‘s Healer of Kono, Mendokusai (This Healer’s a Handful) manga and airs on Crunchyroll Sundays.
How was the first episode?
Rebecca Silverman
Classification:
There is nothing objectively offensive in Don’t hurt me, my healer!. It’s incredibly annoying. Or rather, Carla, the eponymous healer, is incredibly annoying. The premise, as I understood it before I went in, is that the dark elf Carla is a pretty terrible healer, who does the opposite of helping people despite her class. That may be true, though we don’t see much evidence of it in this episode aside from the part where she curses Alvin instead of healing him. What she is, instead, is intensely irritating, the animated equivalent of that mosquito you can hear buzzing around your head at night but can never find to swat. Somehow, this is made worse by the fact that she clearly means to be funny; her attempts to be cutesy instead are irritating and her every action is just selfish without caring about anyone else. When she says that she’s never been to a party before and Alvin comments that, given her personality, that’s not surprising, it’s the truest statement in the episode.
Carla basically weighs the whole thing, which is a shame because she’s not without other merits. Mostly Bear, the magibeast horned bear that Alvin initially fights, is at least moderately amused with the way he can’t seem to settle for a cute verbal affectation, alternating between “kuma”, “gao” and “bear” with each one. new pronunciation. The fact that we never get to see Alvin’s full face is also pretty cool, and seeing the show come up with new ways to make sure he’s mostly hidden is both a fun jab at censorship through strategically placed elements and fun overall. , especially since both Majority and Carla are under the impression that her face is some kind of bored horror show. I also appreciate that Carla’s healer outfit is perfectly normal and completely covering, which is unusual for a fantasy show; that it is also practical is especially nice.
It’s a shame Carla is so annoying, and since she’s the main character (or at least one of them, although who knows how long Alvin will last), that’s a real problem. This has the unfortunate combination of very little plot, a so far uninteresting RPG-inspired fantasy world, and a character that really annoyed me. His mileage may vary, but this wouldn’t be my first choice for something to watch this season, even if he’s suffering for any of his so-called genres.
Nicholas Dupree
Classification:
There is nothing as unbearable as a comedy without humor, right? There have been some stinkers this season, some of them quantifiably worse than Don’t hurt me, my healer!, but nothing has felt as drawn out and endless as watching this premiere hammer its weak, wafer-thin premise into the ground for a full 20 minutes. He has a joke, which is mildly funny on paper at best, and proceeds to fail to tell that joke in what feels like the most unbearable sketch comedy ever made. The fact that it’s actually a fully animated, scripted TV show makes it all the more difficult to sit down.
Ok, there was a joke that made me smile. The reveal that the generic rhino/bear monster wasn’t just a random monster, but became a character in its own right and basically the mediator between our two leads, was kind of fun. But the more that passed, the less fun it became, and by the third minute the gag had just folded with the unfunny. Manzai Alvin and Clara pranks. Thus, the only spark of comic hope in this premiere faded into the night, never to be seen again, and there was still 14 minutes of this sucker left to go. And all the pranks from then on followed the same formula: Carla says something rude or arrogant, Alvin gets mad. At one point, there’s a gag about Carla not being able to heal her face properly (which she doesn’t really have) that goes on for eons and repeats the punch line a dozen times before, thankfully, she ends.
This is just the antithesis of charming comedy to me. It is routine, boring and repetitive. Half the jokes are just Alvin yelling that Carla is being rude, as if yelling the point of a scene is inherently funny. And since the show is so basic on art and animation, there’s nothing to distract from how unfunny it is. It was a miserable time and unless you have a totally different sense of humor there is nothing here for you.