I was originally not going to write a review of this “work”; it’s not necessarily a good watch, but I found entertainment in it and kept watching out of a morbid curiosity. I never plan to finish watching three series so far: Golden Time, Call of the Night, and The Index series (including Railgun and Accelerator) but willingly finished this one without needing a break. Welcome to my review.
(Source - HiDIVE Official Promotional Artwork)
When the series started, Keyaru, the main male protagonist, had been having nightmares about being the Hero of Recovery and fighting the Demon Lord. Anna, his caretaker for an unknown amount of time, had just checked his fever and most of the rest of the first episode was just setup for a complex revenge plot involving time travel and all of the Heroes being villains. By growing a Harem of powerful female companions, Keyaru lived out his darkest fantasies and desires with a single goal: wronging those that wronged him with each step being more elaborate and diabolical than the previous one.
I’m not going to convince you to watch this series. I personally don’t think most Anime fans should. That doesn’t change the fact that I completed it and will willingly watch Season 2 if it gets announced. This series from Episode 2 on did many things that typically would make me uncomfortable. Much to my surprise, I laughed about most of what was shown on screen. I won’t be going into specific detail in this review about the multitude of extremely problematic events that occurred in the story but instead drop this scene that became an overnight meme so you can decide for yourself if you want to watch this. That was just over halfway through Episode 2, and it just went south from that point on for the rest of the runtime. Where I will discuss these will be towards the very end when I talk about the aspects I disliked.
Next two images sourced from Official Episode 1 Preview
In the next few paragraphs, allow me to talk about what this series did right. For starters, I never skipped the credits for this one. Both the opening, "Zankoku na Yume to Nemure" by Minami Kuribayashi, and ending, "Yume de Sekai wo Kaeru nara" by ARCANA PROJECT, were wonderful bookends to each episode. Kenji Fujisawa and Johannes Nilsson's joint composition duties produced this, one of my favorite tracks on the soundtrack. Matt Uelmen, the main composer for the entire Diablo series of games, should take note of this one.
What I loved about the opening was how 80s Anime rock ballad it was; think of it as the unholy union of "Dress (BLOODY TRINITY MIX)" by BUCK-TICK (Trinity Blood Opening) and "Dead End" by Faylan (Mirai Nikki's Second Opening). Every other frame of it conveyed more detail and personality of the cast and setting than most non-pornographic Anime do with half of the effort and time.
What I loved about the ending was less the visuals (which, once you know the full context behind them, might repulse you; it did such for me by Episode 12) and more the complexity of the vocal track used for it. Around the 30 second mark, a steady, calming buildup to a chain linking of quick raps became lyrical honey that I could only define as "cheeky". The opening hyped me up for the madness to come but this ending was that princess in the other castle I desperately must find. Without context involved, the visuals were very calming and reminded me quite a bit of those of the first ending to Hyouka - "Yasashisa no Riyuu" by Choucho. No information seemed to be available for the mad lads and gals tasked with putting together both credit scenes; I hope to see more from them in the future, which means possibly subjecting myself to more projects from this studio.
I'll cover three more aspects before I get into my problems with this show. There was quite a bit of melee based combat on display and they were as visceral and meaty as they needed to be for it to feel threatening to my real existence. These combat scenes were the best animated parts of the entire series. There were several that I paused, rewound and rewatched a few times. I'm no expert in combat or animation, but many of these felt animalistic and were just downright sadistic, especially when Keyaru used no magic in his fights. His physical power was something to behold (even though I wish it had been shown more).
Another aspect that was wonderful for me was the makeup work on the characters' faces. The eyes on most of them were extremely detailed with eyelashes, brows and reflections popping out of the screen. Secondary named characters and mob characters may not have had as much detail poured into their own, but none felt generic and all had plenty of facial work done to make them feel very memorable. The world felt brimming with life and these people had stories that one could only imagine; imagine I did for many of them. Studios don't always have the resources to do this properly; it's not financially viable for the investors backing projects like this with the amount of risk involved either. I was not able to find confirmation of this hunch but I would not be surprised if Studio Wit's makeup department were hired for this project. I'll leave this here for those that are curious to learn more. Sakuga Booru will forever be a better researcher and writer than me for a variety of different parts of Anime production. Check them out.
The final element about this production that brought joy to my experience was the level of skill and talent brought forth by the Japanese Voice Actors. They could have phoned this in and treated it just like another job; instead, they seemed to be having fun with the material, despite how absurd and over the top their lines often were. The standout performance for me was Natsumi Takamori's portrayal of Eve Reese, the Black Winged Devil and future Demon Lord (pre-time travel), shown in the opening and ending credits.
(Source - Official Episode 9 Preview)
Eve was very much the Tsundere archetype in the Harem and didn't play much of a part until the second half of the season. When I met her in Episode 1, she was overall sincere with her performance. She wasn't a truly villainous Demon Lord but a worn-down and more mature (yet still way too young for her station) protector of her people. Her death scene had power behind it and her tears felt genuine with this revelation upon second viewing. When she came back into the story as a main character, she was mostly innocent and hadn't experienced most of the realities of war yet. Her character was one of the few that had layers that could be extrapolated and processed by the viewer without a need for them to be directly exposited or shown. The direction for her didn't disappoint and showed restraint when almost every other character was off their rockers. They say that in a sea of insane characters, the most normal seeming ones are the ones you truly should watch out for. That applied here succinctly and completely.
On a side note, her eyes being opened for the vast majority of the ending credits was a beautiful touch; I felt the studio and everyone that was involved understood what this character represented for the story and handled her predominantly with utmost care. What those eyes saw read to me as her being world weary and observing reality for what it was as the four other party members were "changed" in irreparable ways by Keyaru. If there is a Season 2, I will keep a close eye on her and see where she goes in the story. She was a surprise for me and part of why I finished the second half (along with Karmen, the merchant demon; I wish he had more presence on screen and maybe a spinoff manga or series).
At the time of this writing, I hadn't finished my second watch using the uncensored Bluray release (currently on Episode 4), so take most of the problems I have with this show as applicable to only the original Television run. So far, some of them have been fixed in the Bluray release (but that doesn't mean I fully recommend that version either for different reasons that I'll bring up in this section where applicable). Enough delay; let's rock and roll.
Next three images sourced from Official Episode 12 Preview
Canonically, the vast majority of the main cast of this show were 15 and under after the time travel. Keyaru was around 13 or 14. Flare, the Magic Hero, first princess of the kingdom, and female main protagonist (from the end of Episode 2 onward), was roughly the same age. I'm only bringing this up due to how visually detailed the sex scenes were in the first few episodes of the uncensored Bluray release. It was luckily comically over the top enough in both the censored and uncensored releases (up to where I'm currently at in the latter, of course) that it wasn't as disturbing for me as it could have been and was for many audience members. This was the track that played during most of those sex scenes; with how playfully optimistic yet morbid it came across as, I was left somewhat confused both emotionally and critically.
The censorship used in the Television release didn't help sway my resolve about them. Whenever those scenes came up in it, there was often one of three different treatments to them that almost all ruined their impact: 1) a panning camera shot of a sleeping beast of some type, 2) a different panning camera shot of a location or object from the background with some relation to why that sex was happening, or 3) various different edits to the character's model to hide their nudity or any sexual fluids with mostly black smoke clouds or golden light (which Keyaru directly broke the fourth wall and commented in one instance with how beautiful that censorship was). I don't envy any studio for being required to censor their material to make ends meet or meet the demands of their benefactors but am always appreciative of fun ways to get around that without hurting the pacing of the story being told. That was honestly the biggest failure for me when it came to making this safer for public consumption.
In the Bluray release, the memed sex scene between Flare and Keyaru (from Episode 2; see an earlier paragraph) had some interesting flairs and polish to it that would have honestly been one of my top artistically directed and animated ones in the medium. The context is why it will never be such. I don't usually or actively seek out explicit content like this. Animated sex scenes are just not my thing. There was enough genuine care and craft put into the presentation of this troubling scene that I was left applauding everyone that worked on it. The voice and other audio work sold me on how harrowing it was for Flare. That's where most of the "shocking" imagery equally failed. A constant and consistent escalation of quality portrayals of a disgusting nature eventually leads to it not mattering much. See my paragraph below about the season finale for further thoughts on this matter.
Another aspect that bothered me immensely was the power scaling mechanics of the world. They were very video game logical with Keyaru having "cheat magic" beyond the standard clerical arsenal. I have a theory about that aspect that would require a second season to fully explore that I'll shelve until such gets announced with confirmation given forth. This power scaling would no longer be a complaint but instead a possibly brilliant subversion if my personal hunch gets proven correct about the authorial intent of all of that. Time will tell.
For the average adventurers to level up beyond their natural level caps, it was proclaimed that by having sex with a Hero, that Hero's power and experience would ignite growth. Personally, that was such an idiotic ass pull for fleshing out the system. Keyaru leveled up through healing, stealing and dealing in a similar fashion. By healing fatal wounds, he would experience the entirety of that person's life up to the point of receiving their injury and gain their knowledge, allowing him to duplicate and refine their skill sets.
I initially thought this idea was creative but the execution and explanation left me thirsting for my own redo and mental healing. In a more well planned out and realized story, this could have been handled in jest the way a series like The Misfit of Demon King Academy did (see here for an early example). I was waiting for the punchline that this was all some power fantasy that wasn't supposed to be taken at face, but that never came. The most disheartening form bad Anime can take is when their core direction is nothing more than the average expectations given by their lesser produced contemporaries. The true disappointment was a lack of validation for finishing a work.
Now, about the big elephant in the room: two of the girls in Keyaru's harem became members through him raping and mind wiping them into becoming willing victims of his "loving embrace," as he mischievously called it a few times. The others joined through various means of manipulation. The order in which the girls were shown in the ending with their original appearances being essentially "whitewashed" away was both artistically creative and horribly disturbing for me due to how it related to the direction the plot took. I’m also pretty certain that the final shot of an onlooking eye was not of Eve but Keyaru watching over them, his dear possessions and children of his revenge, adding a layer of slime to what could be viewed as a work of artistic "healing".
For this last part, I will be heavily spoiling parts of the final three episodes. There are two specific scenes I have in mind but plan to keep their discussions short. Skip to my closing thoughts if you want to avoid any spoilers henceforth.
These episodes angered me. A new Hero, Hawkeye, was introduced to the story as another antagonist. His role was to protect Norn, Flare’s younger sister, from any threats to her life. When the fight against him came up, due to how stupidly overpowered Keyaru was, it only lasted a matter of minutes with Hawkeye just straight up blowing up because of one of the endless pure ass pulls that ground my nerves. Almost all of Keyaru’s fights played out like that in some form and were genuinely the most boring parts of the show. His abilities were often treated as an earnest threat but there was too little time left in the story with no announcement of a continuation for them to be more than a worn-down farce at this point. No extra effort was put into this final boss fight, leaving it almost pointless in a sea of already bad ideas.
The finale kept floundering and drowning from there. When Flare came up in a bikini, donning a dog tail and fur paws, I had to pause, intensify my internal screaming and Mortal Kombat my will back to life; that was almost too much for me due to how many levels of pure terror were in that reveal along with the levels of stupidity required to reach such a conclusion. The entire scene of horn dog Flare molesting and "tonguing" her younger sister lasted what felt like around 10 minutes. The outcome of Norn's "defeat" was even more disturbing for me: she was forced to partake in what I will glibly describe as a “sister act.” I don't look forward to that particular element in a hypothetical second season.
(Source - Official Episode 8 Preview)
My Closing Thoughts
I thank you for reading this. I can't believe I had as much to say as I did here. I wanted to try my hand at writing a review for something more controversial while also having a bit of a toss. I will hopefully return to Redo of Healer at some point in the future because of how much I cut out of this already time-dense review.
If you enjoyed it as much as I did making it, feel free to reply down below, vote on it and reblog it. Your feedback and general response will help me decide on when and what I'll do in the future with this particular series. I hope everyone here has a wonderful rest of their nights. Take care y'all.
Important Info
- Adapted from a Light Novel series written by Rui Tsukiyo and illustrated by Shiokonbu (link is for official website for illustrator but very NSFW)
- Studio: TNK (official studio website is very insecure)
- Seasons / Episodes: Winter 2021 (12 episodes)
- Genres: Dark Fantasy, Revenge Thriller, Time Travel, Harem, Villain Protagonist, Hentai (for Bluray Release), Extreme Ecchi (for Television Release)
- Similar Content: School Days (made by the same studio); Rising of the Shield Hero (dark fantasy Isekai with same general plot beats but a better overall presentation)
- Streaming: HiDIVE (Censored)