The Winter 2024 Anime Preview Guide

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic

High school nobody Usato was just waiting for the rain to stop after someone took his umbrella when he unexpectedly met two of his school's most popular students. Happily, they're both really nice, and Usato quickly feels like they're all on their way to becoming good friends. Unhappily, the two of them get summoned to another world, and he's pulled along with them. Kazuki and Suzune are, of course, the heroes the kingdom was looking for, but Usato's far from useless – he turns out to have the rarest of all powers, healing magic. He'll be really helpful in fighting off the demons…assuming that the training doesn't kill him first.

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic is based on a light novel series of the same name by Kurokata and KeG. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

A funny thing happened a few minutes into the premiere of The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic. Despite everything I have been trained to expect from shows with this exact kind of premise sporting this exact kind of title, The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic was…taking its time to introduce its main characters before getting into all of the isekai stuff. And the characters…were good? Usato is a bit of a socially awkward loner but he's still likable enough to make for a decent protagonist. Suzune is charming and funny but she is allowed to talk to the boys in her life like a real person, and not a glorified Plot Device With Boobs. Kazuki is the all-too-perfect Student Council member who should be everything that a guy like Usato resents and envies but not only is he not written like a sociopathic strawman ripped straight out of a teenage edge lord's diary, but he's also such a decent dude that you buy it when he, Usato, and Kazuki just become friends all of a sudden, no strings attached. This strange sense of connection and meaningful rapport that these kids share, it's…that's right, it's called “chemistry”. I didn't think that was allowed in an isekai anime in the year 2024.

I started to get this funny feeling in the pit of my stomach—something altogether foreign to me and yet not at all unpleasant. I was…having fun. Surely, though, this had to be some kind of fluke, right? Once the main character got Spirited Away to the isekai world, it would all be over, and I would have to return to the real world, where shows like The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic are required by law to suck ass.

Except, The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic didn't suddenly start to suck, even when the trio of kids got sucked into the magic world. Instead, it somehow managed to establish Usato as the unexpected wild card with shockingly deep reservoirs of magical powers without coming across as stupid or contrived. It plays off jokes like Suzune being a shameless weeb and everyone in the kingdom being terrified of Usato's healing magic teacher, Rose, and it's funny. Just 24 hours ago my ears were being assaulted by Hiro Shimono's shrill screeches in that godawful My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered show, and now here I was, laughing at all of these jokes and getting genuinely invested in Usato's story and relationships. Let this stand as a reminder that these isekai stories can be good! All you have to do is give a damn and try to make something worth watching. Who would have thought, huh?

I'm a bit conflicted about this first episode. Starting at the beginning of a story is often the best choice from an overall storytelling perspective. However, doing so can be a detriment depending on the medium—especially when it comes to anime where the first episode needs to hook the viewer so that they come back next week. This is likely one of these cases where the story really should have started in medias res.

That's not to say this episode was bad. It has a solid theme about appearances being deceiving—especially when it turns out the school's ice princess is a closet otaku. And the group dynamic of the summoning allows us to get three different reactions to being pulled into another world. However, much of the episode is bog-standard isekai first episode flair aside from that—largely just going through the motions.

This is unfortunate because, at its core, The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic is an incredibly fun thought experiment—it just makes the classic mistake of burying the lede by not stating its premise right out of the gate. That said, its core concept is at least hinted at through a bit of visual storytelling in the scene with Rose chasing after Usato.

Rose is a healing mage, yet she seems to have super strength, super speed, and near invulnerability. The idea being explored here is, “What if you used healing magic on yourself constantly?” You wouldn't have any fear of getting hurt and could use adrenaline 100% of the time—instantly fixing any damage you cause to your body. In other words, Rose is operating a maximum human potential—and that is what she wants to train Usato to do.

It's a fun concept to build a story on—and this episode should have probably focused entirely on it. After all, we could have always jumped back to the standard isekai setup at a later date.

If ever there was a character ready for her isekai moment, it's Suzune. What's more interesting is that she seems to have a pretty specific reason for it, apart from just being a run-of-the-mill closet otaku. Suzune is the student council president and all-around dream girl of her high school, and her conversation with actual protagonist Usato and Kazuki (who is emphatically not pleased to be whisked away to another world) implies that she's feeling a lot of pressure from how people see her. She's in her final year of high school and doesn't know what to do next, presumably because so many people have expectations for her. Suzune wants to escape and not think about any of it, and that's a relatable feeling.

It's also pretty fun watching Kazuki and Usato be confused by her reactions because Kazuki seems to be the straight-shooter A-student he's reputed to be and is fine with that, while Usato is simply more aware of pop culture trends than the other boy. That adds a bit of a sting to the realization that King Lloyd of Llinger (yes, really) only meant to summon the two whiz kids – Usato was just an accidental bonus. You know that social hierarchies are set in stone when one kid is so far outside the realm of high school stardom that even magic couldn't fathom that he'd be hanging out with the two kids at the top.

In many ways, this is just another isekai series in a long line of them. That said, it's better than the others we've seen so far this season. Usato, as a bonus summon, already has more personality than all four "powerless" kids from My Instant Death Ability is Overpowered, and everyone's reactions to being isekai'd away are unique. Kazuki is furious, Usato's confused, and Suzune's elated; Kazuki sees the king's actions as selfish and ignores that he's ripping three people away from their lives and families. (And he's not wrong.) The revelation that Usato, despite not being "wanted," also has a nice set of magic chops in the form of ultra-rare healing magic stops the plot from going down the path established by series like Arifureta; he's not useless, and Lloyd and his court mage Welcie try very hard to protect Usato from the insanity that is Rose, the head of the kingdom's rescue team. It's nothing new, but it also works to make itself feel like a better version of genre trends than has become common.

If you're already sick of isekai, I doubt this will change your mind, but if you like the genre, this is a more enjoyable example. If anyone could teach Usato a "wrong" way to use healing magic, it'd be Rose, and while it may not reach the heights of nursing insanity Nobunagun did when it made Florence Nightengale into Jack the Ripper, it should at least still be a decently interesting time.

Let this premiere stand as an example to every other god damned isekai we get this season. You don't have to radically reinvent the wheel or shake up your premise to be entertaining. You just need to put actual effort, thought, and personality into your story and characters, and trust that those connections will keep people engaged. Because that's exactly what happens here; The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic doesn't have some new, novel twist on this story archetype. It knows how to effectively establish likable characters whose personalities and relationships speak for themselves.

Take Usato, for example. In damn near any other show, he'd be insufferable, walking around as the epitome of sad-sack mediocrity until he either gets blessed with unrivaled power or is betrayed and THEN gets unrivaled power. Instead, he comes across as a pretty amicable guy who is maybe too passive for his own good but isn't riddled with bitter insecurity about not being the universe's main character. The fact that he was summoned to Fantasyville by accident, a literal hanger-on to his more accomplished and powerful classmates, could easily be a source of insecurity or mockery from the rest of the cast. Instead, his popular classmates are just nice people, and they establish a sense of camaraderie well before anyone gets transported. When it's revealed that Usato was summoned by accident, there's no belittling him, just concern that he got caught up in this mess entirely by accident. It's as if the people in this show are actual characters, capable of empathy and rationality, rather than cardboard cutouts to facilitate a flimsy persecution complex for our hero to stomp out.

Enough about what this premiere isn't. Regardless of the genre tag, this first episode is charming and funny in its own right, bolstered by a solid production that shines in a few places and allows the characters to be expressive where needed. I like that Suzune is secretly a huge chuuni who's practically salivating at this whole adventure, much to her companions' confusion. I dig that Usato gets immediately dragged into the tutelage of the kind of intimidating mentor figure you'd find in old-school shonen anime. I love the skate-rock OP that transported me back to 2007 whenever the vocalist growled out the chorus. There's a level of energy and personality that works without the need for caveats like "good...for an isekai" or the like.

My biggest issue is that the world itself is pretty standard, but that's not too big a problem when the cast inhabiting it is enjoyable on their own. Weirdos like Rose and her cadre of scary-looking employees add just the right level of zaniness to the fantasy characters while giving Usato a lot of strong personality to bounce off of like a quivering ball of jelly. It's not going to blow your socks off, but it has all the right elements in just the right balance to be a good time, and it's the first time in a while that I've genuinely been excited to see more from an isekai adaptation.