The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

The Brilliant Healer's New Life in the Shadows

Life hasn't been kind to Zenos. He was born in the slums, and his dirt-poor background has denied him almost every opportunity. After an encounter with a healer, he throws himself into studying to become one and finally catches a break when an adventurer invites Zenos into his party. Zenos is thrilled—so thrilled, in fact, that he's willing to put up with his teammates treating him like garbage. They fail to appreciate his talents and ultimately kick him to the curb, claiming he's outlived his usefulness to them. Now bereft of money and out of options, Zenos decides to put his self-taught skills to use elsewhere and opens an underground clinic. Word quickly spreads about the brilliant healer working incredible magic in the city's shadowy underbelly. Even the royal palace is taking notice.

The Brilliant Healer's New Life in the Shadows is based on the light novel series by author Sakaku Hishikawa and illustrator Daburyu. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Thursdays.

Ten minutes. That's how long The Brilliant Healer's New Life in the Shadows takes to get to anything that resembles a story. Ten minutes wasted, squandered, evaporated into the great black hole of crappy light novel anime. After a brief opening narration about the different levels of healers in the world, we get ten minutes of the protagonist Zenos' harem girls coming in looking for him, one after another. Do they leave when they hear he's stepped out? No! They stand around and bicker, bicker, bicker. It's so unmemorable that I genuinely do not remember a word they said—not that it matters because it sure didn't do much to establish who they are as characters.

I mean, I actually do like their designs—they're all demihumans, but only one of them has the standard animal ears plus tail look. However, that scene is storyboarded with zero skill—every shot is just of one or more of the girls from the chest up as she stands stock still and moves her mouth. If they needed to move more than that, the camera conveniently looks away. The dialogue is likewise terrible.

The thing is… I almost want to like Zenos. A light novel fantasy protagonist with genuine principles is practically a novelty. My jaw actually dropped when he bought a slave and, instead of adding her to his harem where she'll be soooo grateful to have a good owner, he tears up her contract and sets her free. The lowest of bars has been officially cleared! He heals on a sliding scale and doesn't appear to have any ulterior motives! However, breath of fresh air though that may be, it doesn't make Zenos interesting—and he's so stoic he has the screen presence of a hunk of rebar. And once again, the lack of skilled production work exacerbates the issues with the story—with some truly baffling color usage like shading often being done using a muddy brown.

There's a surprising amount of stuff to like about The Brilliant Healer's New Life in the Shadows, but an anime-original (from what I understand), harem-forward premiere that is haunted by amateurish production choices drags it back down to a level slightly above dreck.

A little bit of back story: last month I went to the world premiere screening for this anime. There, we didn't watch this episode. Instead, we watched the second and third episodes—because those episodes are the actual beginning of the story (like where the source material starts). This episode, on the other hand, is an anime original episode—one clearly set at some nebulous point in the middle of it—and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

On one hand, there are reasons to start a story in medias res. It can tease the climax to add tension to the story. Or it can show what the status quo will be—which is helpful in situations where the start of the story is far different from what it eventually becomes. While this is a little bit of the latter, I can't help but feel this episode has something else in mind.

In general, this episode seems like it's aimed at fans of the novels/manga rather than at attracting new audiences. To fans, this is a dream episode—not only do you get to see your beloved characters voiced and animated for the first time, you get a short, brand new adventure that includes both the comedy and action you know and love.

However, for a newbie to the story, this episode is kind of a mess. None of the female characters (i.e., 90% of the cast) are actually introduced—nor are their relationships or even their jobs. While you do get a sense of each of their personalities (which are, admittedly, unique enough to set them apart from one another), you don't have enough connection with them to care about their bickering over soup.

Then, on the other side of the episode, we have Zenos. This is a much better character introduction as we see him as the magical equivalent of Black Jack—a rogue overpowered healer who charges what he deems his skills are worth on a case-by-case basis. We also have the rare fantasy world character who rescues a slave by buying her and then *gasp* frees the slave—truly a shocking anime moment.

So all in all, this isn't really a bad episode as much as it is a baffling one. Fans will have a fun little time while I expect newbies to be largely detached—not exactly what you're hoping for in a season premiere. Still, I would recommend that anyone even slightly interested in the premise stick around for the next two episodes. I'd give those a solid 3.0 score at the very least.

The first half of this premiere almost feels like some kind of subtly twisted parody. One after the other, cute beastie-girl after cute beastie-girl barges into the kitchen of the tiny, cute elf-girl and loudly proclaims their undying love and desire for Zenos. Then, they spend an interminable amount of time sitting around the house, bickering and bantering, getting into all sorts of shenanigans, all while Zenos himself is barely featured at all. It's like a Samuel Beckett play by way of light-novel harem anime. Call it "Waiting for Zenos."

To be clear, this isn't necessarily a criticism of The Brilliant Healer's New Life in the Shadows—though I'm not going to act like this premiere was any kind of masterpiece. I'm just saying that the premise actually lends itself to a subversive kind of “nihilisitic sitcom” vibe. The different monster girls have just enough flair and personality to stand out from the usual cadre of anthropomorphic hairdos that we're usually stuck with—and while the show's animation is pretty limited, it also manages to convey an idiosyncratic charm of sorts. Honestly, I don't think I'd mind a whole show that was literally just Waiting for Godot but with cute anime girls. It'd be funny to see the strange depths of madness the poor harem members would sink to after weeks upon weeks of not getting their much-anticipated hair-pats and tail-pets.

That said, I'm here to evaluate the anime that The Brilliant Healer's New Life in the Shadows really is, and not the one that I'm dreaming up in my head (though remind me to stick “Waiting for Main Character-kun” into my ever expanding pile of Incredible Anime Ideas that Studios Should Be Bidding On). To that end, the show is pretty okay. In addition to the aforementioned supporting cast of fanged and furry cuties, Zenos himself turns out to be a perfectly adequate protagonist. He goes out of his way to exploit and humiliate a slave-owning aristocrat, for one, which is always a quick way to get on my good side. He frees the bastard's poor slave, too, which I was very glad to see (though he could have been a little more tactful about the whole process). As our leading man, Zenos doesn't have the most personality in the world, but there's enough going on to satisfy the prerequisites for a decent slice of fantasy entertainment, provided that he gets some kind of meaningful development before too long.

The Brilliant Healer's New Life in the Shadows is a bit too shabby looking and vaguely defined to make for an immediate recommendation from me, but I can see that there is enough potential here to be worth giving the show the ol' three-episode trial run. Plus, it's propagating the vital practice of filling more anime harems with monster girls. That is an unequivocal moral good that I must recognize and reward.

I really enjoy the light novel series this show is based on, which makes me sad that the anime adaptation isn't putting its best foot forward. Clearly, the anime producers have a different idea than I do about what the heart of the story is. I think it's Zenos' drive to save people in an effort to save his child-self and to give back to his mysterious healing mentor. They seem to think it's the harem.

Or at least, they seem to think that the harem is the best place to start things off, which I can't help but feel doesn't trust the viewers enough. All of these ladies – Carmilla, Lily, Lynga, Loewe, and Zophia – do come into the story early on, but by starting with them all assembled and fighting over Zenos (or at least his food), the episode is assuming that viewers will only pay attention to the more serious core of the story if it comes with ladies of all shapes and sizes. And to be fair, that is a piece of the overall series, but it's more a comedic embellishment than anything. But by opening with it, we lose the opportunity to more fully get to know Zenos. What's accomplished through his interactions with Til could have been shown by starting with him rescuing Lily, a scene we see in the opening-as-ending theme.

That particular complaint aside, for an in medias res opening, this doesn't do a great job of giving us the action such narrative tricks typically employ. The dinner scene takes up an inordinate amount of time, and the explanation of healers leaves out some key worldbuilding information, that the kingdom is based on a very strict caste system. While we can infer that from the slavery angle, not quite enough is shown to let us know why Zenos is operating where he is. I will give them credit for showing that Zenos' healing skills are outside the norm without explicitly saying it – that his healing also exorcises the spirit possessing Til is a good indication without spelling it out.

Visually, I do like that the demihumans look different from comparable series, even if I don't love the furry limbs approach, and I'm pleased that both male and female lizardfolk (that's Zophia and the fellow we see Zenos healing in the very beginning) look mostly human rather than making the guys look more lizard-like but keeping the ladies fanservice friendly. The voices are fine too, even if Lily occasionally edges into shrill territory. But I'm not impressed with the adaptation in general, and I think my recommendation would be to stick to the light novels. That's what I'll be doing, anyway.