In video games and anime alike, healers are essential to any adventuring party. These healers in particular are absolutely essential to their series as a whole, whether they are the heroes fighting to change the world with their power or the heroes’ dearest friends and greatest supporters. Healing isn’t a power commonly found among villains, and when it is, it’s even less common that they use it for others rather than themselves, but it isn’t impossible.

Many times, healing magic will be the rarest or most complex form of magic in a given world’s power set, making its great advantages available only to the luckiest or to the most dedicated in their studies. The harder it is to obtain or master, the more powerful it will be when its wielder can finally use it as they like. If they’re lucky, hard work is all it will take; if they’re not, healing damage can come with a heavy price.

10

Ken Usato Goes Through Fierce Training to Become a Healer

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic

Usato didn’t mean to become a great healer any more than he meant to join his classmates as they were summoned to another world to join a human kingdom’s war against demons. But while Kazuki and Inugami train as heroes, Usato is discovered to have a talent for healing magic and conscripted into the Rescue Squad. Under the harsh training regimen of the squad leader, Rose, he strengthens his body and his ability to use magic to become a field medic.

The Rescue Squad is trained to move quickly and effectively through an active war zone, healing wounds while avoiding injury themselves. Though he’s the youngest and least experienced, Usato has such a powerful potential for healing magic that he quickly becomes Rose’s favorite student. When he’s finally put to the test, he not only saves lives but employs the titular “wrong way” to use healing magic to hit through the Black Knight’s attack-reflecting armor and turn the tide of battle.

9

Falin Touden Was an Extremely Skilled Cleric

Dungeon Meshi

Falin and Marcille met in magic school as teenagers, and as adults, they are the mages of the Touden adventuring party, with Marcille using her magic primarily for combat and Falin serving as the party’s healer, her metal staff doubling as a mace in a pinch. Thus far in the anime, Falin really hasn’t gotten the chance to show her stuff, due to being eaten in the first episode and turned into a dragon after being resurrected by Marcille’s forbidden magic.

However, Laios and Marcille’s reminiscence of her makes clear just what a vital party member she was. More proficient in healing magic than Marcille, who’s a very powerful mage in her own right, Falin is a deeply compassionate person who could not only heal injuries but souls as well, laying troubled ghosts to rest for good. Even after returning as a chimera, she retains enough of her mana to cast spells easily.

8

Akiko Yosano Heals Only Those Half-Dead

Bungou Stray Dogs

Typically, a doctor’s bag will be filled with medical instruments for testing vitals, administering medication, and the like. When Yosano wants to heal somebody, she pulls a huge honking chainsaw out of her bag and starts going to town on them with it. Her ability, Thou Shalt Not Die, lets her bring patients back from the brink of death, but they do literally need to be on the brink of death before it will heal anything.

The Armed Detective Agency’s fear of their team healer and the pain she has to cause to bring them back to 100% is always played for laughs. But season 4 reveals the pain her ability has actually caused her: as a child, Ougai Mori brought her to a war zone in an attempt to create an immortal army. Soldiers were driven insane by being nearly killed in battle and then brought back to life by Yosano to do it again over and over, and Yosano, unable to heal their emotional and mental scars, was traumatized by watching the process destroy them.

7

Recovery Girl Spent Her Entire Career Healing Heroes

My Hero Academia

As one of the most creative names in My Hero Academia suggests, Chiyo Shuzenji spent her youth flitting around the battlefield healing her fellow heroes as they fought. Her Quirk can instantly fix any injury with a simple kiss, by speeding up the body’s natural healing processes by many, many times, leaving patients exhausted afterward. Though she couldn’t restore All Might’s lost organs and capacity to maintain One For All after his fight with All For One, she is the reason he’s alive at all.

Now in retirement, Recovery Girl is U.A.’s school nurse, where dealing with Izuku “Breaks His Own Bones On The Regular” Midoriya is probably more stressful than her entire hero career put together. If used too many times or on too major a wound, her Quirk drains the patient’s stamina dry and becomes ineffective. She tries to limit Izuku’s reckless behavior by refusing to treat him if he damages his own body too often.

6

Noi Is a Powerhouse and a Healer

Dorohedoro

Magic in Netflix’s most bizarre anime is a coveted thing, used by the world’s sorcerers to control the powerless population with an iron fist. Among the magic users of En’s crime family, Noi and Shin are among the strongest, able to tear their opponents apart with ease. But while Shin’s Cutting magic is suited for it, Noi’s power is to heal any wound or magical condition in a puff of smoke.

Noi’s perky, energetic attitude clashes severely with her perpetual bloodlust, which tracks for the tone of Dorohedoro overall. Not only does her healing magic allow her to get her allies instantly up and running again, but it lets her shrug off even the most brutal damage to herself. The ability to quickly repair damaged muscles is a major boost to strength training, which explains why Noi is such a physically powerful fighter as well.

5

Nurse Joy Will Always Be There to Heal Pokémon

Pokémon

Sometimes, all the health-replenishing moves, Ethers, and Potions in the Pokémon world aren’t enough. At those times, any good Trainer will rush their exhausted team to a Pokémon Center for a state-of-the-art full heal, curing all their battle damage and status conditions. Performing these procedures is always a member of the Joy family, whose influence on the medical field spans every region.

Usually with a loyal (and well-educated!) Chansey by her side, Nurse Joy is always cheerful and ready to help any Pokémon that comes into her care. However, that doesn’t mean she’s a pushover: she’ll lay a harsh lecture on anyone she witnesses mistreating or neglecting their Pokémon, and is equally insistent that the younger Trainers remember to take care of themselves. Without Nurse Joys, the Pokémon world would be a much scarier place.

4

Orihime Inoue Reverses Any Damage Done to Her Friends

Bleach

Orihime doesn’t come into her power as quickly as Ichigo and company, but when she does, she’s determined to use them to protect her loved ones any way she can. Her wide skill set boils down to the ability to negate anything she wishes to reverse. Enemy attacks aimed at her friends are deflected right back at them, and she can make it so even fatal injuries never happened simply by willing it, making her Soul Society’s most powerful healer.

Technically, Orihime is capable of offensive moves as well, but her ability to use her powers being linked to the strength of her desires doesn’t mesh well with her gentle and compassionate nature. Unless she’s under extreme duress, she just doesn’t want to hurt anybody, so she focuses her energy on shielding and healing. By the later arcs, it’s clear how much this has paid off.

3

Farma de Médicis Is Reborn With Divine Medicinal Powers

Parallel World Pharmacy

As is the alarming trend among isekai protagonists lately, world-famous pharmacist Kanji Yakutani drops dead young from overwork. He’s reborn in a new world as Farma de Médicis, son of the Royal Pharmacist, and given a divine blessing allowing him to diagnose and treat any illness. In a world ruled by superstition, Farma is determined to use his gift to bring medicine into the modern age.

Despite being a trained medical professional, upon his rebirth Farma is empowered primarily by supernatural abilities. Favored by the Medicine God, he is able to save everyone his treatment touches, ultimately protecting his entire kingdom from looming disaster. The author of the original light novels and the screenwriters of this underrated isekai anime are trained pharmacologists and biologists, respectively, and their expertise shows in Farma’s application of his abilities.

2

Josuke Higashikata Restores Life With His Stand

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure

Several of the strongest Stands in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure have the capacity to heal, from Giorno’s life-giving Gold Experience to Antonio Trussardi’s cure-all gourmet meals. But Crazy Diamond, wielded by Josuke Higashikata in Part 4, is particularly special. It may be fast and strong, but its ace in the hole is its ability to restore anything it touches.

According to Jotaro, Crazy Diamond is indicative of Josuke’s kind nature. He can heal injuries with this ability if he can reach the victim in time, though the rules of the Stand don’t recognize disease as damage to be reversed, and deconstruct objects into their basest components. Crazy Diamond’s restoration abilities aren’t just used for healing; it can also fuse organic and inorganic matter in a nightmarish way — just ask Angelo Katagiri.

1

Sakura Haruno Becomes a Medical Ninja to Surpass Her Mentor

Naruto

When Sakura became seriously dedicated to getting stronger, she went directly to the best for training: Tsunade, the shinobi world’s greatest medical ninja. Over the time skip, she worked just as hard as her wayward teammates, learning perfect chakra control. Upon coming home to the Leaf Village, Naruto is shocked to find that she now has the brute strength to punch him right through a wall.

However, it’s her medical abilities that lead to many of Sakura’s best scenes in Naruto. She can perform a variety of healing techniques and operations for injuries, and is particularly skilled at extracting poisons or curing them with antidotes of her own invention. By the time of the Fourth Great Shinobi World War, she’s also mastered the Strength of a Hundred Technique, which uses one’s own life force to heal, without the regenerative Senju genes Tsunade and Hashirama possess.