A new isekai currently airing during the Winter 2024 anime season, The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic, slyly pokes fun at “revenge isekai” stories by flipping the script on the protagonist when he is discovered to have healing powers. Many anime indulge viewers with a power fantasy of rising to the top with a meager power. The Wrong Way seems to have a more lighthearted approach to the concept, trading drama for laughs.
While it’s not an explicit rebuttal of similar tales of summoned heroes, the way the first episode has its lead Ken Usato laughably recruited by Rose is a complete reverse of how previous characters with “support powers” have been treated. It’s to the anime’s benefit that it immediately acknowledges the advantages and “cheats” these powers afford.
In this way, early clichés can be sidestepped for immediate adventure.
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Produced by Frontier Works & Lantis
The set-up of the first episode could have gone down the path as other isekai. Following their arrival in the fantasy world, it is revealed that Ken is not one of the summoned heroes, having accidentally stumbled into the spell alongside the intended recipients, Suzune and Kazuki. Furthermore, the king advises Ken to hide his healing powers. The joke is that rather than trying to brush Ken under the rug, the kingdom is trying to protect him from Rose, their resident healer and a vicious taskmaster who announces her intent to wring every drop of potential out of her “new recruit”.
Ken is unique in this regard; since Rising of the Shield Hero popularized the concept, many anime have trotted out their own anti-heroes, whose “weak powers” lead to them being abandoned by their allies, leading them to seek revenge. While common sense would see the value of non-offensive powers, it hasn’t stopped the creation of everything between straight formulaic copies like Arifureta and slice-of-life comedies like Campfire Cooking In Another World, where their heroes hone their powers to eventually get the last laugh in the future. That missing common sense seems to have found its way to The Wrong Way.
It is deeply amusing to see Rose, the kingdom’s resident healer, being perceived with comedic dread, but it also establishes that Ken’s magic already has the credentials it should have. Furthermore, his training montage in episode 2 is already skipping through the obvious cheats, like using healing to accelerate recovery and muscle development. In this way, the anime’s lighthearted vibe is a breath of fresh air, as it chooses to avoid needless drama about unlikely heroes. By choosing to acknowledge the obvious advantages, The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic, ironically, has avoided falling into the same pitfalls that other isekai have.
Watch On Crunchyroll
