Don't Hurt Me, My Healer!

GakutoDeathGlare★ 9

I watched twenty-five anime this Spring 2022 season. Twenty-five, plus a few more that leaked over from Winter. That's quite a lot. By far the most I've watched in a season. To think that Kono Healer, Mendokusai would end up becoming my favorite airing anime, well, I can scarcely believe it myself. I enjoyed the first episode for sure, but there were so many high praising series alongside it. Alvin and Karla. What a pairing these two are. Alvin, a thirty something year old human, your average throwaway mob character that you see in any fantasy show and Karla, the cute dark elf, one ofanime's biggest ever trolls. My initial thoughts on this anime were pretty positive overall, a humorous Boke and Tsukkomi comedy act, set in a typical fantasy world, as they go about their daily lives, traveling around aimlessly in search of glory and adventure, getting into trouble every now and then, befriending people and monsters alike along the way, etc. I went into this anime like I almost always do, blind, and very early on you realize that any sort of plot or character development will be minimal as the anime revolves almost solely around Alvin's and Karla's relationship dynamics and interactions between one another. It's a purely comedic show. Three episodes in, I came to the opinion that this show would simply work much better as a shorter length series, as I was becoming increasingly aware that the comedy acts would either start to drag a little bit, or become a tad stale after watching the same humor for 20-25 minutes straight. Again, there's no intricate plot or incredible animation to sell the story, it's up to the comedy to hit it's mark more often than not. Thankfully, episode three was just a one off dud and we were back on track when episode four rolled along. Every episode that followed, I found myself laughing more frequently, a stupid grin slapped across my face throughout it's entirety, I looked forward to an episode drop every Monday. The relationship between the MCs is the selling point, the hilarious back and forths, the deadpan, air headed humor from Carla coupled with the occasional scene of emotional vulnerability (a comparison would be Takagi-san losing her cool, though not as rare or impactful as that show, but still fairly adorable when Carla starts to blush), the stern honest responses from Alvin, the little mushroom creature that randomly stays around lmao, the "monsters" that act anything but monster like, the bizarreness of it all, it simply worked. The comedy act between the main pair is not as fast paced as say the comedy act between Kazuma and Aqua from Konosuba, there's many timely pauses and the dialogue itself is usually spoken at a slower rhythm, it's quite refreshing to see this sort of unique execution. There's puns, playing with tropes, deadpan humor and more, a fair amount to choose from. One of my favorite scenes in the whole anime is when Alvin is in despair over losing his sword and falls down onto his hands and knees, the gloomy atmosphere accompanies it along with the low piano note, you know, the usual trope, and then after about five seconds it cuts to Carla taking a seat on Alvin and the back and forth begins. That shit was hilarious to me, I could not stop laughing. The early episode drop stats must be fairly high judging by the overall score, comedy is obviously very subjective and this anime is most certainly an acquired taste, though Kono Healer, Mendokusai succeeded in tickling my funny bone with it's witty, dry humor and lovable main cast. IMO, this would tick a lot of boxes for an older audience, but by no means, don't let the score mislead you, If you are looking for a good laugh and enjoy absurd humor, then one should definitely try this out. 9/10 for my AOTS.

AnimeEnjoyer420★ 3

Recommendation: Skip it. Comedy is a subjective medium, so it isn't always a meaningful criticism to say that a show "isn't funny". What's funny varies widely from person to person, and something that I find laugh out loud hilarious might bomb with a different audience. I tend to give comedies a fair amount of latitude with this in mind. However, when I tell you that Kono Healer, Mendokusai isn't funny, I mean it in a different sense than that. This show is *structurally* unfunny, by which I mean the problem isn't the jokes themselves, but the technical construction of those jokes. There aresome good one liners and gags in this show, but even when it's funny, the jokes are constantly undermined by Alvin's reacting and screaming. Nothing kills a joke like explaining the punchline, and that's *all* Alvin does in this show. It's supposed to be like manzai comedy, which is hit or miss in and of itself, but the effect is just that Alvin is constantly stepping all over punchlines with his angry reactions. The show has some other issues as well. Bits will often go on for far too long, with gags that should last 3 minutes regularly stretched into half the length of an episode, and it gets old fast. It also does not make effective use of side characters, with Carla and Alvin being the only regular characters for most of the series and only having one off run ins with other characters that don't come back until the end of the show. It means there is nothing to change the pace from the bickering between the two of them and contributes to the show's problem with episodes dragging or getting boring. At the end of the day though, those issues would be easily forgotten if it was funny, but the jokes just aren't well constructed enough to get the job done. It's like watching a standup comedian that has some decent jokes but still bombs because they get the delivery and timing all wrong.