This is the story of a young man from a sword-and-sorcery style fantasy world who has an amazing magical ability - the power to Heal. Unfortunately, this ability comes at a terrible price: the Healer absorbs the entire life experience of the person he is healing. As a result, he's not very keen to hit the adventuring circuit, and has to be pressed into service as part of a group of Heroes that includes the Princess Flare, a powerful magic user, plus a girl with a magic sword and a gun with a magic gun.
Turns out these so-called heroes are not nice people. From the moment he displayed a reluctance to use his power, the Healer is kept in an addled state to make him more pliable and subjected to constant physical and verbal attacks (particularly from his fellow Heroes) until the fateful day he is able to escape his predicament by acquiring an artefact that allows him to "heal the world" i.e. Travel back in time with his memory and powers intact.
Confucius said "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves", but our protagonist can be forgiven for not having heard that since he's from a world with magic and demons and as much depth as a bottle cap. The Healer is back in the past for a second go at life and he has only one aim in mind - revenge.
Frankly this is a mean-spirited and at times outright embarrassing piece of work. The narrative is simplistic and there is zero character development. The world features several infuriatingly explicit JRPG elements (the Healer has a magic eye that lets him read his opponents stat blocks, one of the Healer's companions is able to grow in power by engaging in a certain activity rather than, you know, through gaining actual combat experience or something stupid like that). And it's a JRPG where our protagonist bought all the DLC.
There's no tension to most of the fight scenes because the Healer is laughably OP and healing is only a tiny fraction of what he's able to do. To be fair, it is established in the first episode that his Heal allows him to copy abilities from the people he heals so presumably he reverse Sylar'd his way to a whole bunch of powers the first time he went through life but you only see it happen once so afterwards he's just dropping new powers seemingly out of nowhere. Also I guess he got used to the psychological trauma of experiencing another person's entire life in a matter of moments because that stops being a problem pretty early on.
And finally we have the problematic content. The villains do revolting things to the protagonist to give the viewer license to enjoy him doing even more revolting things to them. Judging by all the 10/10 reviews, some people enjoy that kind of thing a lot, but your mileage may vary. The show is surprisingly light on gore so they aren't as disturbing as they might have been. But there are undoubtedly animes out there with much more shocking content if that's what you are after so I can't imagine it is worth watching this whole show for maybe three depraved scenes.
Ultimately I knew about some of those scenes before I watched the show and I thought I'd give it a chance anyway to see if it went anywhere interesting. Having watched the whole first season, I can confirm it doesn't. The show is about him attracting a bevy of babes who are (mostly) inexplicably in love with him and getting revenge, not about whether his revenge is justified or how taking it changes him as a person. You can watch stuff happen in this show but it will not make you think.
I give it two stars because I made it all the way to the end.
Turns out these so-called heroes are not nice people. From the moment he displayed a reluctance to use his power, the Healer is kept in an addled state to make him more pliable and subjected to constant physical and verbal attacks (particularly from his fellow Heroes) until the fateful day he is able to escape his predicament by acquiring an artefact that allows him to "heal the world" i.e. Travel back in time with his memory and powers intact.
Confucius said "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves", but our protagonist can be forgiven for not having heard that since he's from a world with magic and demons and as much depth as a bottle cap. The Healer is back in the past for a second go at life and he has only one aim in mind - revenge.
Frankly this is a mean-spirited and at times outright embarrassing piece of work. The narrative is simplistic and there is zero character development. The world features several infuriatingly explicit JRPG elements (the Healer has a magic eye that lets him read his opponents stat blocks, one of the Healer's companions is able to grow in power by engaging in a certain activity rather than, you know, through gaining actual combat experience or something stupid like that). And it's a JRPG where our protagonist bought all the DLC.
There's no tension to most of the fight scenes because the Healer is laughably OP and healing is only a tiny fraction of what he's able to do. To be fair, it is established in the first episode that his Heal allows him to copy abilities from the people he heals so presumably he reverse Sylar'd his way to a whole bunch of powers the first time he went through life but you only see it happen once so afterwards he's just dropping new powers seemingly out of nowhere. Also I guess he got used to the psychological trauma of experiencing another person's entire life in a matter of moments because that stops being a problem pretty early on.
And finally we have the problematic content. The villains do revolting things to the protagonist to give the viewer license to enjoy him doing even more revolting things to them. Judging by all the 10/10 reviews, some people enjoy that kind of thing a lot, but your mileage may vary. The show is surprisingly light on gore so they aren't as disturbing as they might have been. But there are undoubtedly animes out there with much more shocking content if that's what you are after so I can't imagine it is worth watching this whole show for maybe three depraved scenes.
Ultimately I knew about some of those scenes before I watched the show and I thought I'd give it a chance anyway to see if it went anywhere interesting. Having watched the whole first season, I can confirm it doesn't. The show is about him attracting a bevy of babes who are (mostly) inexplicably in love with him and getting revenge, not about whether his revenge is justified or how taking it changes him as a person. You can watch stuff happen in this show but it will not make you think.
I give it two stars because I made it all the way to the end.