Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

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Okay, yeah, we’re doing this.

Healer Girl, if you’ve not seen my prior post on it, is an absolutely mesmerizing little series from Studio 3Hz. It’s about girls who sing to heal people. Songstress-doctors. Idol-medics. Whatever compound term you care to come up with. It is the best anime airing right now, and even though I have basically no “good reason” to cover it from a practical point of view—it’s not that popular from what I can tell, which is a tragedy I hope to play some small part in fixing—I definitely have a good reason from a personal point of view. I love this series; it’s a sparkling, scintillating ocean wave of pure joy.

So, this is the only warning you’re going to get. If you’re averse to just straight-up fangirling, this is probably not a column you’ll enjoy. But if you aren’t, well, welcome to the cult.

We’ve missed an episode, but thankfully Healer Girl‘s second was not too complex, so we can quickly run through it here. The episode introduced two new characters; the stuck-up Healer prodigy Sonia Yanagi (Chihaya Yoshitake) and her assistant / friend, an aspiring composer named Shinobu Honosaka (Miyu Takagi). The former is obsessed with trying to show up the clinic that our main girls work at, and essentially strong-arms her way into the story as their self-declared rival. The latter just sort of goes along with it. These two will doubtless play an integral role in the story going forward, as will another fact established in episode two—that Healers panicking can adversely affect their ability to treat patients—so that’s the gist of what we skipped by my not covering episode two.

Episode three is about our girls studying for, taking, and waiting for the results from, the stressful medical exam they need to pass in order to become certified Healer Assistants. They spend most of the episode’s opening half studying for and/or panicking about this. Particularly Kana, whose pharmacological (there’s a fun word) knowledge is sorely lacking. Because this is Healer Girl, the episode actually opens on the three studying by singing. Remember; this is also a musical. I’m particularly fond of the bit where one will call out a music term and another will sing back the definition. It’s wonderfully bouncy. Toe-tapping, even.

The series manages the difficult feat of showcasing the three’s personalities through their singing alone. Kana is Healer Girl‘s ostensible lead character, but it’s really more Reimi who is the “leader” of their little clique, and her forceful, almost rock singer-ish vocal style and fuller timbre emphasizes that. Kana, meanwhile, has a peppier and lighter tone, which fits her status as the not-too-bright lead. Hibiki, the most mature of the three, actually has the highest tone, but it only serves to reinforce her playful, never-taking-things-too-seriously nature.

Of course, the show’s spoken dialogue is full of personality, too. During a study session, where Kana and Reimi stay overnight at Hibiki’s room at the clinic, Kana recounts a story about why she’s so bad at learning about medicine, and I really cannot do justice to her completely absurd excuse except to reproduce it in full.

^{Any Discord servers out there looking for a :NotLikeKana: emote?}

To which Reimi correctly replies.

In general, the whole “study scene” does a lot to remind us that, while it’s true that these girls have an extraordinary and very important job within the context of their world, they’re also still just teenagers. (And frankly having to take a medical licensing exam when you’re in high school sounds like an utter nightmare.) Given how important it is for any “slice of life” anime to make its characters feel human and relatable, this is pretty important.

There’s also an interesting scene where the three visit a shrine (to pray for success on the test, natch) and Hibiki, witnessing some miko perform a kagura, wonders aloud if Vocal Medicine works by faith. Reimi even mentions that the exact mechanisms by which it functions are obscure, even though it’s been proven to work. (This part is less absurd than it sounds, given how opaque the precise workings of even a lot of chemical medicine were and, in some cases, still are.) If you were being really uncharitable, you could maybe spin this into Healer Girl promoting pseudoscience or faith healing. Suffice it to say, I think such a reading would be an extreme stretch.

Boxing at shadows aside, the shrine scene (and a sung-over montage immediately after it) transition us into the second half of the episode. Here, the girls have already taken the exam and are simply waiting for their results. The stress from the waiting has made them, shall we say, a bit off-key.

^{I’ve been there, girls.}

Ria (the girls’ teacher, and the Healer they’re assistants to, if you’ll recall), decides to try to get their minds off of things. How? By entering them in a town sport and field competition. Why not?

The girls sing all of their dialogue in this second half of the episode in an amusingly flat, slightly off tone, to illustrate how tired they are. This continues—with slightly more spirit in the singing—even when Sonia shows up to cause a general ruckus and gets on Reimi’s bad side by dissing Ria. Naturally, the two decide to settle things by seeing which team between the two of them can score more first-place leis. (They give out leis instead of medals at this competition. I don’t know.)

^{I really must make it totally clear that Reimi’s half of this whole exchange is sung. It’s great.}

Things are neck in neck, until the grand prize for the overall competition winner is announced. You may wonder what a mere county meet could offer as a compelling first prize. I will tell you in three words; Enormous Dog Plushie.

The injection of pure motivation this provides is instantaneous and noticeable.

^{This is also how I feel about large plushies.}

Reimi wants it too, since conveniently apparently Ria collects merchandise of this character and this is another chance for everyone’s favorite blonde lesbian disaster to get in good with her teacher (in her own mind, anyway). With the spirit of competition raised to even greater heights than before, Sonia also starts singing. (Her second number in the show, in fact, after her Healing Song from last episode.)

But Reimi and Sonia’s fired-up neck and neck competition ends up not mattering. Because apparently Hibiki, who quickly overtakes both of them from behind, is a musical Speed Force user or something of the sort.

The competition ends with the giant plushie going to Hibiki. She promptly sends it to her many adorable younger siblings, meaning no giant plushie for Reimi to give to Ria. Don’t worry, though, because Reimi did win the second-place plushie, and gives that to Ria instead. Ria is duly grateful and hugs her student, thus giving Reimi specifically a very happy ending for this episode.

After the ED, we see that the girls also did, in fact, pass their exams. It’s a heartwarming note for the episode to end on. And, for us here at MPA, an apropos one, too.

Song Count: Two full songs in the episode’s first half. The girls’ dialogue is almost entirely sung in the back half, as mentioned, depending on how you want to count that.

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