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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This week, Healer Girl returns to a marginally more mundane setting. Specifically; Sonia’s clinic. Much of the episode serves as a small spotlight shone upon the hitherto minor character. I’ve never disliked Sonia—her “antagonism” is extremely minor and cartoony—but it’s nice that she gets an episode to shine regardless. Haughtiness is fun, in the right hands, and Sonia’s are well-equipped to handle it.

The episode’s forehalf showcases Ria’s apprentices helping out around Sonia’s grandmother’s clinic. You may recall that Sonia has something of a self-proclaimed rivalry with Ria, but their help is at her grandmother’s insistence. (She’s bedridden dealing with backpain, you see. Which also serves as yet another small reminder that even in this world, there are limits to what medicine can do.)

Sonia is extremely haughty throughout, even as Kana tries to help despite her palpable exasperation with the white-haired healer’s antics and Reimi nerds out over the clinic’s massive archive of vintage sheet music. The entire opening half here is very charming, and caps with Sonia showing off her healer chops by singing away a burn on a young boy’s arm with almost no prep time beforehand. (That second thing being impressive is new information to us, I think, but given that the only other healer we’ve seen do much work is Kana, who is also a prodigy, it makes some sense that we didn’t know before now.)

The second half of the episode sees Sonia rope Kana into all kinds of silly bullshit. First, she drafts her into the “executive committee” of her high school’s culture festival. Then, she abuses the power she has in that position to create a “Russian Cooking Club” out of thin air and fill out the paper work letting them set up a stand at said festival. Why do this? Because she met some random little kids who wanted to eat Borscht and she promised she’d make them some sometime. It’s exceedingly random, but it mostly works as far as goofy school life antics go.

We meet a few of Kana’s classmates here too, although none get much characterization beyond their constituting the Local Kana Fanklub (which she deserves. She’s a good protagonist.)

It also manages to sneak the ancient “people who are incompetent at cooking accidentally create the weird purple muck that Grimace from McDonald’s is made out of” gag in there. It’s old hat by now but this is at least a well-executed take on the joke.

Kana manages to run herself pretty ragged while doing all this, so the episode’s last major scene is also its insert song. Sonia, adorably, soothes Kana as she sleeps. My personal guess is that the right song-medicine can make sleep more restful, turning even short naps into a viable way to recharge your batteries? It’s not spelled out to us here, but the general idea is clear. It’s also illustrative of the fact that just below her somewhat arrogant surface, Sonia is a real sweetheart, too.

At the end of the episode we’re treated to a small post-credits scene. There, a nondescript fellow (one of the very few on-screen boys in Healer Girl at all) rushes into what is presumably the high school’s student council. He declares an emergency; a huge gap in the culture festival’s schedule! And on that fun little cliffhanger, the episode comes to a close. Perhaps hinting at a full-on concert next week? I wouldn’t put it past Healer Girl. The show remains, even in minor moments, as pleasant as lemonade in July.

Song Count: Two, both sung by Sonia. There are a few ditties consisting of a couple bars each throughout, as well, although in general this is one of the least musically-dense Healer Girl episodes.

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