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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And we’re back. Let’s celebrate with Cat Maid Kana.

Lovely.

This week’s episode of Healer Girl is a straightforward one. The high school festival episode is a classic format for anime like this, and it’s no real surprise that Healer Girl can knock one out of the park with minimal effort. We open with the class cafe` that prompts Cat Maid Kana up there, and some cute little gags about how the class spent so much time on the costumes that they had to go with pre-bought stuff for the food and drinks. But hey, no one goes to these things expecting 5-star dining. (If you do, you’re a monster, just FYI.)

The real focus point of the episode picks up about halfway through, where the student council president informs our leads—all of whom are accompanying an overfed Sonia to the nurse’s office—that there’s a gap in the festival schedule. You see, usually the school calls in a surprise performance by a band or something of the like. This year, the band actually got in a car accident, and while the band themselves are fine, their equipment is busted. The student council president is in a tizzy about this, but gets the bright idea that since the girls are all healer apprentices, they should perform as a rock band instead. Sonia, ever self-aggrandizing, agrees to it even in her hobbled, ate-too-much state. (Despite having to cede lead vocals to Kana because of this, which to be fair, she does willingly and of her own accord.)

The “high school rock band performance” is an old anime trope. To me, nothing will ever top the way it was done in The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, with J-Rock band ZONE knocking out otaku classic “God Knows” in the process. (And in 2010, Angel Beats! seemed to have doused that particular fire for good with its showstopping third episode, “My Song,” where such a performance marks the first major emotional moment of the series.) Healer Girl‘s take doesn’t match either of those, but those are all-time great anime episodes, so that’s not really a serious knock. Frankly, I’m just happy to see one again.

The lead-up here is a pretty hilarious scene where Kana just conks out after practicing the song for the first time. Exhaustion is no joke, but her bandmates letting her sleep until nearly the very moment they have to go on stage very much is, and it provides an amusing lead-in to the episode’s emotional climax.

The girls’ performance, even all I’ve said aside, gives us another of the series’ trademark free-flowing image-spaces. I will never be unhappy to get one of these, and they are almost always the high points of the show’s episodes. The music here is a lot slower and dreamier than “God Knows”, but it accordingly fits with the Healer Girls’ style in a way that a more uptempo track might not. It’s heavier than their normal material but not in a way that seems out of their ability, and the vocal trade-offs here are pretty astounding.

(This is the first episode since the one where somebody almost died that we’ve gotten to hear the girls sing all at once, I believe. And it’s definitely the first time Sonia has joined them.) There’s also a cute trick at the end where they perform an “encore,” the opening percussion of which immediately smash cuts into the ED.

“A Culture Festival Full of Surprises” may stand as one of Healer Girl‘s less essential episodes. Certainly it’s not as much so as episode 4 or episode 5. But if that’s so, it’s certainly not a bad thing. Sometimes it’s just nice to see the band play.

Song Count: Just one, but as in episode 4, quality makes up for lack of quantity.

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