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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As I continue to struggle with getting things sorted out in my life (and consequently, on this blog as well), I’m blessed with an episode of Healer Girl built around a central visual showpiece, which makes writing about it pretty straightforward. Hooray for small miracles! Even if you’re probably still only seeing this at least a few days after the episode airs.

Episode 9 is, in a way, what the whole main “plot” of the series—in as much as Healer Girl has such a thing—has been building toward. The girls and their mentor aiding in a successful, full operation. You might note that this is in some ways an echo of episode 4’s central conceit. You’re right about that, but the tones and focuses could not be more different. Episode 4 established the limits of vocal medicine, and we nearly saw someone die. Episode 9 is more or less its total opposite; this is what the technique can accomplish at its best. (And of course, it further cements Healer Girl‘s central themes of connection, and music as a balm for the world’s woes.)

The patient is Ria’s onetime mentor, since we here learn that she was a traditional medical student before switching track to vocal medicine. The surgeon in question, interestingly, also has a connection to Kana; he prescribed her an inhaler for her asthma when she was very young, leading to her wanting to be involved with medicine in the first place. In this way, the episode neatly ties together three generations of medical professional. It also helps the episode feel a bit more meaningful than if it were just Some Guy.

The operation itself forms the episode’s centerpiece. Here, we get to see Ria work her magic for the first time, and it’s pretty damn impressive. Lasting for a solid six minutes, it is the longest “image sequence” in the show so far, and serves as a fitting launchpad as Healer Girl transitions into its final stretch.

More than that though, it’s fascinating how the sequence manages to convey so much without ever using actual dialogue. We know from earlier in the episode that the patient has some pretty serious problems; polyps on his intestines, chiefly, a very real and very unpleasant medical issue. Thus, when we see Ria flying her students down into a massive valley and removing alien-looking growths from the stone with the power of song, we know what those are and what’s going on. Nothing is said because nothing needs to be.

The images, it’s clear by now, allow the healers to enact physical change by manipulating visual metaphor, which is itself born from their songs. This is, in a less literal sense, exactly what music does to us in the real world; it can cause real, present changes in our mood and even our outlook on life by working with abstract, non-real material. Healer Girl‘s image sequences are, thus, a longform metaphor for the impact of music (and more broadly, all art) itself, a neat little thematic mobius strip that suits the series’ ambitious but low-key nature perfectly. Art that contemplates the nature and impact of art itself can seem indulgent or even pretentious, but Healer Girl never gets anywhere close to that. If it’s self-impressed, it’s only minorly so, and with good reason.

On a more literal level it is also worth noting the character development on display here. While they’re worried before the procedure starts, none of the girls freak out or lose confidence in the middle of the operation like they did back in episode 4. They’ve gone from total novices to having some real experience under their belt, and indeed this episode is iyashikei-esque in its lack of any real danger. Most everybody thinks everything will go fine, and it does, in lovely-soothing technicolor splendor.

There are also a few jokes scattered throughout, which is key to keeping the episode from feeling self-serious. At one point early on the patient jokes that he only got sick so he could hear Ria sing, to which she rebuts that he should just buy one of her CDs. (This exchange raises SO many questions about the world of Healer Girl that I’m well aware the anime has zero interest in answering.) And another early scene where Ria assures all of her students that they’ll do fine while giving them big, gentle hugs. Yes, including Reimi. She damn near dies in the process.

There’s also an absolutely adorable Zoom call between our main characters in the episode’s post-credits, where among other things, the girls discuss Hibiki’s collection of wrestling manga. This all puts a very cute bow on what is overall one of the show’s strongest episodes.

Song Count: Just one, but at a full six minutes, saying that feels unfair. There are also a few pieces of non-diegetic vocal music throughout, so you can raise the count a few if you want to include those.

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