The Great Cleric – Episode 1

What’s it about? Caught by a stray bullet on his way home from work, an average salaryman wakes to find he’s been given a second life in another world. Given basic knowledge, a few skill points, and little else, the young man now called “Luciel” sets out to become a healer.

Having committed the ceremonial lowering of the bar that’s required before watching the average seasonal isekai, I would like to report that this premiere is….fine.

I mean sure, the running animation leaves afterimages that I think were meant to be aesthetically purposeful but feel like the animators had some kind of exhaustion-related breakthrough about animating on fours. But sometimes it does exaggerated noodley gag shots! I missed those!

And yes, the faces have slightly too-small features, which makes them look stiff. And the head clerk at the Healers’ Guild wears a very professional boob tie. But—and perhaps this is due to the slightly corpsey look of the character models—there isn’t a leering camera! Luciel even seems to admire head paladin Lumina for being cool and authoritative rather than just being hot. And only one of the characters is a catgirl in short-shorts, which I call a diversity win.  

I had a better time hanging out with Luciel than the average isekai potato, because I too fear social confrontation in any form. The show might montage over it quickly, but the fact Luciel actually has to train himself up from level one rather than being automatically overpowered is also a nice token gesture, and there’s a few limply acceptable jokes born of various characters wondering how he got to job-seeking age with literally no idea how the world works. Yes, I did want to drive an ice pick through my eye when yet another good goddamn status screen was introduced, but that’s beside the point.

“Tolerable protagonist, minimal fanservice, and a token attempt at worldbuilding-related conflict (healers, it seems, are extorting the populace since there are no checks on their rates)” meant that I reached the episode simply content not to watch another episode rather than hating every minute and envying my colleagues for snapping up yesterday’s actual quality offerings. It’s stiff and unimpressive to look at, but that only really made me sad when I learned this is the studio tasked with animating yuri series Whisper Me a Love Song next year. I was ready to mark this one down in the books as unimpressive but sufficient, should one contract a disease for which a currently-airing Narou adaptation is the only cure.

Then I learned that after three novels of explicit anti-slavery content (which should at least be all the anime covers), the source material goes in hard on the glutted “modern-day isekai hero starts enslaving people but don’t worry, there are definitely extenuating circumstances” market. Fuck me for the optimism, I guess.