The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic – 13 (Fin) – Great Expectations

The best part of Wrong Way was its lovable, adorkable characters and their chemistry with one another, and finale leans into those strengths. Ken and Suzune meet with the fox girl Amako, who showed Ken a vision so he’d change that vision’s future. Because he and his friends survived, now he can help her mother. Doing so means traveling to Beastkin territory, which is quite far away. Ken wants to help if he can; he just needs to ask Rose and the King.

Meanwhile, Black Knight, whom we finally learned is named Felm, is having the same initial difficulties as Ken in adjusting to her new life with the Rescue Team and Rose as her captain. We know from her time with the demon army that Felm was a bit of a lazy brat who skated by on her magical talent, but that shit won’t fly. Ken gives her a diary like the one he used to help him process the hardship he went through. It’s here where I declare that I love Felm with all my heart and can’t get enough of her!

Amako is pretty cute herself—Suzune agrees, and would really like to scratch those fluffy ears sometime—but she’s not as fleshed out yet as Felm. That said, the king voices his gratitude to her for giving Ken a vision that ultimately motivated him to do what was needed to save the kingdom from demon invasion. In exchange, the final leg of Ken’s four-leg missive delivery journey will be her home in Beastkin Territory so he can heal her mother.

Just as she witnesses how powerful Ken and Rose are when they’re doing dodging training, Felm uses her sneaking affinity to learn that Ken will be leaving for parts unknown, and she’s clearly worried about that. When she tries to make a break for it (though not back to the demons), Rose catches her easily and immediately senses that Felm is worried about Ken.

Felm can tsundere all she likes; the fact of the matter is, when Ken says her name it makes her immeasurably happy. I for one wish she’d be joining his missive delivering mission, but there’s still much she has to learn that only Rose can teach her. She’ll be in good, if rough, hands.

Rose assures Felm that Ken will be just fine, and won’t be easily hurt by anyone. After all, he was trained by perhaps the most terrifyingly powerful human in the world, so anyone else—including the former Black Knight—is a cakewalk by comparison. Rose makes Ken more happy than he expected by telling him she expects great things from him.

So as she continues training Felm, he heads off with Suzune, Kazuki, the mage Welcie, the knights Aruku and Thomas, and of course, Amako. Hopefully we’ll get a second season that chronicles their travels, and above all gives us more Felm. There’s no such thing as too much Felm!

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic – 12 – Upright Demon Brigade

Back from his great victory, Ken is suddenly the toast of the town, as everyone in the market crowds around him. Needless to say he’s not used to this kind of adulation, but you can’t say his heroic deeds didn’t justify it! The way he managed to cancel out Black Knight’s magic also means she asks for him specifically as a condition of providing useful demon intel.

Suzune accompanies Ken, both to protect him—or at least be his meat shield, a line delivered perfectly—but Black Knight, back in her armor, is still in rough shape, since she bore the full brunt of his punches in battle. Ken goes into her cell to heal her, which means first melting away parts of her suit so he can make physical contact. Turns out she’s never felt anyone’s warm touch before, so Ken has a profound effect on her.

Speaking of punches, Rose doesn’t waste any time advancing Ken’s training to the next level: learning how to dodge her E. Honda-like supersonic punches. The ones he can’t dodge, he has to absorb, and her first one, in which she’s going easy on him, sends him flying and knocks him out to the point he comes to thinking he had a nightmare … only it’s reality.

Ken vents about his three days of fresh hell to the Black Knight (or BK), who is both clearly happy he’s there spending time with her and somewhat confused the man who defeated her so completely in battle is now just hanging out with her. I love this dynamic, and BK herself (again, voiced by Aoi Yuuki and sounding a lot like Maomao) is a total cutie.

It’s just like our kind best boy Ken to reach out to those he thinks are having trouble, even his ostensible enemy. Because she’s a demon, it felt a little foreboding when the king summoned Rose and we didn’t hear what about, and Ken even thought about the possibility of BK being executed. Turns out, Rose wants to reform BK into an “upright demon” and a member of the Rescue Team. That’s awesome, especially since BK totally has a crush on Ken!

Ken is informed by Rose that he, Suzune, and Kazuki (who is basically married to Celia now) are going to be dispatched to neighboring nations in order to deliver missives as key parts of a campaign to build alliances against the demons.

While in town buying some supplies, smiling at some smitten young lady fans of his, and bumping into Suzune, he spots the fox girl who showed him a bad future he was able to prevent. She doesn’t seem that miffed about being run up on and lifted into the air. In fact, she’d been meaning to speak to him about paying her back by saving her mother.

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic – 11 – Doing What Needed to Be Done

As she lies on the ground beaten and bleeding, Suzune remembers that dark, rainy day when she and Kazuki were at school late. She hid her sad smiles from Kazuki when he praised her for earning the teachers’ complete trust and exceeding their expectations.

Then they met Ken, who forgot his umbrella, ended up in another world, and Suzune was able to be herself, and Ken accepted her true self, not the fake Suzune she’d created back home. She thought as long as the three of them were together, everything would work out.

My attitude going in? If Suzune or Kazuki die, I RIOT. Well, we don’t know how this story ends, but so far, Suzune’s still right! Before the Black Knight can deliver a killing blow, Ken charges in at Mach K and delivers a hell of a right hook to the Black Knight, sending them flying.

When Suzune comes to, she and Kazuki are being healed by Ken. They were certainly in a bad way like his vision, but they were still breathing. He made it in time by not hesitating. They all stuck together, and things worked out.

As expected, the nanosecond things started not going exactly the Black Knight’s way, she (as it turns out) gets all whiny and petulant about How Things Are Supposed To Be, and fury at why those things Aren’t That Way. She’s nothing but a cheatin’-ass bully, and it’s time to put her in her place. Not only is Ken able to actually harm her and damage her suit of mana armor, but her attacks have no effect on him.

Throughout their battle Ken is surrounded by a green healing aura that turns her razor-sharp attacks into black goop. But this is no stalemate; Black Knight can’t hurt Ken, but he can most definitely hurt her. When Kazuki comes to, he and Suzune watch the battle and aren’t sure why Ken’s attacks aren’t continuously healing his opponent.

Then it dawns on Suzune: the Black Knight has a weakness to healing magic. Not only that, but Ken’s healing fists are powerful enough on their own to deal significant damage. When Suzune actually says the titular line, “That’s definitely the wrong way to use healing magic,” I did a fist pump.

At first Black Knight is able to heal her armor, but as the battle wears on, it’s clear she’s losing mana. We’d seen her in the past lazing around, sailing by with her nigh-invincible armor. But Ken isn’t tiring; thanks to his ridiculous training regime, this is a walk in the park.

When she tries to go all out with one final attack, Ken’s fist meets the tip of her enlarged sword, blows through it, surrounds both of them in an gleaming emerald aura, and delivers a devastating punch to her gut. The Black Knight is knocked out and her suit of armor melts away, revealing a beautiful young demon woman with silver hair.

She’s promptly tied up and taken as a prisoner. Suzune messes with him a bit by telling him she overheard his embarrassing shounen name for his attack, but then gets serious and thanks him for saving her. Since she and Kazuki are all healed up, they head back to the front, while Rose orders Ken back to camp with her.

While he, Rose, and the other healers continue to treat the wounded and poisoned, they suddenly see a bright flash of light mixed with lightning: Suzune and Kazuki have done their part by taking down the giant snake monster, which was never going to be as tough as the Black Knight with her reflective anti-hero armor.

With the capture of their most powerful knight and killing of the giant snake, the Demon Army beats a swift retreat, their morale in tatters. Amila is at least level-headed enough to know they don’t stand a chance against Rose, Siglis, and a second Healing Monster in White.

With the battle being a complete victory thanks to Ken, Rose gives him his proper due, while also praising him for making it back to her alive. She admits he reminds her of comrades who only live on in her memory who represented the best of the Rescue Team, and now Ken has similarly distinguished himself.

Upon hearing her kind words, Ken can’t help but tear up, reminding Rose that at the end of the day he’s still a green seventeen-year-old kid. When he finally runs out of mana and stamina and passes out in her arms, she holds him close and tells him he did good.

So did this episode, which was full of heart, emotion, and some outstanding character work while also providing quite a bit of nifty, satisfying action. It’s a true gem of an episode that brought the whole season together—an emerald, if you will.

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic – 10 – The Black Knight Surprises

The morning of the battle arrives, and Ken wakes up to a rising sun and an uneasy heart. Suzune feels the same way, but compensates by flaunting her pretty battle armor and flirting with Ken. She wants him to “soothe her heart”, but when Ken yelps for Kazuki to rescue him like a demsel in distress, he does. We see that despite her lighthearted surface, Suzune’s hand still trembles as she grasps her sword.

Now we know why Wrong Way took so long to give us an action-packed battle: it doesn’t really have the budget to actually pull one off. The battle loses a lot of grandeur once it devolves into a sequence of panning and shaking stills. Still, I’ve long since been okay with the so-so- production values because the character work has been so solid.

Once the battle gets going, Rose and Ken advance into the battle area, and he ends up rescuing a number of soldiers, one in particular who was about to be killed. Suzune and Kazuki soon encounter the Black Knight, who is so laid back it had me wondering if they were also from another world. When the soldiers ignore Suzune’s orders to hold back, they pay dearly, as the damage caused by their strikes ends up reflected back upon them.

While Suzune and Kazuki seem to be doing okay in the heat of battle, it’s clear Ken is having a lot more difficulty. He even ends up in the same situation as the soldier he saved, about to be skewered by a demon foot soldier, only to be rescued by that very same soldier! I like the fact that the soldier, while perhaps not as strong or fast as Ken, has still seen battle, and so is able to think and act more clearly.

Ken’s vision also becomes clearer once he’s saved by the soldier. Specifically, the vision of Suzune and Kazuki fallen and bloodied at the feet of the Black Knight. He rushes to them as fast as he can, hopeful he won’t be too late. When a slash to the Knight’s back doesn’t heal or reflect, Suzune takes it as a sign they can’t reflect an attack they can’t see coming. Suzune has Kazuki use his light magic to blind and distract while she uses her lightning speed to slip behind the knight and stab them in the throat.

I am, and I cannot stress this enough, NOT COOL with this

But the knight simply chose not to heal their back wound, in order to trick Suzune. They also don’t need to actually say “reflect” to reflect. They reflect Suzune’s attacks, and she ends up with her throat and back slashed open, while Kazuki gets impaled on the knight’s greatsword.

It’s an exact recreation of Ken’s horrific vision, but hopefully Ken can get to them before they bleed out. Not only that, there’s a chance he just be the one who can actually harm the unharmable Black Knight … perhaps by , say, using healing magic the “wrong” way?

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic – 09 – Staying the Person They Admired

If only she’d stayed a little closer to her team, Rose might have been able to heal some of them. Instead, Nero is able to lure her farther away. And while both Aul and the others are able to fight Nero’s subordinates to a stalemate that earns them Nero’s praise, once he uses his cursed sword to compel his people to fight without regard for their lives, Rose’s people start falling one after the other.

The episode doesn’t spare the brutality of the ensuing bloodbath, as the knights call for Rose to heal them. Alas, when her eye is struck by the cursed sword, her healing magic has no effect, and her mana is drained. She can’t make it in time to save anyone, but Aul makes it in time to save her, at the cost of her own life.

Rose lashes out in rage and beats the hell out of Nero before throwing his own cursed sword into his shoulder. He is not immune to its effects, but he still has one subordinate in reserve: a young, inexperienced, and clearly freaked out Amila. In her face Rose sees Aul’s, and ultimately allows her to escape with her maimed master, though with her wounded foot it’s not like Rose can move much.

With her last strands of life, Aul puts her hand on  Rose’s pained, bloodied face and smiles. She has no regrets, is glad to have been able to fight under Rose, and knows the others felt the same way. She urges Rose to “stay the one they admire,” before breathing her last. Rose, utterly broken, lets out a primal scream.

She does manage to return home with the bodies of all her subordinates, for which the parents of one are grateful. But she asks the king to relieve her of her army command and revoke her knighthood. She refuses to heal her eye, so she never forgets the lives lost under her watch. She spends a month alone in the suddenly empty and silent barracks once so full of life. She even admits to a concerned Siglis that the thought occurred to her that death might not be so bad.

But Rose has no intention of ending the life Aul gave her. It’s only a matter of what to do with it. Visions of her subordinates and Aul appear before her and tell her that if any of them were acting like she did, she’d throttle them and assign them to training from hell. Aul then reminds Rose of what she told her: that everything changes, and you have to accept that and move forward.

Rose allows herself a few more minutes of fragility, and tears, then stands up and walks outside the barracks with renewed purpose and resolve. She’ll honor Aul and the others by creating a new kind of force, one that saves lives and won’t allow anyone on the battlefield to die. She knows she’ll need someone like her who can both heal and fight.

Back in the present, she tells that someone, Usato Ken, how glad she is to have found him, and that he should be mindful of how precious his existence is. As they near his first battlefield, we’ll finally, finally see how her Rescue Team system works, and how the Heroes fare, and whether Ken can save them from a supremely confident Black Knight, not to mention a grown Amila eager to kill Rose.