The Fall 2022 Manga Guide

The Wrong Way To Use Healing Magic

What's It About? 

Usato, an ordinary high schooler, happens to run into two fellow students after school one rainy day. Suddenly, all three of them are engulfed in a magic circle and transported to a fantasy world. There's just one tiny problem—Usato is simply dragged along by accident! On top of that, Usato learns that he is capable of using healing magic—an incredibly rare affinity in this new world. Now Usato must spend his days with the rescue team thugs, struggling through their hellish training regimen—learning the wrong way to use healing magic. Get ready for an eccentric otherworld fantasy filled with comedy and combat! (from One Peace Books)

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic is based on the light novel series by Kurokata and KeG, with English translation by Kristi Fernandez. The manga is drawn by Reki Kugayama, and One Peace Books will release its first volume both digitally and physically on November 22

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Is It Worth Reading?

Christopher Farris

Rating:

It says a lot about the state of modern isekai stories that The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic primarily stands out for what it doesn't do. Yes, it is an isekai, but the setup of our main man Usato getting summoned to a fantasy land along with a couple of his classmates isn't used to the same exhausting effects I've grown accustomed to in the genre. Usato isn't miraculously overpowered in his abilities, nor is he initially branded as 'weak' or uselessly-powered in a way he can subvert later on. Instead, his aptitude for healing magic is simply a unique status for him that leads to him being trained seperately from the other kids. And then, his relationship with them seems to be one of genuine amiability in wanting to feel worthy to protect and work with them, instead of the vindictiveness of other, more ostracized isekai protagonists forced to find success alongside their peers. Heck, Usato's design even feels like it has a couple more distinguishing characteristics compared to your average potato-face protag. And there aren't even any viewable stat sheets or other blatant RPG mechanics? How did this one get by the isekai inspectors?

The result is a story where I kept expecting some sort of dour dark swerve to come up from behind everything it was setting up, only to be surprised time and again by how genuine and straightforward everything was. Even its title doesn't seem to be an indication of put-upon healers repurposing their abilities to nefarious ends, as in something like Redo of Healer. Instead, it simply outlines the unique conceit for The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic: rather than simple support party members, White Mages are reimagined as combat medics in major militarized battles, needing to dash to and from the front lines transporting injured soldiers who they can heal and then return to the fray. There's a disciplined structure to all of it, though it does result in about 90% of this first volume effectively acting as an ongoing training montage for Usato, put through healing-magic boot camp by lead healer Rose (who rules, by the way).

In other words, I enjoy The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic more as a concept than as a full story at this point. While a lot of the little elements are appealing—Council President Suzune being the one who's earnestly adorably excited about getting isekai'd, and Usato's survival training in a forest culminating in a battle against a giant magic-monster snake—so much of the rest is necessary exposition over exercise and training efforts, or characters reiterating their well-worn motivations and backstories for working so hard. The presentation doesn't look bad at a glance, but there are times when it notably breaks some visual storytelling rules, or zooms in and squishes panels too much in a way that can make it harder to read. To say nothing of how over-layered this volume can get with sound effects and the translation text for those sound effects! So much about The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic can only be called refreshing in comparison to how exhausted I am by its peers. But even then, I can still say I'm honestly interested in where it's going after this.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Covering most of the first volume of the source light novel, The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic is comfortably mediocre. In part that's because of the pacing—while it's technically not moving any faster than the novel, it feels as if it is. Mostly that's due to the fact that the pictures take the place of Usato's (and a couple of other peoples') narration; there's just no need to fill as many pages with descriptions and information. The result is that it feels like we're hopping around in the story in the same way we're crossing a river on elevated rocks: sure, we don't get our feet wet, but the tradeoff is that we miss the experience of the water.

Clumsy metaphors aside (the first week of classes is killing me), the other major issue with the story is Rose. Rose, to put it simply, sucks. She's got some fairly valid reasons for that, fortunately—as an insanely powerful individual with the rare magical affinity of healing magic, she was the first healer to lead a group of soldiers into battle, but lost most, if not all of them. Now she's stuck in a perpetual mental loop of anguish, and she's determined never to lose someone under her charge again. The downside is that her answer to her trauma is to traumatize others. The training regimen she devises and subsequently puts protagonist Usato through is often referred to by the other characters as “hazing.” Their use of that word is absolutely correct, and while Usato seems to do just fine under her brutal tutelage, it's still difficult to watch. I suspect she's meant to be over-the-top in a funny way, while Usato thriving under her methods serves as both justification and the proof that he's the real hero despite having been the extra in the summoning, but it just doesn't work for me.

That's a shame, because while the story isn't anything new or innovative, it is decently interesting, especially in the contrast between the three summoned characters. I love that gorgeous upperclassman Suzune, the picture of high school girl perfection, is just going all out now that her secret isekai dreams are coming true, and while it's frustrating to see the king powerless to stop Rose, I appreciate that he tries. Also I'm a sucker for the chapter where Usato helps an orphaned bear cub avenge his fallen parents and then adopts the cub. Animals are always the way to my heart, something this story seems to be aware of with both Blurin and Rose's pet bunny. I also like the way that the use of Usato's journal is handled; in the novel, its pages are just reproduced, but in the manga Suzune finds it and reads it, which is very in-character for her.

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic is a bit better in novel form, but this isn't a bad adaptation. You'll miss some world-building details if you only pick this version up, but it's more than readable in its manga guise.