“An Equal Price”
What They Say:
Banished as “useless,” Zenos, a self-taught healer from the slums, turns despair into defiance and opens a secret clinic in the city’s shadows. With unlicensed, unmatched magic, he cures, comforts, and rights wrongs, quietly becoming a legend. But as his power grows, even the royal palace takes notice. Can he buck the odds and heal a world that cast him aside?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Based on the light novel series Sakaku Hishikawa, which has a manga adaptation as well, the project is one that’s good for fans to check out, as both the light novels and manga have been picked up for release in English by J-Novel Club. The adaptation itself has Joe Yoshizaki directing it from the scripts by Taika Miyagi. This is Yoshizaki’s first anime directorial work, which certainly makes it interesting to check out, while Miyagi only has a few works to their name and this being their first series composition and script job. It has Makaria handling the animation production which has mostly done in-between and finishing animation for a lot of projects. They also have That’s Journey this season and the Kiyoneko ONA to their credits.
Within this fantasy series, we’re introduced to Zenos, a young man who has the ability to heal. He’s self-taught and helps out in the darker and more forgotten parts of the capital city of the kingdom while living with Lily and Carmilla. It’s a simple found family kind of setup with cuteness to it in design and personality but it’s anchored by Zenos as he simply wants to help people as he can and take whatever payment they can offer. Amusingly, in the first ten minutes or so, the show throws a lot of characters at you but very little of Zenos as he’s off on a “house call” visit. There are a trio of women who show up for various reasons and are trying to find ways to do something for Zenos, such as figuring out how to cook what he likes while hiding their actual intention from Lily so as to not appear like they’re really trying to get close to him. It’s cute and silly but is it how you open a show? Not for me, but perhaps for others.
When Zenos does get back into the show, it’s when he comes across a human who is manhandling his slave girl and tormenting her before taking her to a graveyard. It’s here that we learn that he uses her to absorb the souls of those within in order to find things of value but she’s become feral and violent toward him. Zenos gets the details when he walks in to help out the girl using his abilities, which means you know she’s going to be a part of his found family. It’s a forced way to see how Zenos vies things in comparison to this othe guy who just wants her dead since he can always buy another slave. But through it, we get a good look at Zenos’ abilities, which extend beyond simply healing and his own past, briefly where his desire is to help everyone and hurt no one. It helps to cement who the character is in a clear way and the scope of his skills, but it’s just kind of awkward and clunky.
In Summary:
The opening episode to this series is both familiar and kind of odd. You can ese the basics here easily enough with what it’s trying to do to establish things but it does it in a kind of unusual and odd way with its pacing and structure. A more traditional structure wouldn’t exactly be better but this one just feels odd in how it’s trying to do things, particularly with its lead character being gone for the majority of the first half. When it does focus on him in the back half, showing his skills in protecting and helping others and then his medical healing approach, it works a lot better. The first half almost lost me just because it was turning into a lot of nothing about nothing with the women trying to build some favor toward Zenos with him not even there. The back half offers a lot more interesting material to it and a chance to see more of this aloof and serious shadow healer who is likely going to cause problems as his work interferes with the authorities. I can see the potential of it, but it’s a rough first episode with how it approaches introducing itself.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
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