Reviews for Doctor Elise: The Royal Lady with the Lamp

I will be honest, this was a disappointment. I read the story (multiple times) and I was looking forward to see it happening in an anime, but they butchered the story and the characters a lot resulting in an incoherent and messy story that could've been soo much better. If I had to describe how this anime feels, then I would see it feels like watching a Hollywood adaptation of a beloved anime. Look, the new story isn't bad. It's passable. But is that what you want from an anime? I do recommend this anime simply because it's pretty unique, but I recommend reading the story more.

The beginning starts out realistic, where a Dr. Aoi gets isekai'd. BUT This isn't your usual terrible isekai. It is so much better. As the story progresses, Gekai Elise becomes a heartfelt and authentic journey of a young lady proving to people that she can become a surgeon. Despite her previous life flaws, Elise demonstrates with her knowledge and skills that she is a better person and puts her doctor skills to help people in need. What makes Gekai Elise unique is there is real healthcare knowledge used in the anime, and there is great progression and character development between Elise and the characters aroundher throughout the series.

The series is realistic and there is no over-sexualizing characters, which is a huge plus.

I would definitely give Gekai Elise a watch if you enjoy a girl boss proving people wrong and a relatable but not cliche plotline.

Gekai Elise is a Medical Romance anime that is has Double Reincarnation + Time Loop. We have our main character Elise who was reincarnated in modern world after being executed in her first life. We learn that she was definitely not a gift. She did have very bad attitude and was obsessed with idea marriage with the Prince. In this life she had a loving family and easy life but after reincarnation her life was not easy. In this life she became a very famous doctor but sadly she died again (Luck is not on her side as we can see) after this she is Reincarnatedagain to her first life before the execution and bad thing happens. So in this life she decided to become doctor too but she has a big problem in her way and it’s a marriage with the prince that supposed to happen on her 18th birthday. We see how she became a doctor in this world’ how she uses her knowledge ‘ people mostly don’t believe in her and try to sabotage her too because she needs to become Queen.

In this anime there are a lot of problems. Firstly I’m gonna talk about the Genre of this anime that is very poorly shown:Romance, we have more than one love interest but with none of them there is a enough connection for us to be called Romance or for me at least. But my biggest problem is the main love interest Linden (her fiance the Prince) this man is dull as a stick. He didn’t do NOTHING almost all of the Anime. Most he can do is sometimes is to go next to her to talk…But even this talks are unnecessary as fuck for the whole Anime the only think this man know about Else is that she loves eating sweets and she is try to become a doctor. That’s all he has zero idea what type of a person she is almost all of the Anime and the anime wants me to ship them…. Then give me a reason? There are some situations that was puts Elise in danger or be a wall between her and her dreams. He didn’t help her at all even I feel he can help her he dont. I cant this man makes me angry and the worst part the other two man are 10 times better than him. One of them is smart and the other one is brave and funny.

The sad part is the second problem is the main character Elise. She is your typical Mary Sue. She can’t do wrong she doesn’t have any flaws. Everybody loves her , she is perfect at everything. Watching a character without flaws in a universe that she needs to struggle and prove herself in the hard way is exhausting. Even when she struggles it not because of her she always right and gonna came clean from everything without a problem. Not only that she doesn’t have an interesting character. She just smart and that’s all

There is some medical and logic problems too but I’m not gonna talk about them or it’s gonna be too long.

Is there any good parts? Kind of her relationship with Graham and Julian was nice too see and I think I can count that her try to prove herself too whole kingdom while no one believes her at the start was nice to see.

The animation was nice nothing that gives the wow effect but its suits the anime but when you look at the original design of the characters they look pretty dull especially her brothers somehow.

In the end I dont recommend this anime there are a lot of better historical romance with good female characters.

If you are looking for a medical show, this is not it. If you are looking for a period drama/romance, this is not it. If you are looking for a villainess/reincarnation story, this is not it either. This show squanders its many ingredients and shows no signs of life throughout. There are not many medical anime shows out there (to my knowledge), so I was really excited for this one. Unfortunately, the medical aspect is seriously lacking. I am not a medical professional so I cannot comment on realism, but I can say that the medical problems and solutions feel very simplistic. Elise makes some observations,rattles off medical terminology like she is reading off of Wikipedia, identifies the condition, proceeds to administer treatment, and then the patient is fine. The whole process is very “A to B to C”, like a detective finding a bloody knife on a corpse, taking fingerprints from the knife, and then arresting the culprit by matching those prints. It may be true that all the details are indeed accurate, but they make for dull viewing.

Elise is 100% correct in her diagnoses right off the bat and 100% successful with her treatment; there are absolutely no uncertainties, complications or mistakes. Even a genius doctor like Elise should not be able to see and predict everything, unless she has the all-seeing eye (like in Parallel World Pharmacy), and it would have been satisfying (and expected of a doctor) to see her adapt to unexpected developments and even learn new things. There are no other doctors that provide much help or insight, either; Elise does it all herself. Everything is neatly wrapped up in a matter of minutes, and there is no real challenge or tension. I cannot shake the feeling that very little thought was given to how doctors actually work and what they go through; what is important is that Elise healed them, and that is it.

An interesting twist to the medical aspect is the setting, which looks like 19th century Europe. I was curious about how Elise, who has knowledge centuries ahead of the times, would deal with the outdated science and culture. The show does almost nothing with this, except having other characters marvel at Elise’s knowledge. To my (untrained) eyes, most of the facilities, tools, and practices look basically the same as the modern-day ones, and Elise never has any real difficulty producing results or convincing others. I expected some doctors to not even understand what she is talking about, but that is never the case. Also, Elise never really makes an effort to hide how she knows so much, and everyone just accepts it and moves on. The patriarchal nature of the field of medicine at the time is very weakly hinted at but is not a factor in Elise’s career. There are so many missed opportunities to create some interesting challenges for Elise.

This shallowness extends to the broader, non-technical aspects of a doctor’s work. The biggest pet peeve of mine is when Elise promises her patients that “she will save them,” on more than one occasion. Elise, a seasoned veteran from the modern day, should know better than to say something like this, but I can chalk that up to dramatic flourish. However, the show still does not really dig into so many other topics in this field that are ripe for drama, such as her relationship with co-workers, her relationship with patients, educating people and bringing about change, tackling ethical dilemmas, how she handles the stress, exhaustion and responsibility, and more.

The show does not even do a good job of characterizing Elise outside of her medical skills. On top of being a medical genius who can do no wrong, she has no character traits other than how kind and hard-working she is and... how much she likes sweets. She has no character flaws or weaknesses to speak of, and she is constantly validated and praised by everyone around her. The main love interest does not have a personality either, which makes the romance side of things a non-starter. During most of their stock-standard interactions, Elise is barely even aware of him. Other characters get little to no characterization and have almost no impact on Elise’s journey; they either stand around in awe of her talents or feebly try to hold her back before they are steamrolled or are won over. The show also tackles palace politics, centered around Elise’s status as a noblewoman and the prince’s fiancée, but these developments turn out nonsensical and only a mild inconvenience in the face of Elise’s overwhelming genius and kindness.

The double-reincarnation setup in the beginning is interesting, but Elise draws so little from her modern-day life that it seems like the only reason for this setup is to impart medical skills on the main character in what otherwise would have been a simple “re-do” story. Also, Elise’s “villainous” past is the source of her desire to help sick people as a form of penance, but this is somewhat unconvincing when her exact crimes are left very vague and have almost no repercussions on the present anyway.

The closest comparison to Elise that I can think of is Sei from The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent (also voiced by Yui Ishikawa). Sei received criticism for being an overpowered, bland character, but she at least had a desire to learn, the pressure to grow into her role, and a shy demeanor. Elise is a vaguely likable lead, but her complete lack of personality or quirks fails to make the character very engaging or sympathetic.

Yui Ishikawa and the other voice actors simply do not have much to work with here. The music, visuals, animation and direction are barely passable and do little to elevate the lifeless storyline and wooden characters.

There are so many things to talk about in this review, yet there is so little to be said about each of those things. Elise is a doctor, but she is so good at fixing everything so quickly that she might as well have been a magical healer. Elise is a “villainess” reincarnated from the modern day, but that ends up such a minor detail that she might as well have been simply an extremely gifted doctor from 19th century Europe. Elise is too bland a character, surrounded by non-characters and non-threats, to develop any sort of romance, drama or intrigue effectively.

This show has been a major disappointment, and the more I think about it, the harder it is to come up with any redeeming qualities. The most positive thing I can say about the show is that it is good-natured and inoffensive. It also deserves some recognition for tackling the topic of medicine in the first place, which I would like to see more of. If you are starving for anything medical/healing-related, you may get some enjoyment out of this. If you’ve completely run out of wholesome, female-led romance/dramas to watch, this may pass the time. Otherwise, this one is an easy skip.

I began this isekai anime with high hopes, and it was enjoyable but didn't execute the premise as well as it could have. Elise is an interesting character and starts making her way into the medical field in the past. It excited me to think of what was to come. However, the medical part of the story isn't well developed, the characters feel a bit bland, and there are no interesting challenges for her. Elise is instantly good at everything medically, which makes sense, but only to an extent. It would have been more entertaining for Elise to have to adjust to the less modern medicalfield, with things to overcome such as not having modern medical equipment, or proving medical treatments are effective before she goes ahead with them. The medical side of the anime is by far the most interesting, but Elise's lack of growth and apparent "all-knowing medical goddess" -ness makes it feel a bit flat.

As for the being the queen side of things, we start with some interesting political input from the main character, which would be cool to explore further, but instead, there's lots of screen time spent on rather boring scenes like being at a ball. I'd personally much prefer if they were to spend less time on noble life, and if there was focus on her engagement for it to be focused on her political opinions and solutions she would implement in the slums to prevent famine or plagues, and how she would prove this is a good idea.

As far as the romance goes, it kind of feels forced. There isn't much chemistry between the main couple, and I'm sorry to disappoint but nearly every guy falls in love with her. Her brother is overprotective too, in that weird reverse harem way. The characters that like her don't have a personality anyways. It's kind of disappointing to see this premise force so much attempted romance into the plot when thats not really what we're here for. Romance is fine, but maybe try to keep it to one or two characters. Just my opinion, as an avid romance enjoyer, this feels kind of badly done.

But the show is enjoyable. At the very least its more interesting than most reverse harems, or isekais, but it's left me disappointed because it had so much potential and was let down a bit.

This anime is tolerable if you turn your brain off. It has a severe misunderstanding of what the medical world is like, and paints an overly simplistic view. Our MC can do every type of general and specialized surgery. She also goes around telling people she will save them with absolute certainty, never mind the risks of surgical procedures (or the nuances of treatment outcomes not being effective). All of her surgeries are 100% effective, and we are even told at various points in the first episode that all of her surgeries are successful and cure the patient. Elise is driven, optimistic, and hard-working soshe is not unlikeable, but her character does feel a little shallow/flat. Overall, none of the characters really stand out, and the world they are presented in is also lackluster.

This anime is probably fine for a young shoujo demographic (e.g. tweens) and can actually serve as positive representation (we have so much media with OP male doctors, it's good for young girls to have something to look up to/aspire to be). As an idealized character, Elise is not a bad role model for young girls.

Gekai Elise is one of the more original isekai, or should I say, “reverse isekai”, in recent years. What makes this one cool is that Elise is given another shot at life in her original world AFTER being isekai’d to Earth. This allows her the unique experience of combining both her original life’s knowledge and the medicinal skills she gained on Earth making for a really fun watch. Now, there’s going to be some party poopers who say the show isn’t accurate or realistic in its portrayal of some medical stuff and to that I’ll agree, but it’s ultimately anime not grey’s anatomy. I’m not watchingthis for 100 percent accuracy. The fact we’re getting a show that handles medicine and doctors in a somewhat realistic manner in a fantasy world is so cool. I’m so used to healing magic or fantastical herbs being used in the treatment of patients, but to get a story that relies on legitimate surgery and medical analysis to treat people is a treat. While not a doctor myself, my sister and several other family members are and we had a blast watching this together.

Elise faces a lot of challenges in her original world due to her awful personality before her reincarnation as well as the sexist nature of the medical field. Like in the real world in the 18-19th centuries, medicine is a male dominated field and she struggles to gain acceptance of her peers, even having to disguise her noble background for a time. She also has to convince the king that she’s better suited to be a doctor than his son’s fiancé. This plot point I thought was a little dumb because these surely aren’t mutually exclusive.. but I enjoyed seeing her prove both he and the kingdom as a whole wrong, earning the respect of royalty and established doctors alike.

It’s a small cast, mainly focusing on Elise, her fiancé, his brother and her mentor, but I did enjoy them for the most part. I actually think the little brother, Mikhail got fleshed out a lot better than the fiancé. If I had to pick a criticism, it’s that Linden needed more screen time. I understand it’s a long running Manwha, so for these 12 episodes he probably just wasn’t a big character in the source. But it does feel a little odd because you can tell the story wants him to be important, and you just can’t quite care that deeply about him yet.

Speaking of Manwha, Gekai Elise is part of a great trend of Manwha adaptations. It seems surreal to be getting this many lately and I love the diversity that they bring to the medium. Different types of writing and settings are really what we need. There’s so much cool stuff coming out of Korea lately.

The art in the show looks really good. You can tell the author was heavily influenced by traditional shoujo art. The animation isn’t the best, but it rarely is in these villainess shows so that’s no shock. Overall, the production is solid from top to bottom.

Gekai Elise is just really fun to watch. Yea, the story isn’t too developed right now, but just seeing Elise save lives and break through social barriers, with a tinge of romance was more than enough for me. I can’t get enough of strong independent female characters who are determined to make their dreams a reality and this is one of the best of the bunch.

Gekai Elise gets a very strong 8, out of 10.

A strong must watch! No matter your gender, age, it is a gem that's rare to come by. I am truly biased by having read the manhwa and loved it so much, however that would only make me all the more frustrated if I saw that the anime adaptation wasn't on par with it. It isn't her second life, it's her third, Elise is given a second chance at her first life after redeeming herself during her second. In her first life she had everything to be happy and made everyone miserable, the empire became a living hell. In her second life she had nothing,no family, no money, other than her studies, she was determined to save as many as possible and redeem herself from her mistakes from her 1st life.

In her third life, she is simply grateful and everyone around her sees her maturing to the woman they always wanted and deeply down believed her to be. She was loved, as she changed to meet their expectations, it was well received and praised upon.

She hesitates a lot and tends to phrase all her knowledge from modern era in a way that best fits the context she's in, to not create a reality clash that's too big.

Out of all isekais that tend to be higly repetitive, superficial, sexualize women and lack emotional momentum, this one is the most meaningful for me, as while all the others use the knowledge they have for selfish reasons, for revenge or whatever, she uses it to save people and in crucial moments, for selfless reasons. Even if it means putting herself in a tight position, she's totally committed to her cause and confident in her medical skills.

Everything is fine, but the writing is crazy bad There is a scene where a fire started inside a theater and our main character, Elise (of a very high ranking family, second only to the imperial family), tells some nobles not to breathe the obviously toxic smoke. Well... the show, out of thin air, pulls a nobles vs commoner girl cliché, and they start ranting about how they are nobles and superior and she is no one to tell them what to do, all this while breathing the smoke and coughing. It was so absurd that had me laughing, however, the other times this happens are not sofunny.

The show is filled with these moments where clichés happen without any regard to the story.

Most of the times they are small things, like a character saying some line that doesn't make any sense, however, sometimes they are major event that heavily steer the plot and that's very frustrating.

I suggest you watch this anime only if you have high tolerance for bad writing.

This show actually made me angry. I can forgive inconsistencies and some poor plot and world-building, but I can only suspend my disbelief for so long. This show is an insult to anyone with any knowledge of medical practices, history, fantasy, etc. Buckle up folks. Time to dissect this trash piece by piece. Spoilers in case you actually want to watch this. You've been warned. Doctor protag is the best doctor in the world apparently and gets called to Germany to perform some surgery on someone because she's so incredible and is a polyglot too. On her way though plane-kun crash lands and somehow she and allthe other passengers survive, many of whom are in critical condition. She proceeds to successfully treat or perform emergency surgery on every single one of them.

Here's where my first and second major problems come in. After finishing treating the passengers, we find out that she herself sustained a severe abdominal wound and dies after succumbing to blood loss and falling dramatically out of the broken airframe. So she somehow managed to, first, successfully treat every single passenger in that plane with just the plane's first aid kit and a piece of broken glass for a scalpel, no proper surgical tools, all while, second, bleeding out through a massive abdominal wound without any hint of suffering or difficulty on her part. Makes sense. Moving on.

She then gets isekai'd back to the same world that she was originally reverse isekai'd from, making this essentially a reverse reverse isekai. In her first life she was a brat who treated her family and virtually everyone around her poorly. Here's problem number 3. In her newly reborn self with all her memories from her past two lives, she has a near complete personality change from her original self. Nobody questions this sudden extreme personality change for very long and quickly accepts her new behaviour.

Problem number 4. She decides that to avoid the future that ended her first life, she's going to become a doctor and fix all this world's problems. Naturally, she's challenged on this by several people throughout the story that I've seen so far, but all of them quickly relent before long despite being effectively blindsided by this newfound goal. Remember she'd never shown any interest in medicine before now in her life in this world. She's then sent to a really unforgiving hospital as part of the condition of allowing her to study and practice medicine with the expectation that she'll quickly give up.

Here's where things really start to get bad. She shows up at this hospital and is sent by the "genius" resident surgeon to the ward with the worst conditions in the whole hospital to try and scare her off. She immediately cleans the dirty room in record time until it's spotless and then, problem number 5, proceeds to perfectly treat every patient and, worse still, perform unsupervised emergency surgery on one of them to which none of the nurses present offer any substantial resistance. Problem number 6, she performs this surgery using extremely modern tools and modern looking operating gowns in what has up until now appeared to be a early semi-Victorian era fantasy setting. She succeeds, shows up the resident "genius" doctor, and receives very little resistance or punishment on top of everything.

It gets worse though. Problem number 7. In another emergency procedure, one of the staff brings in a patient who's clearly still breathing, albeit with difficulty, and suggests using an AED/defibrillator on them. As far as I know, you don't use a defibrillator on a patient whose heart is beating when the problem isn't the heart's rhythm. Problem 8. AEDs didn't exist in Victorian times. Problem 9. There's no explanation of where the power for the AED or anything else in this world comes from. Problem number 10. The protag again successfully performs the surgery herself with minimal resistance or supervision, shows up the "genius" doctor again, and receives no punishment afterward.

Later on we see a patient who was shot in the spleen. Shot, not stabbed. So they've added guns now. Fine. Guns did exist in Victorian times in more primitive forms, so that by itself isn't a problem. No, problems 11, 12, and 13 are how, with what, and by whom the patient was shot. We see a flashback showing the classic trope of these two characters being assaulted in a sketchy back alley. The bad guy charges at the two guys with a knife and the one guy defends the other with his sword and disarms the bad guy and knocks him down. What happened next blew my mind. The bad guy pulls out a modern-looking revolver and shoots the guy with the sword. First of all, why didn't the bad guy use the revolver from the start? Second, why is there a modern revolver in an early Victorian setting. At best, they had old looking black powder cartridge revolvers. Look them up if you're interested. Third, there's absolutely no way that this bad guy could have had a gun anyways given the way he's presumably been living. Revolvers back then were generally things that only military or police officers and wealthy people owned, and this bad guy was clearly none of those things given his living situation and lack of combat ability. Flashback to the present and once again, protag performs the surgery perfectly, receives little resistance from even the other doctors this time, saves the guy's life, shows up the "genius" resident yet again along with all the other doctors in the room, receives no punishment for disobeying orders, and everything is sunshine and rainbows.

Here's another one. In one scene the protag helps set a patient's dislocated shoulder using a method named after the person who created it IRL. Problem number 14. The "genius" resident doctor recognizes and specifically says the name of the technique. There's absolutely no way that he could have known the name of a technique created by, and named after, a person from a completely different world. It would be one thing if the technique was named after a person who created it in the fantasy world, but the fact that they just used the name of the real person who created the technique in our Earth is just plain lazy writing. Such an obvious logical fallacy that could've easily been fixed.

Last before I completely stopped paying attention. Problem number 15, every single surgery the protag has performed through every episode so far, and likely going forward too, has seen her and someone else spilling mindless, argumentative exposition over top of the patient as the patient is suffering/bleeding out instead of performing the surgery, wasting valuable time that could determine whether or not the patient survives. It would be one thing if that time was spent identifying the problem and how to fix it or doing anything else meaningful, but in every instance so far, it's just characters creating conflict for the sake of dramatization.

This show is downright insulting to watch and a complete waste of time. Don't watch it unless you can laugh at how bad it is. I certainly couldn't. Screw this show.

Deeply disappointed I liked the first few episodes then it hit me how medically all over this setting is. It’s supposed to be a medevil society but it has the medical tech of 19th century while have medical tools of 20th century. It would have been so much more interesting if the author knew anything about medical science besides what they googled. Have a person with 21st century medical science have to deal with not having the tools she needs to do anything, calling her a genius while not have to adapt at all is so terrible. When watching this I just wanted to pullout my copy of Black Jack instead of this minimum effort medical drama “romance”.

The romance is non existent he doesn’t even interact with her as himself most of the shows run time.

Why is thier no consequences for her past self actions, this literally could have been a doctor dies and is reborn in some random girls body.

TLDR: I don’t hate myself enough to continue watching such mediocre brain-rotting anime with uninspired characters. Characters are 0/3 - FL is tolerable. The prince is like a shell you see on the beach, pretty on the outside but hollow on the inside and no amount of cliche backstory can make him even as half as interesting as stale bread. In Shojo mangas, you can sometimes just feel when an ML is made for the FL. Now, you can argue and say that technically all MLs are made for the FLs but no, there are MLs out there who are distinct and have a life,personality, and dreams outside the FL. Sadly, this is not one of those MLs.

The story is a 0/3 - I do love the medical stuff and if they scratched the romance and focused on that I wouldn't dislike this anime so since the medical scenes are the only redeeming quality of the show. Her relationship with her family; the focus on “being a doctor” arc, while I do love the moments, does sacrifice interactions and moments with family that can truly flesh out their connection. Also, the romance makes me want the scalpel to suddenly come alive and sweep her off her feet. She has more chemistry with the medical equipment than the prince.

Art is a 0/3- The art is like eating Hunts baked beans. You just scrunch your face in disgust every time you take a spoonful.

Personal taste is 0/1.

It is so bad I want to give it a zero but that's not possible, so I give it a one.

As someone who's read the manhwa for Doctor Elise, I can confirm that the manhwa is extremely good. Definitely not your average isekai. Its actually quite educational and informative. Theres lots of character development and growth that progressively happens over the manhwa. Doctor Elise is definitely one of the more unique isekais, utilizing real medical knowledge and integrating that into the story. Give this a watch if you're into more educational shows while still maintaining a good level of fictional attributes. The characters are pretty great. Elise is such a girlboss and she only gets even better as the story progresses. Personally, I think the animeadaptation is definetly not bad, but I don't feel like it was as good as the manhwa. Of course this will probably change as the show continues to air, however at the time of posting this review, I'd recommend reading the manhwa over the manga.

If you enjoy isekais, like education, and love strong female leads, this show is amazing. And if you enjoyed the show, definitely check out the manhwa.

Have you ever had that feeling when a series is too fast and too slow at the same time, when it somehow feels completely off the pace? I had exactly that feeling with "Doctor Elise: The Royal Lady with the Lamp". Apart from the fact that I don't know where the lamp is supposed to be in the series, the anime is about a noblewoman who was executed at the stake by her husband. However, she wakes up in our world and wants to make up for her past mistakes and becomes a doctor who is considered an absolute genius. She is so talented that sherescues every injured passenger after an airplane crash without having any tools. In the end, however, she dies from her own injuries, only to wake up again shortly before her engagement! In order to really make up for her mistakes and prevent all the suffering she had to witness in her first life, she does her best to break off the engagement and become a doctor here too.

I have a few problems with the series. I've already mentioned that the pacing seems slightly off. Halfway through, she's still engaged and still not recognized as a doctor, while at the same time she's undergone dozens of surgeries (or the like), all of which we get to see within the few episodes. This makes the show feel rushed when it's about her work as a doctor and too slow when it's about royal diplomacy.

Apart from that, the characters all come across as flat or unsympathetic. The king, for example, allows himself to be influenced too much by his minister and thus comes across as stupid and an asshole, as he makes life difficult for the protagonist even though he made her a promise. Everyone else often only appears very briefly and simply befriends her or falls in love with her, without much backstory or similar. There seems to be some backstory, because stuff is hinted at again and again, but the hints aren't enough to give the characters any depth.

Conclusion: Uff - why am I still watching this? The series somehow has a charm that I can hardly describe and that makes me curious about the next episodes, even though I could hardly stand the previous ones.

Edit: I've now seen the series all the way through and decided that I can leave this review as it is. The biggest problem with the series is the intrigue part, which I can only describe as strange. I admit that it has potential, but the way it's implemented is annoying 90% of the time. The last 10% concerns the finale, which took a step back from the doctors' part and focused more on the intrigue, making for a thoroughly interesting finale, even if the rather open ending is annoying.

I've seen many isekai and reincarnation stories over the years. The more recent ones have developed somewhat of a bad habit of excessive power fantasy and heavy wish fulfillment. It's a guilty pleasure to be sure. But every so often we get a story that offers a bit more. Gekai Elise is an anime adaptation of Doctor Elise: The Royal Lady with the Lamp, a Korean web novel that was later given a webtoons adaptation in 2017. My first impressions of the anime were strong enough that I decided to pick up the webtoon and read ahead. I read a lot more than watch anime, soif one has source material, I start by comparing that if I can.

First off, the anime takes a few liberties in adapting the story. The romance is more subdued in the anime and there is greater emphasis on proper medical practices. They even added filler episodes to cover more treatments. The medicine alone makes it worth a watch if only for the sake of edutainment. The era that the world takes place in is hard to place. It reflects 18th century Britain, but with some facilities comparable to 21st century. While there is magic it seems exclusive to certain individuals and can't heal injuries. The focus is definitely on the surgeries. As a result, anything out of place used to justify its use requires some suspension of disbelief. But if you can get by that, it's an enjoyable watch. There's also much more story to cover. For those looking to get a romance fix, that will have to wait until the next season.

The animation quality is normal I'd say. Not at the level to a similar anime released at the same time: 7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy! Even so, I would forgive it since there is a lot of talking. And the topics are more intelligent. The opening song [Believer] by Yui Ishikawa sounds nice. I actually liked the credits song [Listen] by Arai Maju much more. It sounds melancholy yet sweet. Enough that I've listened to it many times on Youtube.

This was actually a recommendation from a friend. I went into this expecting it to be along the lines of Parallel World Pharmacy. It wasn't, but that's okay. I think if you like your fantasy stories more grounded in reality, just not in a modern setting, then I think this will be a nice enough watch. That being said, I can't give it a score higher than 7 for the following reasons. We are never fully told what horrible sins that Elise committed in her first life nor the powers that allowed her to reincarnate not once, but twice. It makes sense from a writing perspective since she needs knowledge of modern medicine in order to change fate. But it feels like a needless level of complexity. There's also the aforementioned suspension of disbelief. A handful of scenes felt almost like a PSA as far as best practices. And this is all coming from the word of a girl that hasn't come of age with no background in medicine. Privilege of the upper class I guess? The protagonist is female which is already a win since most of the isekai/reincarnations tend to be male centric power fantasies. The ones that do get female leads often play out like otome games. At least here, the main character is bringing about change through her own efforts, blood, sweat, and tears which is very admirable. I hope there are more isekai shows like this in the future. Here's hoping the next season builds upon the success of the first.

General Opinion: A fine, if not flawed Anime. Plot. Gekai Elise (Americanized to "Doctor Elise: The Royal Lady with the Lamp") is a story about a girl who was an awful human being and forced her way into a marriage with the Crown Prince in order to become the Queen. Her world and evils eventually unravel, she is killed (literally burned at the stake), and is (for unknown reasons) given a chance to repent by being reborn in the modern world, where she devotes every ounce of her strength and time to become the foremost general surgeon in the world. He then diesin the modern world in a plane crash by spending time giving first aid to all the survivors, rescuing all of them, but causing herself to die by not treating her own wound which she bleeds out due to just as rescue arrives. She is then REINCARNATED AGAIN (yes, this opening is basically a mini soap opera) as the SAME PERSON SHE ORIGINALLY WAS just on the day she is about to be promised in marriage to the Crown Prince. Except this time she is a completely different person, who hates everything she has become, and now has to try to undo all of it when she's all in a little too deep. Her main goal is to become a doctor and spend the rest of her time saving lives.

So, now you've got a woman who is a high noble, and future queen in a....colonial? time period with all the ability and knowledge of modern medicine, but without the technology. She also is fighting against the King who is incredibly impressed with her and wants her to quit medicine in order to become the next queen, and a prince that wants nothing to do with the marriage but has his own political intrigue to deal with (alongside having a suddenly changed in personality future queen). Deals are made with the King for her to prove her worth in medicine, and this provides the backdrop of what is to come. This is a spoiler free review, so I wont get into specifics, but obviously her modern medicinal knowledge plays, and she does incredible things that complicates many strings attached to one another, and we get to watch it all play out.

Yes, it is a very complicated plot, but it doesn't feel very complicated when you're watching it? All the pieces fit together, once all the original intrigue is shown, you don't have too many plot curveballs thrown at you, so you don't have the need to feel constantly at grips with maintaining all the new information. I think it's a very fresh take on the Isekai world with the double reincarnation, it certainly felt new and exciting, without being forced, which is impressive especially when you take a step back and see just exactly how complex it really is.

Characters: They're likeable. They're understandable. The show does a very good job of building a world in which all the character's motives are defined......mostly, there are things about the prince that are implied but you just don't know WHY they happened?. The characters aren't puzzling, the side characters are not distracting, and there are definitely a few places you THINK you're walking into a trope character and they surprise you with their freshness. I had a good time throughout, and was able to cheer for the MC, a VERY important thing for me in an anime.

Things I did not like:

1. I'm not going into it too much because spoilers, but I was pretty annoyed that the world was firmly established as not a fantasy world. Everything that happens (outside of the Isekai) could happen in real life. The governments, the people's abilities, the world and how it works is all very "real". There isn't healing magic, there isn't super powers and spells and devices and whatnot, and that makes a lot of sense because for her to apply medicinal knowledge that she learned in a modern earth with no magic back in this colonial world, they would have to live by the same rules. ....then they suddenly break that rule and a magic device DOES exist. It isn't used for any medicine stuff, but it happens and when it does it's very out of place. As the viewer, you suddenly seem like you've been jerked around, and the use of the device feels cheap...like they needed to move the plot in a certain direction and the only way the could do it was this random magic thing that happens and is out of place. It felt lazy and cheap to me, and I liked the show a great deal more leading up to that point, then after.

2. The show wanes in the second half, which is VERY disappointing given the depth of the plot and how interesting the backdrop of it is. The front end of the show is a 9, the back end is a 4/5. On top of that, it's missing a resolution for several plot points, and the backstory of a few things that felt like you could have spent time on, just don't happen. It doesn't drag on. Stuff is happening, intrigue that moves the plot along does occur, but feeling satisfied at the end of an anime season is important to me, and there were loose ends abound with this one.

Conclusion: I think most people (especially if you're down with the Isekai) would like this show. It has its flaws, but it's worth the watch.

they changed so many good scene from the webtoon,the character aare so flat, elise is not like this, they change her character too much, the only thing that stayed is a "bad writting" the ml is suposed to be more serious(why the cleaning scene exist?!), they ruined it with a bad writting, it's one of my fav but the anime is really not good. I recommend to read it instead. itt go too face, the pacing is strange, so many important moment are innexistant and they focus to much on the realtion instead of the actual action. the idea is really good, but they tried tomake it child friendly when it'sd a darker story, it''s not supposed to be that "cute".

The voice actors are really good, but really why

It's a time killer. They attempted to cram transmigration, villainess redemption, doctor house, women empowerment, mary sue "wow that girl is amazing and can do everything!", unachievable love, political intrigue and reverse harem into 12 episodes, with predictable results. It's not a bad story, but due to time constraints it's all very shallow and smudgy. The general plot fails to interest me, with it being "MC makes a wager with king-sama so that she can escape the fate of marrying the bishounen, kind prince and become and empress; only that way she can be a doctor and save a lot of people". Watch out, bitch, how i'll smackyou when season 2 rolls around and she becomes either "Doctor Empress" that will release the modern medicinal knowledge, or just a "normal empress" that realizes that she can save zozzles more people than a doctor that way, considering she can fund and propagate the medicine anyway.

The world building is smudgy, too, since it's a world of sword and magic. But there's guns! But they use candles in a wooden theatre (which is aimed at noble attendance). Oh but wait, they have electricity powered defibrylators! But bone saws are analog shite that I wouldn't want to use for a DIY doghouse, not to mention cutting people in critical condition with. Till the last episode I'm not sure what the hell is going with the technology level of that world.

So, while it's a nice watch, it's also very forgettable. In a month this review will probably be the only thing standing testament that I did see this show.

Doctor Elise isn’t just an isekai—it’s a reverse/double isekai where a spoiled girl from the past is reborn in the modern world, becomes a doctor, and then returns to her old life with all her memories intact. Aoi Takamoto is a skilled doctor with a reputation for being one of the world’s best surgeons. Maybe it’s my bias as someone who also wants to go into medicine, but I instantly loved her character. She’s poised, professional, and kind both to her patients and her colleagues, important traits in health care that tend to get overlooked in favor of drama. But instead, Aoi embodies the ideal doctor,showcasing both in skill and personality why she’s considered the best in her field. Also, she has some quirks outside the hospital, like her sweet tooth. :)

Aoi became a doctor because her previous life ended tragically, both for herself and the people she loved. As a result, she wanted to make the most of her new life and help save as many people as possible. Her desperation is explained well with an early flashback of her execution. However, why she chose medicine in particular is a bit random. We learn a better motivator in the second episode; showing that motivation before Aoi works hard to become a doctor would’ve better explained her new career choice, which is important for reverse isekai.

When Aoi returns to being Elise, her personality shifts so drastically I’m surprised the characters in her first life aren’t more suspicious of her. There’s even a hint of alternative history when Elise uses her modern knowledge of history and geopolitics to influence events in the past—and the other characters just go along with it because she sounds smart (she’s a doctor in a younger person’s body, like Aqua from Oshi no Ko, so of course she sounds smart, but still). Ultimately, it looks like the story is going to be a “you can have your cake and eat it too” deal, as New Elise will likely have it all: her career as a doctor, the crown prince she was in love with, a happy family life, etc. It’s a bit iffy when you realize that New Elise is a full adult woman at least in her late 20s suddenly in the body of a girl coming of age. :P

The art is lovely, with the characters’ eyes following the trend of that luminous glow, though simpler than other modern shows like The Apothecary Diaries. I like that New Elise’s face closely resembles Aoi’s, with her wide eyes and gentle expressions, even if it’s still technically Elise’s face (dark blue eyes instead of Aoi’s light brown ones). And I absolutely love the soundtrack, which is stunningly gorgeous and immerses you in the story.

I recommend this anime if you like at least one of the following: isekai, medicine, romance, aristocratic slice-of-life—apart from shonen, it has something for almost everyone! ^^

so you're telling me she's a cardiologist and a GE and ABLE TO TRACHEOSTOMISE while also able to FIND a clot without doing any ctpa with no contrast dye (nada)...colour me impressed!! it's high time i start holding my dr colleagues to a higher standard. a feel-good, empowering anime but very evidently lacking in substance. personally a very routine isekai watch, but not outstanding or particularly memorable in any way. characters were routine as usual; stony, curt prince who keeps to himself (more of a kuudere), pitted against the likes of a strong, self-assured, Dr Elise who saves the world one miraculous surgery at atime.