Drug Store in Another World: The Slow Life of a Cheat Pharmacist (Cheat Kusushi no Slow Life: Isekai ni Tsukurou Drugstore): Isekai Anime Review (Spoiler Free)
Tired of work or school? Need a break? Just want to sit back, relax, and watch
a cute show? Then watch Drug Store in Another World: The Slow Life of a Cheat
Pharmacist (Cheat Kusushi no Slow Life: Isekai ni Tsukurou Drugstore)! A
healing Iyashikei show about an Isekai'd salaryman turned into another world apothecary!
The Breakdown
Criteria
Grade
Summary
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Standard
⭐⭐☆☆☆
Substandard
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Standard
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Standard
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Standard
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Yes.
Summary Review of The Breakdown
As an Iyashikei show, nothing ever happens in each episode. However, despite the nothingness of this show, animation comes off as light and easy to consume, with its pastel-colored style soothing the soul. In terms of story, each episode follows a simple outline and doesn't go beyond that. For voice acting, each character has their unique traits but some speech patterns can become annoying, such as the constant baby-talk style of speaking. Both opening and ending for this show are fairly generic but the background music has some slight uniqueness due to the shows roots in Iyashikei.
Overall, if you need a break from the stress of daily life and want a silly fantasy show to watch, then this show fits perfectly for those needs!
Produced by
EMT Squared, a company
founded in 2013. However, their first series, Ame-Iro Cocoa, was made in 2015 and their first full length TV show was Kuma Miko in 2016. EMT Squared has a unique style with light pastels typically dominating their characters in their recent shows.
Criteria
Grade
Summary
3D
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Standard
Special Effects
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Standard
Character Art
⭐⭐⭐★☆
Slightly Above Standard
Background Art
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Standard
3D
Background environments are made in 3D as per usual, however these are the most 3D part about this show. All of the stylization helps hide any 3D objects in the show, but fails to use 3D in any creative fashion.
3D jars in the background.
Special Effects
Very few special effects appear in this anime. The most noticeable ones include screen transitions which typically come in the form of a screen wipe or black screens. Sometimes, occasional magic abilities pop onto screen, and are shown without any issues or immersion breaks.
Magic circle being summoned on screen.
Character Art
A light, pastel colored art style brings a calmness to the characters actions in this show. In pursuing this art style, the show amplifies the slow nature of the show, allowing the eyes to relax on slightly unrealistic and heavily stylized colors. It also pops them out against the background, allowing for an easy viewing experience. Furthermore, the show has some special animations when Reiji, the main character, devises up new medicine with a special jingle. It goes slightly above what a normal show would do with character design and demonstrating abilities.
Reiji talking.
Background Art
Most scenes in this show take place either in the pharmacy, in town, or surrounding forest areas. Art blends nicely against the pastel characters, not looming behind characters. An overall standard experience for backgrounds, nothing too amazing. Some small details are added into the background, especially in the pharmacy. Jars, potions and other concoctions line the walls in the front, while personal items like scales, coat hangers, and desks are seen in the back of the pharmacy where Reiji lives. It fleshes out his character and the world a bit more through this style of visual world building.
Background shows the back of the pharmacy.
What the Heck is Iyashikei?!
Coming from the words "Iyasu" (癒やす) meaning to heal or to soothe and "Kei" (系) meaning lineage or system (or in this case, directly meaning "type"),
Iyashikei describes a type of media based around soothing the
soul. The genre boomed after two nationwide traumatizing incidents in the 1980's and has continued ever since. Typical features of Iyashikei anime include nonsensical plots with no defined goals, relaxing music and art, and slow placing for each episode. Learn more about Iyashikei here.
Story Review
Armed with our knowledge of Iyashikei, how does this affect the story? Each episode follows an episodic storyline with recurring characters. However, the story doesn't try to teach us some grand moral or push towards some greater narrative.
- Each episode tells its own self-contained story with its own simple morals.
- Easy to follow outline of an issue, conflict, then resolution.
- Characters have likeable writing, not too unbelievable as characters
- World building through different medicinal herbs used in potions and other medicines.
However, because of this episodic nature, characters typically don't show any growth or furthering themselves in a repeated fashion.
- Characters can feel one dimensional, never breaking away from their character tropes.
- Pacing can be extremely repetitive as each episode follows the same formula.
- They somehow shoved a beach episode (9) into an anime without a beach.
- Exposition dumps occur with a narrator.
Voice Acting
With a mostly veteran cast of main characters, Drug Store in Another World: The Slow Life of a Cheat Pharmacist demonstrates a wide variety of both female and male characters can sound like. With young girls, ghosts, adventurers, and a young demon king, the variations in characters are immense. However, some characters like Noela, can have an ingratiating speech pattern which, at times, can come off as annoying or bothersome. Overall, voice acting properly shows off characters as written and nothing more.
Soundtrack
Both the opening, Kokoro Hayaru (ココロハヤル) , by cast member Akane Kumada and the ending, Mainichi Kashimashi Pharmacy (マイニチカシマシファーマシー), by cast members Noela (CV: Risae Matsuda), Mina (CV: Akane Kumada) and Reiji Kirio (CV: Jun Fukushima), are standard "anisongs". If you enjoy these types of songs, they may stick longer in your head, but compared to the anisong hits, feel quite forgettable.
Background tracks are presented well in this series. They don't take up too much sound space when played and disappear when not needed. They also portray a wide variety of emotions during different scenes from calmness to somberness to hectic-ness when necessary.
Criteria
Grade
Summary
Opening
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Standard
Ending
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Standard
Background Tracks
⭐⭐⭐★☆
Slightly Above Standard
Sound Effects
⭐⭐⭐☆☆
Standard
Do you enjoy the Iyashikei anime genre? Have you watched other Iyashikei shows or manga? Tell me some of your favorite stories from this genre down below!
Thank you for reading!
Sources
Lum, Patrick. “In Praise of Iyashikei: Why We Love Soothing Anime Where Nothing Happens.” The Guardian, 25 Apr. 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/apr/26/in-praise-of-iyashikei-why-we-love-soothing-anime-where-nothing-happens.
Roquet, Paul. "Ambient Literature and the Aesthetics of Calm: Mood Regulation in Contemporary Japanese Fiction." The Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 35 no. 1, 2009, p. 87-111. Project MUSE, https://doi.org/10.1353/jjs.0.0050.
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