There are plenty of anime documenting the struggles of characters hanging on the precipice between life and death, but there are actually only a small few medical anime series about doctors saving those people.
While anime does enjoy exploring a large variety of genres and concepts, medical anime is definitely one of those genres that is challenging. It lives in the same vein as getting medical advice on the internet. There are some who may seem medical mysteries and treatments in doctor anime and think that it is more fact than fiction – which is, obviously, dangerous.
However, while more than a few creators probably stay away from doctors due to the challenge of balancing entertainment and medical accuracy, there are still a few great medical anime recommendations out there that you can enjoy if you are looking to watch doctors practice their craft.
Medical Anime About Doctors
Black Jack
When it comes to medical anime, Black Jack is the pinnacle of it. Many anime about doctors often have various plots that sort of side-step having to display a doctor actually just practicing medicine on patients. I suppose creators might not want to present potentially fictional information for entertainment as actual medicine that audiences might take as fact. However, Black Jack, a series adapted from the manga of legendary mangaka Osamu Tezuka of Astro Boy fame, is as diligent to medical accuracy as it is entertaining in its more clear fiction.
The series follows an unregistered doctor with a mysterious past named Black Jack. He is well-known for being able to tackle challenging cases that no other doctor will touch, but for a price.
While Black Jack is intrigued by the mystery, he is also a bit of a Robin Hood figure, charging the rich exorbitant prices while helping the poor for more reasonable prices depending on what they can offer him.
As Black Jack is both an old and long-running series, it has amassed quite a sizable collection of anime from prequels, sequels, spin-offs, and alternate versions. This has made it a doctor anime series that you can get lost in for a long time.
Ray the Animation
If you were a fan of Black Jack, and have somehow ran out of Black Jack/Young Black Jack episodes, you still have this related, but separate spin-off.
Ray the Animation follows a character in Black Jack called Ray. She was a human who was, quite literally, raised to be spare parts. When rescued by Black Jack, she had already lost her eyes, but thanks to some artificial replacements, it allowed her to grow up to be a gifted surgeon herself.
Ray the Animation is part-medical anime and part-dark mystery. While she is performing magnificent and difficult surgeries, Ray is also looking to find out what happened to the other children that were raised to be spare parts like her.
Dr. Ramune – Mysterious Disease Specialist
If you are looking for doctor anime where doctors treat real illnesses, then Dr. Ramune is perhaps not what you were looking for. Dr. Ramune is certainly about a doctor, but he is treating supernatural diseases that are also oddly food-related.
Crying soy sauce, having gyoza for ears, having your genitals turn into a fish cake – you will see a lot of strange diseases in Dr. Ramune. However, while they may be food-related for a bit of comedy, each episode explores the underlying cause – which is usually some sort of mental or emotional turmoil manifesting physically.
Parallel World Pharmacy
It was only a matter of time before isekai anime isekai’d a doctor, but Parallel World Pharmacy isn’t actually about a doctor getting isekai’d – it’s about a pharmacist.
Now, doctors diagnose illnesses and pharmacists create medicine to treat them. Parallel World Pharmacy masterfully skips around giving a pharmacist the near-decades honed diagnosis skills of a doctor by sending him to a new world and giving him unique magic that lets him diagnose people with just a glance. So he can tell what is wrong with people, and uses his knowledge of medicine to prescribe them the proper treatment for it.
It is actually a great twist on the normal isekai formula and a lot more dedicated to medicine than to the usual isekai elements, like action-adventure or harems.
Doctor Elise: The Royal Lady with the Lamp
Similar to Parallel World Pharmacy, Doctor Elise is about a doctor practicing in another world. However, it works a bit differently with the concept of isekai.
Originally, the titular Elise was a spoiled noble that became empress and was executed in her fantasy world. She reincarnated in our modern world and trained to become a master surgeon before perishing in a plane crash. When she next wakes up, she is back in her original fantasy world in a time before she became empress and was executed, allowing her to fix her mistakes and help her country.
Instead of getting married and living a pampered life, now Elise decides to become a doctor, using he modern medical skills she brought over from our world, she is quickly hailed as a prodigal doctor.
Doctor Elise progresses like a pretty standard shoujo anime. The main character is a magnificent doctor, she earns the admiration of everyone as she helps them, and that eventually leads her to building a stronger relationship with the prince.
Monster
Monster starts off as a pretty strong medical anime about a gifted Japanese doctor practicing in a hospital in Germany. However, Monster is not remembered as a doctor anime, it is remembered as a legendary psychological thriller about the consequences of choice.
In its initial episodes, Monster explores a popular medical moral quandary where the main character is forced to choose between saving a small child and a more prestigious adult who both need his help at the same time. He chooses the child, and due to that choice, a lot of others begin to die in the future as the child kills them after growing into an adult.
As the main character leaves his profession behind to put right the choice he made years ago, Monster stops being as medicine-focused and instead transforms into a taut game of cat and mouse. However, as it explores the psychology of the mind, it never loses that mature storytelling that it started out with.
Monster Girl Doctor
Monster Girl Doctor is one of those anime series that is about exactly what it says on the label. It is about a doctor in a fantasy land who treats monster girls and beast people. However, what the label doesn’t tell you is the above average amount of ecchi that it injected in there.
While the doctor himself is a normal and dedicated medical professional to his patients, everyone from his female patients to his overly-attached assistant is a bit horny for him. If they aren’t horny for him, they are still going to be lewded up by the visuals anyway.
While Monster Girl Doctor definitely feels like it added ecchi for that extra does of appeal to certain audiences, it does treat it medical plot quite seriously – but only if you mute the moaning and ignore the clear provocative nature of the visuals.
Tree in the Sun
While Tree in the Sun, or Hidamari no Ki as it is probably more recognizably known, is a bit dated in both animation and storytelling, it does tell a unique and interesting story of medicine in a historical setting.
Tree in the Sun follows two main characters in mid-1800s Japan. One is a young samurai trying to live up to the ancient traditions and ideals of the warrior class while the other is a young doctor trained in western-style medicine.
Through the lens of these two very different classes of people, you see various historical events happen in their periphery and see how these events affect what are, essentially, two normal people trying to live through history. So while not a sweeping tale of historical events, this series instead focuses in on how history affects the day-to-day lives of both characters.
Snow White With The Red Hair
Like Monster, Snow White With The Red Hair is a recommendation that isn’t as applicable to people looking for a strictly medical anime. Snow White With The Red Hair is very much a fantasy romance anime about a main character that just so happens to be an herbalist.
While the plot starts with Shiraiyuki fleeing her home country and establishing herself as a court herbalist in the royal court of a neighboring country, the series does become less and less about her herbalism aspirations and more and more about her romantic relationship with the prince and political struggles of the kingdom.
The Apothecary Diaries
The Apothecary Diaries follows a young girl raised by an apothecary that developed a passion for, not just healing arts, but poisons as well. After being kidnapped and sold to the imperial palace, her knowledge of healing and poisons lands her a job as a poison tester for one of the Emperor’s concubines, allowing her to further use her knowledge to help the people of the palace with various intriguing mysteries and medical maladies.
As it follows a young woman who becomes close with a higher-ranking, ridiculously handsome man, The Apothecary Diaries seems like it will go the way of Snow White With The Red Hair where it starts off focused on her passion as an apothecary, but becomes increasingly focused on romance – but it never does. In fact, because she was raised in a red light district, the main character is understandably adverse to romantic charms and handsome men.
Instead of a romance story, The Apothecary Diaries keeps you hooked with its variety of smaller tales. At times, the main character is curing those who have a mysterious illness. At other times, she is using her knowledge of poisons to deduce the true culprit in a whodunit-style mystery.
Comical Psychosomatic Medicine
Comical Psychosomatic Medicine isn’t about treating illnesses of the body, but more an exploration of various illnesses of the mind.
This short-form anime explores various mental afflictions throughout its 5-minute episodes in the sort of frenetic and comical way. The patients are all presented as a little extreme for comedy and their afflictions are explained, explored, and occasionally treated through the lens of a normal beleaguered doctor.
Comical Psychosomatic Medicine isn’t a series for those looking for a serious exploration of mental illness, but it is a solid watch for those who enjoy the comedy that can come from certain maladies.
Cells at Work
While Cells at Work isn’t about any sort of doctor treating patients, but it is a medical anime in the truest sense. Cells at Work does what anime does best – it takes concepts like the cells working to keep you alive in your body, and turns them into lovable anime characters.
While Cells at Work has a few spin-offs, the original series tells the tale of one red blood cell among many who does her job transporting oxygen throughout the body with diligence and dedication. However, she crosses paths with a white blood cell fighting threats to the body and they become increasingly close friends. Throughout their interactions together, you are introduced to a number of different beings inside the standard human body from blood-clotting – and surprisingly cute – platelets to villainous bacteria.
Do you have more medical anime about doctors plying their craft on the human body? Let fans know in the comments section below.
