In manga and anime, iyashikei 癒し系, meaning in Japanese "healing-type," refers to a genre and type of character (or even person) that "heals" you, in the sense of makes you feel at ease, relaxed, calm.
Meaning in Japanese
The word iyashi-kei is formed by two parts: the ~kei ～系 suffix, which is the same as visual-kei, ヴィジュアル系, that you may have heard about before, and the noun form of the verb iyasu 癒やす, "to heal."
- kega wo iyasu
怪我を癒す
To heal wounds. - iyasareru
癒やされる
To be healed.
- "It heals me" - something a character will say when they're captivated by an iyashi-kei character.
- {kokoro ga iyasareru}
心が癒やされる
[It] heals the heart.
[It] heals [my] heart.
[It] makes [me] feel at ease.
Together, iyashi-kei would translate to "healing type." This word normally means "heal" in the emotional sense, but since the verb means literally "to heal" and can include healing wounds, you may come across some pun eventually where a "healing type" character physically heals other characters.
Character Type
As a character type, and even as a term to refer to people, an iyashi-kei joshi 癒し系女子, "healing-type girl," or iyashi-kei danshi 癒し系男子, "healing-type boy," would be someone who makes you feel at ease just by being together with or just by seeing the character. According to Pixiv, this is generally about "small animals," "little girls," and "bedclothes," but it varies from person to person.(pixiv:癒し系)
With that in mind, "healing" or "soothing" in this sense is about things that make you feel soft and mellow inside like a pillow, or a bunch of pillows. Like the sound of waterfalls, birds, the nature. A completely pure horizon with blue skies above and blue ocean below. That sort of thing.
For reference, this is a small animal:
- Context: cat girls soothe the soul.
And this is a little girl sleeping:
Anime: Maoujou de Oyasumi 魔王城でおやすみ (Episode 1)
- Context: negao 寝顔 soothes the soul.
This is important because there's a different term, moe 萌え, which could also be described as "healing" or "soothing" or "comforting" but means something else entirely.
It's a gleeful feeling that fills you with energy, so it should be completely different from feeling at ease.
- Context: Morioka Moriko 盛岡森子 is surprised by a cute anime girl character in an MMORPG.
- bikkuri moemashita------'!
びっくり萌えましたーーーっ！
[I] surprise moe'd!
However, it seems there are many times people mix these two terms together, perhaps because moe is kind of healing, which makes things very confusing.
Genre
An iyashi-kei series is a series that makes you feel at ease when you watch it.
Obviously, this means that the series won't be a drama or a horror series, and even too much action or comedy may be, well, too much. An iyashi-key series will be slow, calm and soft.
It will have a slower pace, less dialogue, less action, and make up for it with more visuals, backgrounds, audio and music, and so on, in those long stretches of time where nobody speaks and nothing happens to create a soothing experience.
Depending on whom you ask, it's either very nice or very boring.
Anime: Non Non Biyori のんのんびより (Episode 1)
- Context: headpats soothe the soul.
Often, iyashi-kei overlaps with genres like Slice of Life (SoL), or nichijou-kei 日常系, and Cute Girls Doing Cute Things (CGDCT), but they aren't exactly the same thing.
Some slice of life series are gag comedies, full of action and jokes. They can be too fast-paced to be considered soothing. This also happens with some CGDCT series.
The CGDCT genre is full of moe anime, so people may be simply some of these iyashi-kei simply because they are "soothing" in the moe sense, and not "soothing" in the feeling at ease sense.
Anime: Yuru Camp△, ゆるキャン△ (Episode 1)
- Context: >u< soothes the soul.
In particular, many slice of life anime aren't just slice of life, they're a "slow" slice of life, where things happen without hurry. Some people may call a series iyashi-kei because of this.
Personally, I have no idea where to draw the line.
References
- 癒し系 - dic.pixiv.net, accessed 2023-06-30.
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