The Spring 2020 Manga Guide

Afterschool Bitchcraft

What's It About? 

Renji Fuyumi is a sorcerer in hiding. He is posing as a chemistry teacher at a local high so he might continue his magic experiments in secret, away from the prying eyes and stifling hands of the powers that be. Ririka Kirise is your average girl; she likes fashion, she cares about animals, and her grades are not the best. One day, while looking to be tutored, Ririkia uncovers Mr. Fuyumi's secret as he in the middle of applying his magic energies. No problem, Fuyumi assumes, her memory can just be erased. Except it is not that simple. For Ririka appears to be descended from an ancient lineage of powerful druids from the British Isles and has a magical aptitude and latent power that is awe-inspiring. Fuyumi decides that it would be better for him to train her, to harness her magics before she hurts herself or another. And so, journey of education and self-discovery begins, as the mage attempts to show the young girl the ways of the world of magic.

Afterschool Bitchcraft is an original manga series written by Yu Shimuzu and illustrated by Kazuma Ichihara. It is available from Yen Press for $6.99 digitally and $12.99 physically.

---

Is It Worth Reading?

Faye Hopper
Rating:

Apart from its ridiculous title, Celtic flavor and constant fanservice, Afterschool Bitchcraft does not have much distinct about it. There is plenty that does not work, plenty that grates, and plenty that is gross, to be certain. And yet, it all slides in one ear and out the other as if it were a tedious, droll day at the office.

Afterschool Bitchcraft's story is torn between two competing aspects: winded exposition dumps, and moments of excessive fanservice. Sometimes these things synthesize (like how our lead girl's summoning her magic powers is often described like sexual arousal), but mostly they slam against each other like a puzzle piece placed in the wrong spot. And even if they fit together more naturally, these are fundamentally not interesting things to hinge a story around. Any time the lead mage began a panel-long monologue about wands or familiars or Homunculi, I began to skim read. World-building can be extremely fun and engaging, but when it is not compelling narrative or does not provide any reason for why the reader should care these expository dialogues bounce off like a ball thrown at the wall over and over again. It does not help that the art isn't very good either (the proportions of the female cast are inhuman and fetishistic to a major fault; the paneling is muddy and difficult to follow).

I do not know what Afterschool Bitchcraft is trying to be. Is it a fanservice manga where all the fantastical elements and story arcs are but a pretext to see the lead girl in various stages of undress? Is it world-building focused fantasy that unveils a new magic concept or facet of its universe every chapter? Is it a comedy about a ditzy girl who just happens to have immense power? Is it a mystery based on intrigue and revelations yet to come? It is so hard to tell, as the manga has elements of all of these and yet never fully dedicates itself to a single mode of story. It makes for a confusing, baffling reading experience that, all the same, feels so pointless and forgettable. And when you consider the additional, gross layer of how much of the fanservice is based on the underage lead girl's agency being torn from her (like when she is almost consumed by a suspectly form-fitting animate slime), it all adds up to a manga I would recommend steering very clear of.

---

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

This was a pleasant surprise – despite the title, which is simply an English translation of the original Hōkago Bitchcraft rather than a localization – After-School Bitchcraft is a fairly basic fantasy manga written with winking nods towards Harry Potter about a high school gal (as in “gyaru”) who turns out to be the descendant of Irish druids, much to the amazement of her chemistry teacher. Of course, he's only masquerading as a chem teacher and is really a sorcerer forced out of the magic world for reasons as yet unexplained, because otherwise there wouldn't be much plot. And there is a pretty good one: Riri, despite her appearance, is a serious student who wants to be a veterinarian because animals have always liked her, and when magic helps save a stray kitten who was injured, she's more than happy to learn it. This earnest quality makes her an easy heroine to like and gives us some investment in her story.

The worldbuilding for this volume is also pretty interesting. Writer Yū Shimizu has clearly done some research into Celtic magic and manages to incorporate it, along with other fantasy staples such as alchemy, into the story without it feeling like an infodump or shoehorned in. Renji, her teacher-turned-magic-master, readily admits when he doesn't know something, which helps keep the information under control, and clearly has a bone to pick with the sorcerers' organization that kicked him to the curb, which manifests not only in him taking Riri on to help keep her safe (from them and from her mana running out of control), but also in his decision to save the kitten when Riri brings it to him. There's a strong implication that Renji's actions all stem from the loss of his younger sister, whom he tried to resurrect Fullmetal Alchemist-style; that was a punishable offense while the cat is someone he can save without consequences if he does so by disguising it as a familiar-binding ritual for Riri. As far as her character goes, Riri may not be as flaky as she appears, as several flashbacks show her mother treating her with disdain and a classmate doing the same, meaning that her self-esteem is in the garbage rather than her actually being less than intelligent.

Where the story stumbles is in its execution, which is a shame. There are narrative jumps that make it feel as if you actually missed a couple of pages (there were three separate occasions where I double-checked), which drops the quality of the story down drastically, and much of the fanservice feels thrown in to make up for that, and yet isn't well-drawn enough to really be any kind of compensation. Artist Kazuma Ichihara draws tortured angles to try and give us a glimpse of Riri's underwear, but isn't good enough to actually draw her whole body in a natural-enough way to pull it off, so that she often times appears to be a collection of weirdly unconnected body parts or as if torso is just sitting on top of her legs without the benefit of hips or a waist. Between that and a title that doesn't actually work for the story (“bitch” having a connotation more like “slut” in Japanese, and Riri is neither in any senses of the words), this simply isn't as good as it could be. It is, however, worth a second volume to see if the issues balance out, because there's a decent magic story lurking just beneath the surface.