Witch Watch

Episodes 1-2

Ever since I first stumbled upon his first major series, Sket Dance, I've been a pretty big fan of Kenta Shinohara. Having been a former assistant to Hideaki Sorachi of Gintama fame, his work tends to operate on a similar style of humor when it comes to rapid fire pop culture references and a willingness to swing for the fences when it comes to nailing a joke, both of which have made his stuff pretty charming. Like his mentor, he's surprisingly good at switching from wacky hijinks to compelling drama and then back again at the drop of a hat. He can tug at your heartstrings as often as he can make you laugh. That's not to say he's entirely cribbing on Sorachi's style, as Shinohara's works do have a few distinct differences. Whereas a lot of Gintama's humor operates on being crude and vulgar, Shinohara's stuff is (comparatively) more on the wholesome end even if he isn't above dunking on his characters, and whereas Gintama pulled a lot of its swerves into drama from its cast of jaded and cynical adults, Shinohara usually operates in the realm of teen melodrama. That melodrama formed a lot of the basis for his previous series, Astra: Lost in Space, which dropped most of his usual humor in favor of doing a teen space opera, and demonstrated that he can be pretty versatile when it comes to doing works in other genres. While Witch Watch leans closer to the Sket Dance flavor of wacky school comedy, it's got some pretty interesting genre-bending of its own, and can be pretty adept at subverting your expectations of where it's going.

That's all for the future, though, and what we have so far for these first two episodes is a fun romantic comedy. The concept is pretty simple: Nico is a young witch with more enthusiasm than common sense, and wants to use her magic to make other people happy and maybe get her childhood friend turned bodyguard, Morihito, to finally smooch her. That's easier said than done, because Morihito is far too serious to think about things like romance, and having descended from a long line of ogres who've been tasked with protecting Nico's family, his main interests are keeping her safe and keeping her magic from causing trouble. This setup forms the basis of these first two episodes as they largely consist of Nico trying out some new spell to help out Morihito, only for it to backfire in some silly fashion, and the results are usually pretty funny. From sacrificing Morihito's favorite mug to fix a broken window to accidentally turning him into Adult Gon from Hunter X Hunter when she tries to add a little more to his pencil eraser, you can never quite predict how any particular gag will go, and while not all of them are winners, I've gotten more than a few genuine laughs out of it.

While what we've seen of the series so far is light on the aforementioned teen melodrama half of Shinohara's usual style, the second episode helps deepen our understanding of our leads. Despite Nico's enthusiasm about using her magic to help as many people as she can, Morihito advises against her revealing she's a witch to their classmates. This seems to be because he's worried about her being ostracized by the other kids. Still, when Nico ends up outing herself almost immediately, and their classmates aren't too bothered by her status, we see that Morihito's fears are based on his own childhood experiences of others keeping their distance once they learned he was an ogre. This makes things all the more heartwarming when their classmates turn out to be as accepting of him being an ogre as they are of Nico being a witch. While it is a bit predictable, it still works all the same. I also liked the short where Nico befriends some new classmates who want to ask out Morihito, and while she does end up throwing him under the bus a bit, seeing her try to subtly downplay all of the things she likes about him in an attempt to kill their interest is as cute as it is funny, and shows that she is at least more observant than her klutzy tendencies would imply.

A lot of what the show has dished out so far has been pretty simple, but that simplicity doesn't make the execution any less charming. Thankfully, that charm has been maintained by Bibury Animation Studios' adaptation, and they seem to be hitting all the right notes so far when it comes to the series' comedic timing and its occasional bits of drama. They've also made a good case for delivering the best opening theme of the season with "Watch Me," as between YOASOBI's usual catchy beats and how many manga references Megumi Ishitani was able to cram into the visuals, I've had it on repeat for the last week. Knowing what lies in wait for later parts of the series, I am wondering how well the production will handle some of its upcoming genre shifts. Everything I've seen so far has me optimistic, and for the time being, there are plenty of good reasons to keep on watching this witch.

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Witch Watch is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.