Review of Witch Hat Atelier

It must be complicated to make a magic based setting nowadays because of how commonly used it is, even more if you want to be somewhat original about it, yet Atelier manages to do it somewhat by mixing it with arts, as in its world, it is a common energy present anywhere that anybody can use by literally drawing the magic circles of the spells, but for the sake of it not falling into wrong hands, its way of functioning and using remains hidden and controlled by the “witches”, which in this case it encompasses wizards, mages, it is all the same thing.

Yet the protagonist, a little girl named Coco, finds out how it works and uses a spell indirectly taught to her by a, later known, dark magic arts user, working as the main antagonist of the series of sorts, and accidentally hurts her mother, thus getting a Spider-Man like motivation and hero’s calling of sorts, and she ends up being an apprentice of a certain witch.

Being a novice and an outsider, Coco is shown to be logically and realistically incompetent in the use of magic, and met with a lot of prejudice from the more experienced users, which are almost every person she meets from the second episode onwards.

So what we have here is a break the norm/defy the status quo story, theme and main character, as well as our young protagonist trying to right her wrongs and also prove herself of being capable of learning and improving, against her low self esteem and tendency to overthink stuff. Such types of characters can be easily misused by eventually making them inexplicably broken and doing things that inexplicably no one ever tried in their settings. Yet in this case it works because she and a colorblind boy rationalize their approach to doing things in uncommon ways for their setting and combine them with their own strengths, thus somewhat managing to surpass their shortcomings. That’s a keyword here by the way, they are not treated as specials with supposed disadvantageous settings somehow working around them, it’s them fighting their self pity and finding their ways to work around within said setting what makes them not spoiled and a good handling of their archetypes and tropes. The protagonist is an outsider and a novice, thus constantly messes up, and the other is a disabled kid thought incapable of doing certain somewhat basic things within his setting, which also explains their lack of confidence on their own.

As far as world building concerns, there’s an effort in explaining and establishing how everything is supposed to work. For example, one could ask, how did no one ever try what Coco and the colorblind kid did? And the answer is that the setting is so restricting and that there’s no need nor consideration to do things differently. As the teacher Qifrey himself says, necessity is what leads to innovation/invention (I don’t remember the exact word), and even in our reality, the most common knowledge was some big discovery at some point. Plus the spells have some mildly scientific reasoning behind them at times, at least as much as they can get in a show based on magic and drawings, so it’s not just let’s draw whatever and make anything happen. There are also several exams and schools, each with a logic behind, which establishes the hierarchy of the magic system as well as permissions, obligations and restrictions for the witches, based on their level. Even the dress code of the characters are thought of as part of the setting and to preserve the magic system, as the cloaks help the witches to draw circles without being seen, and the hats are meant to represent their status, schools and based on what we learn from Tettia, even the type of magic and personality of the witches themselves.

With that said it should be noted that Atelier does not make sense completely. It is true that we see that Tartah colorblind kid reverting powder to different kinds of plants, without the show making sure to let the audience know that they are, or should be, different types of powder. It is true that doing a magic circle on a boat risks being found out, it is true that the squad that takes care of arresting witches using spells on public and casting forbidden spells…did use magic in front of commoners. It is true that the main antagonist lets Qiffrey go mostly unharmed despite being chased down by him, like, won’t you do something about him? It is true that not recognizing Tartah as a regular boat user between islands, despite not having his hat, was contrived for things to happen. It is true that a hospital not labeling its flasks makes no sense whatsoever regardless of the excuse they try to give about it. And the memory erasure spell used in the series to make sure the workings of magic remains a secret makes me think that it contradicts the “spells aren’t used directly on people's bodies” rule, although it could be argued that it is cast on someone’s mind, not body, but still.

However, the main problem within the story is that there’s hardly any plot progression and steady pacing in it, which makes sense as far as Coco is concerned, since she recently became an apprentice, thus it is logical that she struggles to learn, and her main conflict won’t resolve in the first season. But that also takes away any sense of urgency, as I doubt the anime will kill off her mother while she trains. As far as the other stuff goes, it is still mostly shrouded in mystery and didn’t exactly progress in any way.

As did the character Qiffrey, the show wants to make you doubt him by having him do stuff against the law, and thus suspect him, but he remains mysterious throughout most of the series, and is a wholesome character like most of the rest during his screentime shared with other characters, so it’s not like he is a really fleshed out character. Coco on the other hand is passionate and curious about magic and happy to learn about it from the beginning, thus you want her to succeed. And she’s also kind of a klutz, so she comes off as cute, and it’s tolerable because she’s young. Despite being mostly cheerful, the anime did show a nightmare of her where all her guilt hunts her, both about what she did to her mother and all the inconveniences she brings to people around her, so that was a neat detail.

As for the other apprentices, Agott is very hard to like because of how mean she is to Coco for no good reason. Eventually a bit of her backdrop is shown to explore why she behaves like that and why she is in a hurry to go up the witches ranks, but man it is hard to tolerate her in the beginning. Richeh is the second most relatable character for me after Coco for refusing to change her ways in order to fit into what a witch is supposed to be and do, but it is easier to forgive her for it because she is a child. She also finds a way to express herself through her magic, and defy the ways of old in a way, the recurring theme of the anime. Tetia is the character I liked the most here, because the other two hit way too close at home. I’m not one to like goody happy genki characters like her, even less if they have high pitched voices, like her, but she’s not gloomy, mean nor childishly stubborn like the previous ones, plus who doesn’t like a positive friendly character that’s also capable at what they do and with a noble goal in mind? The beginning of episode 9 was great downtime, for setting up different goals and character arcs for the different girls and colouring them way more than all the previous ones. But still, the character immersion ends at a setup for character growth because of the short duration and open ending of the season, and it’s not like the cast is the most elaborated either.

The weakest part of the anime is the audio. I have no real complaints about the voices and performances as others did, I have listened to way more annoying voices, and I think the casting and delivery are mostly fine. The sound effects did their job fine and the opening and ending sequences were alright. The background music was typical and fitting medieval fantasy stuff, but not a single scene was elevated because of the music.

The visuals had everybody mesmerized at every episode which isn’t surprising since this show ranks among the tops of the year in that regard. The character designs may be simple but the logic behind their clothes and even hairstyles added bonus points to them in the storytelling department. There are some semi chibi shoujoish comical moments, but eh, they don’t take much from the whole. The rest is top notch, from the polished artwork, the beautiful backgrounds, the expressive and detailed body language, which surpassed the Frieren season of the year in that regard, and the occasional directing tricks with darker colouring and lighting, even imitating the colorblind vision of Tartah for about half an episode, as well as cool dynamic movements for the scattered but very well presented action sequences.

At the end of the day, the issue I have with this anime is that it’s mostly a setup season for both story and characters, with not much really going on per episode for me to consider it worth recommending. Maybe it features more interesting stuff in upcoming seasons, but this one didn’t exactly leave me waiting for more nor gave me motives to watch more of it, maybe to see more of Tetia but…meh, I don’t think she’ll get as much focus as the rest of the girls anyway. But other than that, it was a mostly polished and decently presented series, but I would be lying if I said that I was engaged with it for more than two or three episodes. It needed that extra step of something actually happening for me to consider it worth watching and recommending, but other than that, it was an ok way to kill some time once per week.




5/10