Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches

Episode 8

I'm starting to suspect that Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches was slated for around half as many episodes as it actually needs. It keeps trying to run through a new story arc every week, and it keeps almost managing to make it work. Unfortunately, the key word is “almost.”

This witch of the week is Noa, a first-year student with the ability to see into the past of whomever she kisses. The student council thinks she's using her power to manipulate other students, and the supernatural studies club is tasked with shutting her down. Yamada and company try out a few amusingly awful tactics before learning that there's more to Noa and her power than meets the eye. When Yamada figures out what's really going on, he decides that it's time for a change of plans. There's a great deal of shouting and a couple of vaguely defined plot points, after which everything just sort of works out somehow.

As is often the case with the witches, Noa plays off of Yamada's personality quite well. She's at her most entertaining during the episode's first half, where the two of them simply find one another insufferable. Noa and Yamada have just enough in common that it's fun to watch them butt heads, especially when it results in Yamada getting bashed in the face with a broom. That rivalry shifts believably into a mutual understanding once it's obvious why they seem so similar; both characters are willing to play the antagonist in order to help their friends. It may not be terribly complex, but it's a decent piece of character development and a notable improvement over the last episode.

Noa's ability to see other people's past traumas is an interesting one, and I like the way the show plays around with our expectations here. It sets us up to think that Noa's out for herself, manipulating other students by using their pasts against them. Instead, we get a much more thoughtful look at what might happen if a halfway decent person ended up with this ability. Rather than serving as a tool for her own ambitions, Noa's power forces her to empathize with the people she uses it on and motivates her to look for a way to help them. It's a very human response to learning about another person's troubles, and another example of how this series uses the witch powers as more than just convenient story points.

Unfortunately, the show's issues with pacing continue to keep it from being as good as it ought to be. While not as desperately rushed as last week's episode, this is still a case of too much plot and not enough screen time. There's very little opportunity for the audience to process one scene before jumping into the next. We get all the information we need, but there's very little difference between the high and low points of the story. It's a bit like reading a summary of a novel in that we learn what happens without getting a chance to really appreciate it.

The series seems to be aware of this problem, but it hasn't picked a very good way to deal with it. The musical score in this episode dominates the more emotional scenes to the point where it starts to compete with the dialogue for the viewer's attention. Rather than giving the story enough breathing room to rise and fall naturally, the show resorts to blasting overly dramatic music in the hopes of making us feel something. Unfortunately, it ends up being more distracting than helpful.

The ideas behind Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches are still good, but the flaws in its execution are becoming frustratingly easy to predict. Faced with the challenge of making its source material fit into a limited number of episodes, it's floundering around in search of a cure-all solution. Unless it can find one soon, this show runs the risk of staying “good but not great” for the remainder of the season.

Rating: B-

Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Paul Jensen is a freelance writer and editor. You can follow more of his anime-related ramblings on Twitter.