Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Witch Hat Atelier
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Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 3036 |
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Coming in a bit late two weeks ago but I avoided this because the artwork and synopsis I saw early on made it seem this would be a cutesy magical girl show which I typically despise. Got desperate and tried a watch. Boy was that impression wrong! Now loving every second I also would point out that so far no detail has been inconsequential to the writer's great credit. With that in mind, I keep thinking back to Ep1 where the magic butterfly drew Coco to "EyeBall-Sensei" (EBS) and they had three sets of books and "wands". Maybe not now, but I wonder if we may eventually see two other "sprouts" because the Op animation indicates Coco will be given an ultimatum to choose the "Brim-Hats" or "Dunce-Caps"...
Another thought, we saw EBS do magic without drawing anything and the glowing stone effect followed young Coco far from where she and they met, though it faded. We are introduced to the "glow stone" construction technique but there is no way EBS could have predicted where she would walk and inscribe hidden spells on them in advance to make that happen, unlike the hidden teleportation spell where they lured Coco to it. Thus, I conclude that the "Brim-Hats" have magic ability inherent in themselves and possibly EBS was looking for others with that innate magical ability, which is what the butterfly was "programmed" to seek out and why Coco may indeed be so "special"...Makes me wonder if her mom/dad/grandma/granddad could have been a "witch" that renounced the lifestyle... |
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Troyen
Posts: 80 |
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Was this really just a one-cour series? ANN doesn't list it as airing next summer and has 13 episodes but that ended with an abrupt cliffhanger.
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malvarez1
Posts: 3015 |
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It’s crazy that they didn’t even wrap up the story arc (the curse of modern one-cour adaptations) but I fully expect a second season announcement any day now.
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Greed1914
 Posts: 5363 |
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Nasty spot to leave things, so hopefully season 2 is soon.
The gold statues were legitimately scary. It seems like the gulf between Pointed and Brimmed is incredibly wide. Pointed are so concerned about what could happen that they cut off useful applications, and Brimmed care so little about what could happen that they have no limits. And now a kid is stuck in a position where the people who want to help him probably aren't allowed to do it since it would involve magic on the body, and the ones who could do something about it won't want to unless they get something. |
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FanGamer24
Posts: 307 |
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I didn’t realize this was the last episode. Honestly I wouldn’t mind reading the manga, unfortunately it’s stuck on that awful K Manga service.
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2467 |
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This was what struck me the hardest about the episode: about the unwitting cruelty of it all. Not that it would be any less cruel to turn one of the girls into a scalewolf, but for it to happen to Eunni *just* as he was finding his footing in Witch society! Maaan, I was absolutely gutted! 
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PumpkinMouse
 Subscriber Posts: 113 |
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You can check your local library if you’ve got one! I highly recommend starting from the beginning, because people aren’t kidding when they’ll talk about the use of panels and all the clever ways the series uses its medium to the fullest. (The closest comparison I can make is to the Nier games.) There are very good reasons why this series won an Eisner Award! But if you absolutely must know what happens next, the final episode ended right where volume 4 ends, so you can pick up volume 5 to continue exactly where the anime left off, and since volume 5 came out about 6 years ago, there’s a reasonable chance of libraries having a copy in their catalogs by now. (Though you’ll skip a cute side story from the back of volume 4.) Seriously though, I strongly recommend reading the whole thing, even if you start at volume 5 and then jump back to the start. The manga really is worth it! Last edited by PumpkinMouse on Tue Jun 23, 2026 3:23 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Aerdra
Posts: 559 |
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Oh, that was the season finale? I was wondering why the next-episode title card was not displayed.
It's a weird way to end the season, but if I had to choose among awkward stopping point, rushed story, or filler episodes, I'd choose awkward stopping point every time. Hoping for another cour soon. |
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Juno016
 Posts: 2584 |
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This was a fear of mine... Everyone! I highly recommend reading the manga from the beginning! As enticing as it is to want to know what happens next, and as pretty as the anime is, I cannot emphasize just how much you're missing out on if you skip out on the first 4 volumes of the manga. The first several volumes have some of the most creative and mindblowing visuals in the entire series. The anime has no way to replicate things like panels outlined as parchment, stairs crossing the manga's binding to show the passage of time, or the panels themselves lifting upward and casting a shadow on the scene itself. A major aspect of Witch Hat Atelier's story and themes are about creativity, skill, flexibility, and beauty. The anime is wonderful and a worthy adaption, but it is an entirely different experience from reading the mangaーin ways that are unique to this series and this series alone. I don't say this lightly, nor do I recommend it often. A bulk of my friends in our watch party all got enticed around a previous anime cliffhanger and picked up the manga from there. I jumped in a little late and suggested going back to volume 1, and after some protest, some of them did. Cue days of regret as each person lamented not having just done so from the start. The rest followed a few weeks later and the cycle repeated... DX |
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EmeraldSaucer
 Posts: 944 |
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For as good as this adaptation has been on expanding on its source material with very mindful pacing, that was an absolutely terrible place to leave things at, comes across as Bug planning for more episodes during pre-production but then only being able to deliver on 13 for the foreseeable future lmao
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BeanBeanKingdom
Posts: 49 |
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This is going to repeat again and again as long as they only do one cour at a time, by the way. Next cour won't quite end on a cliffhanger but it will be right on the cusp of starting a huge arc, and said huge arc will need two cours by itself meaning another break in the middle would be ill-placed. I don't mind as a long-time manga reader but I get how it might feel terrible for anime-onlies.
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PumpkinMouse
Subscriber Posts: 113 |
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Oh, for sure, anime-onlies should absolutely go read the whole thing, but given where the anime stopped, I can forgive someone who’s dying to know what comes next going straight to volume 5. To anyone who jumps ahead: Don’t forget to loop back around to the first 4 volumes! The anime makes some smart and clever anime-exclusive additions, but the manga really can’t be done justice enough, no matter how many words we write trying to explain how adept it is at utilizing the medium of manga. 
(And now to edit my original post to encourage folks to start the manga at the beginning.  )
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annasartin
 Posts: 45 |
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In the final episode review: "I had flashbacks to a Unico film I watched way too young and that gave me nightmares for years."
And I know the exact one, because I did, too! "Unico in the Island of Magic" was pure nightmare fuel. I totally missed the parallel with those golden former humans in WHA til they pointed it out. |
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jdnation
Posts: 2508 |
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Yeah? They're gonna leave us there???
I have flipped through some of the early manga. It does neat things on the page, but when it comes to the action and key magical moments and aura, the anime is significantly better and improves on the manga. So I'll be sticking with the anime. The show is good. It's deliberately slower and takes it's time subtly world building than other shows, but I dig it. Apparently this was supposed to be a 24-26 episode run according to evidence from behind-the-scene vids, but production issues neccessitated a split of seasons? Ah well... I'm happy to wait. Between this and Dandadan, and JJK, there's cliffhangers aplenty... And if Chainsaw-Man Assassin Arc does turn out to be a season with the next arc, you can prepare for a crazy cliffhanger there too! 
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Exodus007
 Posts: 138 |
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That wasn't an Invisible Witch as you keep saying. They said (I think from the voice it's a female) they moved beyond the constraints of flesh. They are the robe itself. Not invisible that's her freaking body, hence the eye in the hat.
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