Witch Watch

Episode 18

After last week's slightly underwhelming showing, I'm happy to report that this one brings Witch Watch back to its usual level of quality. This still isn't exactly its funniest episode, but the overall batting average of quality jokes and occasional sincerity is more in line with what I normally expect from this series, and that's basically all I'm really asking for. As is always the case, though, what's normal for this show can get up spiraling into some wild shenanigans pretty quickly, and while the ones we get here are fairly simple, that doesn't stop it from getting some good mileage out of them.

First on our list of escapades, we have Nico playing around with a spell that accidentally gives life to a paper Shikigami that becomes attached to her friend Kara. Out of this week's three shorts, this one is by far the least funny, but it's also the most sincere so it balances itself out. Despite Kara's initial apprehension towards having to look after this Shikigami, she starts gradually warming up to it, and there's something weirdly sweet about seeing her eventually treat this paper doll like family. That does lead to a bit of tension when the Shikigami tries to use itself as a replacement for Kara's hair clip and we learn that it was a keepsake from her late mother, but after the Shikigami risks its life to scoop it out the river, Kara decides to make it part of her hair clip so the two can always be together. This feels pretty similar to the last short centering around Kara in terms of how straightforward it is, but it makes up for being predictable by being just as charming, and it was nice to see some continuity in regards to her family situation.

The second of this week's shorts is the most comedic, and sees Nico and Kanshi tricking Keigo into believing ordinary marbles are high value items, with things like a lack of air bubbles or the radiance of colors in the middle being indicators of quality. This sounds like a pretty dull premise on paper, so I was taken by surprise when this escalates into creating a new internet sensation after Keigo talks about marbles in one of his videos. Suddenly everyone is scrambling to get their hands on some and getting into heated debates over what colors are the prettiest, which is bound to feel all too familiar to anyone who's tried and failed to navigate the market of collecting Pokémon cards. Given that Morihito has always been the type to hyper fixate on his interests, he falls deeper into the rabbit hole than anyone else, which just makes it funnier when Nico and Kanshi are finally forced to own up to the deception. By that point, the market has been flooded with overpriced marbles and it kills the craze on its own, but this doesn't prevent them and Keigo from having to put on some suits for an apology video, and it's the most appropriate punchline this could have closed out on. As ridiculous as this premise sounds, it does feel like an otherwise accurate representation of how these kinds of internet trends regarding collector hobbies tend to work, and the fact that the show nailed this so perfectly speaks volumes about how well Shinohara understands the internet.

The final short this week sees the gang digging through some stuff from Morihito's childhood and stumbling across an old, badly drawn manga that he drew. As Morihito reminiscences over it and wishes he could travel to the world of that manga, Nico tries to make that happen, only for the spell to backfire and cause all of them to look like Morihito's crummy drawings (minus Kanshi who has the misfortune of looking like one of Morihito's old pieces of woodblock art and gets stuck walking around like he walked out of a horror movie). Like the short with the marbles, this is another one that feels like it shouldn't be that funny on paper, and I didn't think too much of this one in manga form, but seeing it animated ended up being a real delight. It's hard not to laugh at how overly simple the cutesy black and white cutouts of these characters look when placed next to the show's usual character designs and backgrounds, and the animators are clearly having a field day having them move around while still feeling like flat pieces of paper. This gets pushed to its limits when the gang's attempts to return to normal see them stumbling upon a robbery, and the sight of them beating up a burglar while having all their actions punctuated by comic book text is unironically one of the biggest production highlights we've gotten out of this show so far. We even get to see this short end on a fairly sweet note, as Morihito reflects on how he drew that manga because he didn't have friends as a kid, and thought it was great being able to work together with the others. That, of course, just makes the ending punchline hit better as they walk off into the sunset while we see that they all forgot to return Kanshi back to normal. Needless to say, I had a good time with this episode, and even if the comedy set-ups here were a bit simple compared to some of the more elaborate ones we've gotten previously, this ended up being a good demonstration of just how far this show can stretch them.

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Witch Watch is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.