Witch Watch

Episode 23

It seems as though the anime gods have decided to bless us once again, and we've been given a small teaser for the Feint Society arc in Uron Mirage on top of the newest Witch Watch episode. There's been a lot of debate among fans as to where this arc stands in the greater Uron Mirage pantheon compared to the genius of the Yokohama Incident or the Mutant Bees arc, but I think it has a lot going for it. Every battle shonen rescue arc can't help but be compared to the Soul Society arc in Bleach (which itself is just the Sanctuary arc in Saint Seiya with extra steps), but the manga version did a good job of leaning into Miss Honoka looking for an escape from all her past traumas, and its less about Oboro and Utsuro rescuing her from the clutches of the Phasey King and more about saving her from her own self-sacrificial tendencies.

Now, I imagine anime-only fans might be confused as to why Zack is rocking two eyepatches when he only lost a single eye at the end of the Yokohama Incident, but more astute viewers might have noticed he obtained the Mangekyo Minigan at the end of the arc, and we've all seen now how dangerous that magic eye can be. In reality, his decision to cover both his eyes is a nice bit of subtle character writing that gets across how much Zack fears endangering his friends, and while it does look impossibly goofy out of context, that applies to many of the best parts of this series. Uron Mirage's ability to hide its genius behind these small details is frequently its best trait, and it's a big part of why it's become the worldwide phenomenon it is today. Sadly, we'll have to wait another year to see this arc in motion, but you can't rush perfection, and with how groundbreaking each new season of Uron Mirage has been, I'm fine with the staff taking as much time as they need to whip out another masterpiece.

Since we got a new Uron Mirage teaser, it's only fitting that this week's Witch Watch centered around more escapades featuring our favorite pair of Uron Mirage fangirls. When we last left Ureshino and Ms. Makuwa, the two of them were working together on making and selling their own doujinshi, and as Ms. Makuwa struggles to come up with any ideas, she gets distracted when Ureshino mentions that she's looking to meet up with a new online friend. Being both a teacher and a terminally online adult, Ms. Makuwa can't help but be suspicious that this new friend might be a creep posing as a high schooler, and since their posts all look like something a creepy middle-aged dude would write, it sets off her radar immediately.

It's always good to practice a degree of caution when having in-person meet ups with people you've only ever talked to online, but as someone who's made some cherished friends with online pals, sometimes it's the biggest internet weirdos who end up being extremely chill IRL, so it's usually better to take the time to properly suss people out, than to always judge a book by its cover. With all that in mind, it's not surprising that Ureshino's friend ends up being exactly who she says she is, and is simply a high school girl who talks like a horny middle-aged man. Strange, sure, but if Marin from My Dress-Up Darling has taught us anything, it's that this kind of weeb girl absolutely exists and isn't nearly as uncommon as you'd think. Because of that, I'm glad the show avoided having this twist as the punchline, in favor of having Ms. Makuwa somehow getting a bolt of inspiration for her doujinshi from this gap in expectations. It's much funnier, and it gets across that sometimes you really can make some good in-person friendships from chatting up cool folks online (though again, it's always best to carry some degree of caution).

From there, the episode shifts over to the actual creative process of manga making, and although there aren't too many jokes in this segment, it provides some interesting commentary. Ureshino and Ms Makuwa end up hitting a snag early on when a new Uron Mirage chapter drops some info that contradicts the story they came up with. While Ureshino sees no reason to scrap the work they've already done if they're happy with it, Ms. Makuwa believes in sticking to the canon and pushes herself to come up with a new draft for them. Personally, I'm of the mindset that any adaptation of a work, whether fan-made or official, should showcase the artistic sensibilities of the people working as much as those of the original creator, so I wish the story had sided more with Ureshino here, but I at least appreciate that the show took some time to throw some light jabs at the kinds of fans who treat the source material of their favorite thing like sacred text (and I got an especially good laugh seeing the subtitle translation go with the very accurate description of “canon purists”). We also get to see Ureshino dealing with the crushing reality of crunching to hit deadlines, of having to hastily redraw a page after failing to save a file, which, despite the show's generally positive attitude, seems like an absolute nightmare. It also feels like something that Shinohara likely pulled from his own experiences on the weekly manga grind, and while it all works out for these ladies, I can only imagine how terrible it is when it doesn't.

Eventually, it's time for Ureshino and Ms. Makuwa to sell their art at an event, and this is where the episode delivers its best comedic payoff. Since Ms. Makuwa ends up getting swamped with work, Nico appears like a Smash Bros character (complete with her own intro card) to help out Ureshino, though in practice, she's more of an assist trophy. This time her magical hijinks are mostly limited to doing small things like shrinking some boxes, so they have an easier time moving inventory or using a spell to fill in some missing text on one of the manga pages, and although none of it backfires the way you'd expect something with Nico's involvement would, it's nice to see her be helpful to her friends without any caveats. At least that's what I would say, but there's no such thing as Nico using a spell without there being a punchline. The spell for making magic ink that could fill in that missing text came at the expense of draining Morihito's hair color, and it has the consequence of turning him into a white haired anime boy. Luckily, this also has the unintended benefit of making Morihito look like the newest version of Oboro from the Uron Mirage manga, and the girls milk this for all it's worth by using him as their walking advertisement. It's a good punchline, and it proves one thing for certain: No matter what else happens, we can't escape thinking about Uron Mirage. With how dull the last episode was, this is a dramatic improvement, and I'm glad to see the show return to its usual level of quality. We've still got a couple more episodes to go before this season wraps up, and while those remaining episodes are likely to be less comedy-focused, if this ends up being the last pile of laughs we get, I'm glad the anime staff chose to go out with strong ones.

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Witch Watch is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.