Witch Watch

Episode 12

Last week's events did a good job of transitioning the series towards a more action-focused storyline—and this episode continues in that vein, as the gang wraps up their battle with Wolf and his Warlock master. I had a few minor misgivings about how well the anime staff would be able to handle a more action-heavy affair after spending so much of the first cour on comedy. Those fears have been largely alleviated as the presentation here ends up being more than sufficient to get the job done. More importantly, the show manages to balance all that action with solid melodrama. While parts of it feel a little heavy-handed, the conclusion to Keigo's story is largely pretty satisfying.

Before we get to Keigo, there's the matter of the Warlock he's been working for. Nico and Kanshi have a hard time locating her, so they attempt to use Nico's invisibility spell to slip through her crowd of minions and find where she's hiding among them. When the Warlock catches on to their plan, Nico decides to use herself as bait to draw her attention. This allows Kanshi to catch the Warlock off guard using Nico's cloning spell. Nothing here is too fancy, but it does do a functional enough job of delivering all the clever misdirections of a standard shonen fight, and it was cool to see Nico contributing rather than simply standing on the sidelines as it helps demonstrate she can be trusted to deal with whatever future dangers lie ahead for her. Once the Warlock is caught, we learn that she discovered her witch powers as a teenager and, in typical teen fashion, believed they would make her someone special. Somehow, she never quite grew out of that expectation and managed to reach old age still bitter about never getting her chance to be special—which is sad. This made her a prime target for a shadowy mastermind, and he offered to unlock her hidden potential as a witch in exchange for both a price and her assistance in capturing Nico. As dark and pathetic as a lot of that sounds, it somehow manages to square back around to being funny when we learn what “price” the Warlock paid to gain her new powers. It is made into little more than a joke as it's hard not to laugh at her attempts to act intimidating while Kanshi tosses her around like a tiny ragdoll upon learning the truth.

That brings us back to Morihito and Wolf's fight taking center stage. My expectations on the animation front weren't super high, so I was pleasantly surprised that this looked solid. There are a couple of noticeable shortcuts with the use of speed lines, and one or two animation cuts look a bit sloppy, but it's otherwise got enough good-looking hand-to-hand combat for what the fight requires and more than I expected from a studio that isn't known for it. Considering this won't be the last time we see battles in this show, I'm happy we got something that looked genuinely cool, and it's a relief to see this adaptation can handle the action-heavy side of this series as well as it does the gags. As good as the fight looks, that only matters as much as the stakes going into it, and the show manages to hit just as hard with the drama as these two are hitting each other.

Morihito decides to probe Wolf on the nature of his and Keigo's co-existence, and we learn more about how it works. Although Keigo is aware of Wolf's existence, he doesn't have any of his memories and can only communicate with him via text messages—which is how he roped him into working with the Warlock. In contrast, Wolf retains all of Keigo's memories and directs him to get close to Morihito and the others to find an opportunity to lure Morihito away. Since they share memories, it ends up striking a nerve when Morihito asks if Keigo ever genuinely believed the two of them were friends, and while Wolf tries his best to hide it, it's clear he isn't as up for fighting as he claims. Morihito takes enough notice of this to try getting through to him, and considering that Morihito has never been the type to take much interest in others, seeing him trying to keep faith in Keigo shows how much he's come to value their friendship. I alluded in one of my earlier reviews that this arc happened a bit earlier in the manga than it did in the anime, and while part of me still would have liked to get it sooner rather than later, I do think it was a smart change in the long run, since we've spent more time seeing these two hang out, and makes the sense of desperation here feel more sincere.

Eventually, the power of friendship prevails as Nico and Kanshi arrive in time to help out Morihito and bring this fight to a close. However,the aftermath ends up being just as complicated. We discover that Keigo's connection to the Warlock is even more coerced than we saw last week. Unlike what Nico and her pair of dorks have going, a familiar normally forms a pact that causes them to die if anything happens to their master. Although the Warlock is more than happy to use this fact to make Keigo and Wolf her hostages, Nico's good nature makes her reconsider things, as Nico thinks the Warlock would be happier living among the other witches in Nico's hometown than being alone. Sadly, she doesn't get the chance to take Nico's offer as the moment the Warlock tries to reveal the name of the one who roped her into this, she's killed on the spot, and drained of all her magic—which happens to free Keigo from his contract. This is a bit of a cheap resolution, not least of all because there's little more artificial than killing a character this way, but considering that Witch Watch has otherwise been an extremely lighthearted show, a body count of any kind feels serious, and cements how much our mystery villain means business.

Following this, we discover that Keigo's actual motives behind working with the Warlock were a bit more altruistic than he let on. Rather than wanting to use the Warlock's potion to fix his legs, he wanted it to heal his mother's legs after she got caught up in the same accident. Since the Warlock wasn't born a witch, she never had access to the potion she promised to Keigo and was lying to him from the start, but Nico learns she has one, and upon hearing Keigo's story she decides to forgo any personal use she could have for it in favor of restoring his mother's legs. The sentiment here is sweet, though it always feels a bit rocky whenever the concept of a magical cure for a disability is presented, since it glosses over the reality of how plenty of people live fine with them. To give some benefit of the doubt, it is at least implied that it hasn't been very long since the accident, and Keigo's mom ends up heading off on a business trip that she'd been putting off because of it. While this is maybe one instance where Witch Watch's brand of melodrama is a bit too simple for its own good, it works just well enough that it's probably not worth nitpicking too hard.

Speaking of, with Keigo's mom now off to parts unknown, Keigo ends up becoming the newest resident of Morihito's household and joins Nico's merry band of familiars. Given his level of prominence in the opening song, this probably shouldn't be too shocking even to anime-only viewers, but it doesn't make his addition any less welcome. We've already seen how well he gels with the rest of these dorks, and it will be fun to see what his continued presence adds to the show's comedy. As for the rest of the show's future, it's clear that between our mystery villain and Nico's prophecy still looming, this won't be the last we see of the Warlocks. Fortunately, this two-parter has sufficiently demonstrated that this series can be as good at being a regular battle shonen as it is at riffing on them. So with that being added to the rest of the show's formula, it's just one more reason to keep watching the escapades of this wacky witch.

Rating:

Witch Watch is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.