Witch Watch

Episode 13

We've arrived at the second cour of Witch Watch, which of course means it's time to talk about the new OP. After getting something as catchy and stuffed to the gills with manga references as Watch Me, pretty much anything would be a downgrade. I foolishly hoped for something of similar quality, but neither the visuals nor song choice here are anywhere near as immaculate. That said, Tokihanatsu by Hashimelo is still decently catchy in its own right, and seeing all the characters doing TikTok dances in front of the moon works as a cute motif, so I'm sure it'll grow on me eventually.

On the note of new additions, much of this episode centered around Keigo adjusting to life at the Otogi household. We've already seen that Keigo's social skills are less than stellar. He might be excited at the idea of living with his friends, but he just can't help but default to being a poser. Despite his best efforts to engage them in polite conversation, he keeps trying to act above it all or awkwardly bring up some movie he's into, and watching this play out is as funny as it is sad. As you might recall, Keigo isn't the only new resident that has to be taken into consideration here. Wolf comes as a package deal, and with how much of a violent bad boy the last couple of episodes made him out to be, you might be asking how well he fits into the show's comedy.

The answer is: beautifully, as the show wastes little time in establishing how well he bounces off the rest of our collection of dorks. Sure, we see that he does lean hard into the standard bad boy archetypes, like being quick to pick fights or happily drawing the attention of every girl he sees, but even he can't help but get sucked into some back and forth banter with Kanshi when the latter gets annoyed at how fast he can pick up girls. Wolf also makes it clear that he's still a bit of a rebel. He's grateful enough to Nico that he's willing to bail her out of any future trouble, but he's much less interested in being at her beck and call as a familiar. That doesn't mean this dogboy is entirely disobedient. He might not listen to Nico, but he's willing to obey Morihito as he recognizes the winner of their fight as the alpha wolf of their group. I don't think the science checks out. Still, seeing someone as self-indulgent as Wolf fold like a chair the second Morihito tells him to cool down is hilarious.

That by itself would have done enough to sell Wolf's comedic potential, and the second segment manages to take it one step further. Considering that Nemu has both met the others in her human form and befriended Nico, you think we'd be done with her cat transformation routine, but it's just too good of a joke not to recycle, and this time there's a twist! By this point, Nemu has finally admitted to herself that she likes being petted by Morihito. She's ready to indulge in that ecstasy, but there's one problem: Wolf knows about her transformation spell and could expose her at any time. Once he takes note of Nemu's presence, it doesn't take long for him to put the pieces together, and he decides to milk this for all it's worth. He agrees to hide Nemu's secret under the condition that she shows up once a month to let Wolf swap forms with Keigo. You'd expect someone as shy as her to find his forceful bad boy routine intimidating, but it's quite the opposite. One wall slam from him is all it takes for Nemu to start fantasizing about being carried in the arms of this hunky werewolf, and at this point it's clear that her standards for familiar boys aren't as high as she thinks. If this is how the show maintains the joke of Nemu being a disaster with boys, I pray that it goes on for as long as possible.

That brings us to the last part of the episode, which isn't quite as funny as the first two, but only barely. Nico wants to get better at cooking so she can get more popular and impress Morihito, but her actual cooking skills leave much to be desired, as anything she makes comes out looking like a Dragon Quest slime. Normally, I'm not a fan of the whole “laughing at a girl who doesn't know how to cook” since, in addition to all the bad gender expectations those kinds of jokes reinforce, they're rarely ever funny, and there are only so many ways you can recycle such an exhausting gag.

If there's one thing Witch Watch knows how to do with a joke, it's subvert expectations. When Nico uses a spell to make everyone fall in love with her cooking, that gets taken quite literally as she and the others start falling head over heels for Nico's sweet and sour pork. The lone exception is, of course, Morihito, who correctly avoided any of the dishes Nico seasoned with her magic, and soon discovers that the powder she used in her cooking contained a charm spell. His discovery comes just a bit too late as Nico ends up accidentally spilling some on herself, and becomes far more popular than she bargained for when everyone in town falls for her. The only way for Nico to break this spell is by demonstrating that she's chosen one particular suitor over any other in the form of a kiss, and to her surprise, Morihito kisses her on the cheek without hesitation. As cute as both the moment and Nico's reaction to it are, this theoretical bit of romantic development doesn't faze Morihito…at first. While he says it's not a particularly big deal since they kissed each other on the cheek all the time as kids, his subconscious tells him otherwise, and seeing him unable to sleep afterwards without knowing why makes for as great of a punchline as you could hope for with someone as dense as he is. Despite coming off a serious story arc, this episode more than demonstrates that the show hasn't lost its touch with its humor, and with a whole second cour's worth of jokes to dish out, I'm sure there'll be plenty more laughs to come.

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Witch Watch is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.