Witch Watch

Episode 19

Between all the big revelations and bizarre comedy set-ups we've gotten over the past few weeks, there hasn't been too much time to focus on Nico and Morihito's relationship, but this episode pulls that back into the spotlight. Progress between the two has been pretty slow since Nico still can't bring herself to confess her feelings outright, and in addition to Morihito having the density of a steel wall, it's always been hard to get a read on just what his exact feelings are towards Nico. This time, the show finally sheds some light on that as we learn more about Nico and Morihito's childhood, and the answer we get is pretty unexpected.

Morihito ends up coming across an old letter he got from Nico saying that they would always be friends, and it makes him think a bit about the past, since she was the only friend he had when they were younger. We also learn that Morihito's mother passed away when he was young, and when he goes to visit her grave, Nico decides to tell the others about his childhood. While Morihito would always try to assure his sickly mom that he had plenty of friends, he mostly played by himself since he was scared of hurting other kids with his abnormal strength. The sole exception was Nico, and it's funny to see just how much of their dynamic remains unchanged from childhood, as even then she frequently subjected him to her spells in bad attempts to cheer him up. Despite that, it's clear that her friendship meant a lot to Morihito, so when the other kids tore up the letter she wrote to him about staying friends, he went out of his way to put the pieces back together and looked at it every day for years. It's very sweet, and while Morihito regrets the lies he told his mother about how many friends he had, he's now proud to say that he's gotten a lot more since then, and that, for as much as Nico causes him trouble, he considers her his best friend. This is the most insight we've gotten into just how strongly Morihito feels about Nico, and given the circumstances here, this moment should be extremely heartwarming. It's also somehow equally hilarious, as Morihito blurting out how he considers Nico his best friend is contrasted by the poor girl crying over how she can't get herself out of the friend zone. This is the kind of tonal whiplash that absolutely shouldn't work, and the fact that it does speaks to how well this series has crafted these characters.

As it turns out, there may be more going on as to why Nico and Morihito's relationship has remained unchanged than just our ogre boy being dense. During the childhood flashback, there's a seemingly incidental moment where Nico explains to Morihito that a witch's words can have power, and that's why she wanted to pour her feelings into that friendship letter. However, upon hearing this story, Nemu realizes that doing so might have caused some unintended consequences, as looking at it every day ended up putting a curse on Morihito's heart and preventing him from ever seeing Nico as anything other than a friend. In some ways, this explanation seems a bit unnecessary, as Morihito seems like the type who'd be plenty dense on his own even without literal magic involved, and having this tacked on does threaten to make their relationship feel a little more unnatural. Even so, it's a pretty interesting twist, and despite the threat it presents, it meshes just well enough with their existing dynamic not to retroactively ruin what little progress they've made so far. Not to mention that when it's all said and done, the idea that Nico accidentally cursed Morihito into keeping her in the friend zone feels very on brand for her, and the fact that this twist is somehow both devastating and funny makes it hard to nitpick it too badly.

When Nemu decides to relay this information to Kanshi and Keigo, the two of them assume that they can tell Morihito and Nico the truth, and the two will finally hook up, but it turns out that there are serious issues at play here. Even if Nico didn't do it intentionally, putting a curse on someone is forbidden to Witches, and learning that she placed one on Morihito could cause her enough anxiety to send her on a path towards becoming a Warlock. On the other hand, if they were to try and tell Morihito the truth, it's possible that learning about the curse could stomp out any lingering romantic feelings he might have, so they have no choice but to keep this secret. For now, the best they can manage is to try breaking the curse by boosting Morihito's romantic feelings towards Nico enough to override it, but first, they need an idea of how he currently feels. Fortunately, Nico overhears just enough of this conversation to suggest they use one of her spells, and she whips out one that can symbolize a person's feelings by having a flower sprout over their head. In Nico's case, we see a large pink flower symbolizing her massive crush on Morihito, and for the others we see how her friendship with Kanshi is symbolized by two insects buzzing around a plant, while Miharu and Keigo are two dragonflies where one gets annoyed by the other (Nemu, of course, refrains from having her feelings towards Keigo exposed and its funny to see how quickly she tries to change topics). When it comes time to cast the spell on an unsuspecting Morihito, all we see are two caterpillars with one circling the other protectively. This is all the proof Nico needs that Morihito doesn't see her as anything but a friend that needs protecting, but when she tells him how grateful she is that he held onto her letter, something shifts, and the caterpillars turn into shining butterflies. While Nico takes this to mean that Morihito values their friendship, the others take notice that the butterflies look an awful lot like flowers, and that Morihito might have romantic feelings for her after all, but simply hasn't noticed them. Even with the threat of a literal curse preventing these two from hooking up, this is about as optimistic an ending as we could hope for on the romance front, and I'd like to think that the two of them will be just fine in the end. Still, now that we know what's keeping these two out of step, I'm excited to see how the series continues to play around with this whole curse idea, and what hijinks it could bring out on the path towards getting Morihito and Nico to finally smooch.

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Witch Watch is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.