Witch Watch

Episode 22

Well, it was bound to happen eventually, but this is another one of those rare instances where none of this week's Witch Watch's shorts worked for me. That's not to say any of these are particularly rough, or lacking in the show's usual creativity, but they aren't that funny either, and it feels like a second case of the anime staff adapting a few of the weaker one-off chapters into a single episode. As such, it's hard to come down too badly on this one, since it's not like there's anything bad about how any of this week's shorts are executed, but given the material they're working with, the results still feel a little dull.

First up we've got a story about Nico and Morihito shrinking down to enjoy a doughnut, which is probably the most creative of the bunch, but was also the one I was the most immediately averse to. I'm generally not that into shrinking plots in these kinds of wacky sitcoms, and they're something of a personal pet peeve, so this would have needed to be especially funny to win me over. To the show's credit it does manage to take this in some unique directions. While Nico was looking forward to the fluffy fantasy of getting to chow down on a giant doughnut, she's instead hit with the cold reality of science when Morihito realizes that being shrunk in size has diminished their muscle mass to the point where even Morihito's superhuman strength can barely put a dent in the doughnut. It's also reduced their lung capacity to the point where they're inaudible to normal sized people, which ends up being a problem when Nico gets stuck in a piggy bank and Morihito has to try calling for help before she gets crushed to death. “Unique” isn't quite the same as “funny,” though, and in that respect this fell a little flat. While I think this short played around with the shrinking concept decently enough, the jokes weren't very strong, and none of it managed to be laugh out loud hilarious. I can't say I hated it, but by the time it ended I was mostly just ready to move on to the next bit.

Unfortunately that next bit was easily the weakest of the bunch as we get yet another scenario involving Nico trying to help a classmate ask out a crush. This time it's for a girl who keeps running into a guy from another class at the bakery she works at, and she's desperate to know what she thinks of him. Nico's solution is to make a strange bread voodoo doll that will say that person's actual feelings, but can only communicate by blurting out different types of bread. Even putting aside the obvious repetition of having another short where Nico tries to help someone with their love life, this one suffers from a much bigger problem: it's entirely centered around wordplay. More than any other form of comedy, wordplay-based puns are extremely difficult to translate from Japanese to English, and making them funny in English is an even more herculean task, so this short was fighting something of an uphill battle from its inception. In that respect I have to give some serious props to the show's translator, Megumi M. Tsuji for managing to make this segment feel comprehensible at all, and coming up with a way to make these bread puns make sense in English without taking away from the core joke. Impressive as that is, though, it doesn't change the fact that the core joke here simply isn't very funny and this was a bit of a half-baked premise even without all the puns to shift through. I don't know if I'd necessarily call this the show's weakest short, but it's probably the one that's clicked with me the least up now, and aside from the final punchline of Nico's classmate learning her crush has a girlfriend with a similar name, this feels like it needed a bit more time in the oven.

The last short here at least feels a bit more average as it centers around Nico giving Morihito a birthday gift in the form of a spell that grants him good luck. Since this involves the words “Nico,” “Morihito,” and “spell” in the same sentence it goes without saying that hijinks ensue as Nico realizes that she accidentally hit him with a spell that makes his worse. That would, of course, also be a bit too straightforward by Witch Watch's standards so the actual twist here is that between his training, and overly serious approach towards life in general, Morihito somehow interprets everything bad that happens to him as good luck. Whether he gets hit with a downpour of rain that's localized to just him, or has paint spilled on his favorite vintage jeans he remains completely oblivious to the idea that anything bad is happening to him, and instead views the former as a good training experience while seeing the latter as a cool fashion statement. These are pretty solid jokes, and make this one the standout among this week's shorts, but while it's pretty entertaining, it does feel decidedly average when compared to the show's funniest highlights, and coming off of two weaker shorts, it doesn't hit anywhere near hard enough to compensate. About the only other thing that stands out with this one is Morihito spending his birthday party rambling on about how much he hates leaning on others, which certainly says a lot about him, but all of it is pretty depressing, and is a subject that the show doesn't seem ready to unpack just yet. Overall, I wouldn't say I had a bad time with this episode, but none of these shorts hit all that well, and putting them together made it all feel a little underwhelming. With how high this show's batting average is, I don't doubt that next week's shorts will probably be funnier, but since the season is winding down, I can only hope that the show pumps out nothing but good ones from here.

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Witch Watch is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.