unfortunately, magic can’t fix everything

🚨 This review contains spoilers 🚨

Witch Hat Atelier gave me a visceral reaction. The static sensation of frisson, a bubbly, giddy feeling that made me so angry that anime is released on a weekly basis.

Aesthetically, the anime reminds you much of the Studio Ghibli style. Like many of Miyazaki’s films, folded into the bright colors and magic, the audience is plucked from the dazzling fantasy and placed into the hard reality that even magic cannot keep away the darkness.

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This week I am reviewing: WITCH HAT ATELIER

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🪄🧙🏾‍♀️ this review is split into an overview of episode one and then a broader analysis of the season 🧙🏾‍♀️🪄

Before the story begins in earnest, we, the viewer, are asked a few questions.

Are you born to be who you become or is it something you grow into through experience?

and

Is talent something that is innate or learned?

From the time she was a little girl, Coco loved magic.

In this world where witches exist, you cannot become someone who uses magic. Either you know how to, or you don’t, and for someone like Coco, this creates a never-ending yearning to be something she can never be.

That doesn’t stop her from enjoying the magic around her. It doesn’t make her resentful. It’s just how things are.

After spotting a flying pegasus cart, Coco rushes downstairs to tell her mother. She could hardly contain herself, her passion for magic spilling out everywhere as she gushed about it.

She asks her mom if she can go see the pegasus carriage after she helps the customer who’s waiting patiently, promising to her that she’d stop saying that he’d want to be a witch.

Her mother reluctantly agrees and Coco gets started on the order. Qifrey, who has been quietly waiting to be served, gives Coco the measurements for the fabric he needs. As she marks and cuts the material, Qifrey makes a remark about the way Coco works.

It’s so sharp and detailed, her hands never waver.

He calls it real magic.

To that, Coco vehemently disagrees. She insists that real magic, the magic that she loves so dearly, is much more precious.

The audience is transported back into a memory, seemingly the first memory of magic that Coco has. You don’t realize it then, but it’s here that we meet the villain of the story—a Brim Cap Witch. He’s given her a “magical picture book” and a wand.

When we return to the present, Qifrey has a pensive expression, one of concern, but before he can ask Coco more about this book she received. There’s a bang.

The wheel’s fallen off of the pegasus cart and the only way to fix it is through magic. Fortunately for the wealthy women who flew in, Qifrey is a witch and offers to fix the cart.

He takes the wheel into the back workshop and tells Coco that no one is supposed to watch him as he works.

It’s shattering for her. To be so close, but to be so far away from this thing she’s always wanted to see.

Coco sees that a few of the other children in the village have climbed onto the roof. Before they can open the window, she joins them and ultimately Coco is the one who opens the doors.

As if fate were putting up another roadblock, there were shades in the way.

Dejected, Coco goes to retrieve the book she spoke about to Qifrey. Fortunately for her, the attic is right above the workshop and that’s where she decides to just take a peek.

Down below, Qifrey has pulled out a pen and an inkwell.

That’s when Coco realizes that magic is not something that you cast, it is something that you draw.

Just as she realizes what she’s witnessed, Qifrey calls out to her that he’s finished. Coco rushes down in order not to be caught.

The wheel is attached, Qifrey takes his leave, and Coco is set on another mission.

If she understood what she saw Qifrey do, then the book and wand she owned were the tools to draw her own magic.

After scribbling on some paper, she finally draws something that more closely resembles a magic circle. It is her first ever spell, as crude as it is.

Coco decides to trace the magic circles instead and chooses an especially complex one. Just as she finishes the circle, two arms appear from the darkness, but it’s too late. The spell has been done and starts to light up the room.

Qifrey was too late getting back to the shop.

He whisks them through the sky using shoes that give him the ability to fly.

He asks her in a panicked voice: You drew magic, didn’t you? What did you draw?

Coco’s mother comes out of the house, the home glowing blue behind her. She calls for her daughter and Coco yells for her to run.

Again, it is too late. Coco’s mom is encapsulated in crystals.

Qifrey tells Coco that he’s going to have to wipe her memories, but she pleads with him not to. Who would save her mother?

Qifrey, still cold and emotionless, murmurs that it’s unfortunate, but it must be done.

In one last desperate attempt, Coco tells him that she may not know what type of magic she drew, but she knew the book that she traced it from by heart.

This is enough to settle Qifrey for now.

He muses that this was a chance for him to track them down. He couldn’t afford to lose the whereabouts of **the Brim Hat Witches.

Miles above the clouds, far away from the destruction that has unfolded, Qifrey tells Coco that the only way for her to keep her memories is for her to become one of the small group of people who knew the secret.

Coco was going to become a witch.

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I have no doubt that by the end of Witch Hat Atelier, I will have shed at least a few buckets’ worth of tears. I anticipate being deeply wounded by this story, and still I am restless. I must know how this story ends.

As you watch this anime, you realize that magic serves as a tool. Both as a system of power and as a means to represent one of the most important systems in our society: knowledge.

One of the most central conversations is around who gets to be a witch. Who gets to have access to knowledge?

Those who have access to knowledge have power, and this creates an inherently unbalanced structure or hierarchy.

Coco’s love and desire to know the truth about magic ultimately robbed her of what was left of her innocence. She’d already lost her father to illness, and now her mother was frozen in forbidden magic because she couldn’t resist her yearning to know.

The scene where the magic takes over her mother’s house didn’t quite bother me initially. Certainly, if the magic could be cast, there would be something else, a counterbalance to reverse it. However, Qifrey’s reaction, the desperation of his question about what spell Coco had drawn, made my heart sink.

It was so unfair.

As it is in real life, that didn’t matter.

Coco being a child didn’t matter. Her young age made her vulnerable, but I’m sure that, as she learned from the untimely passing of her father, age does not shield you from heartache, from trauma, from violence.

Her situation was ultimately the result of her not following the directions given to her by Qifrey.

The mistakes of children are usually harmless, but in certain circumstances, like this one, they can lead to devastating situations.

Coco learns about the weight, the burden of knowing.

It’s unclear what the ambitions are for the Brimmed Hats.

Regardless of what their motivations are, as it stands right now, I do not like them, nor do I trust that their worldview is rooted in a benign desire for equity or equality.

At the start of the season, I thought they were a morally grey force. I personally agree that the current system being maintained in unsustainable.

In fact, this situation reminds me much of the gripe Erik Killmonger had with Black Panther and the hidden country of Wakanda.

Black Americans had been suffering at the hands of racists and the system of white supremacy, and Wakandans simply watched on. There were no secret back channels to help, just a seemingly “neutral” stance on not getting involved.

Much like my issues with Killmonger, the approach the Brim hats take is harmful and generally unhelpful.

As a viewer, I feel frustration seeing moments where people are harmed or are in danger, and witches can’t freely use magic to assist them. There is nothing moral or correct or right about letting people die because people from a different era couldn’t be responsible.

Certainly there had to be another way?

The terror that the Brim Hats inflict on characters in this story almost nullifies the entire premise that magic should be available to everyone. How is terrorizing children helping them reach this utopian ideal?

And, while I understand the sentiment that unfettered access to magic could lead to disaster, I don’t know if I can fully agree with Qifrey’s perspective either.

An uneducated populace is ultimately a vulnerable population who can be easily be manipulated one way or the other.

The Pointed Caps mean well, but clearly, their ideology has deep glaring flaws. Wiping away the memories of those who know is so drastic and severe. It’s lazy and unimaginative and doesn’t actually stop anyone from using forbidden magic.

But then again, learning about the history of how magic had been used before magic became a secret, makes me incredibly sympathetic.

Who would want to live in a world where magic would have seemingly limitless ability to do harm on a scale that could hardly be fathomed? It would be pure terror if it became a large enough belief system.

I hardly want to imagine the horror that people witnessed when magic was performed directly on a person.

Still, I believe that there is a better way. There has to be.

Anime watchers only have the first season to form their opinions, so there is much that we may not know, but for the time being, I find myself wholly rejecting The Brimmed Hats and in partial disagreement with The Pointed Hat.

Magic is a powerful force in this world. In order to create a safer and more equitable world, there has to be changes.

I’m extremely interested to see where Shirahama-sensei takes us.

Only, I’m not waiting to find out.

Before this next season is animated, I intend on catching up in the manga.

Like I said, manga does not exist to become anime, and I need to know why Qifrey had joined a long line of deeply traumatized white hair blue eyed main characters.

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