Justin: WITCH WATCH…get it? Wristwatch, but swap Wrist with Witch…? Clever right?
Anywho, there’s generally rules that I come up with regarding a lot of Shonen Jump series. As in, if they’re new I’m just not going to read it at the start. It’s tough, since there are certainly talented new creators that can establish themselves quickly, but JUMP can in theory end a series if it doesn’t do well in Japan after a couple of months, so the only times I’ll pick one up will be because of these reasons:
- It’s lasted half a year, or gets between 25-30 chapters.
- If the sales of Volume 1 do well enough. (I heard this was more than the case for Undead Unluck, for example.)
- An established author is creating it.
Which leads to WITCH WATCH, the newest work by Sket Dance and Astra Lost in Space creator Kenta Shinohara. Helen’s reviewed the whole series already, but Astra Lost in Space is not only one of the best Sci-Fi manga you can read in English, but one of the best manga released in English in the past couple years. It’s been since 2018 since anything new has emerged from Shinohara, and I’ve been wondering what new work he would be coming up with and where.
And here it is! And for its first chapter, it’s pretty ordinary.
Otogi Morihito is part of the ogre line, which is why his strength is way above a normal human. This got him into trouble as a kid, so he’s resolved to not use that strength in fights — this changes when his childhood friend, Niko the witch, is set to return, but with a demand: Morihito will be her familiar! According to his dad, Morihito can’t turn this down due to ancestral ties and a contract with witches.
So he needs to protect Niko, who immediately establishes herself as the cute but ditzy character so far. She’s back from her training in the Witches’ Holy Land, but she has many expectations when seeing Morihito since she left 6 years ago. When she sees how hot and serious he is, they were already met. Now she tries to show off her witch powers, and one of them backfires spectacularly. It’s early, but chances are this won’t be the last time she causes many problems.
The end of this chapter gives us motivation as to why these two are together, but it’s fairly weak. Like, the only threat in this chapter was Niko herself. The humor I think is more established than anything else, and it was ok, though Niko going all one-dimensional and barfing confetti was hilarious. The art’s pretty solid, and once we can figure the direction the manga wants to go in it should get better.
But yes, the direction is what provides the most interest. Astra Lost in Space had not one, but TWO well-executed twists. While it may not be at those levels, WITCH WATCH will obviously have something of intrigue, but what will it be? Before we can figure that out though, we’ll have to see a couple other characters appear and have Morihito and especially Niko more fleshed out. The story will have to get sharper. And from there we can have some idea of what’s going to happen…and potentially have those ideas flipped upside down!
So in conclusion, this isn’t off to the best start. But I presume this manga will have ample time to establish itself, so I’m certainly curious about where it’s going.
Helen: Morihito lives in a Japan where magic is real but it’s not something he’s actively dealt with. He comes from a double lineage of witch familiars who took on human forms and had human children but he doesn’t understand why that means he needs to be his childhood friend’s familiar. Niko the witch has finished her magical training and is moving back to town but she seems unaware of a premonition that disaster will befall her in the next year; so while Niko thinks that she and Morihito are bound to become a couple, Morihito is only doing this to keep her from dying!
It’s a bit of a shame that the title Guardian of the Witch was already taken since that’s a lot more informative than WITCH WATCH, although I suppose it does lack the same alliteration in English. This series also seems to be lacking something else but I’m not sure what at this point; this 50 page introductory chapter both tries to cover a lot of ground in getting Morihito and Niko’s situation set up and yet doesn’t actually cover a lot. That’s perfectly fine for a first chapter but I think what will keep me from coming back for chapter two was that the humor felt completely off to me. I’m a big fan of Kenta Shinohara’s Astra Lost in Space series but, while the humor sometimes felt overbearing in that series, it never bothered me as much as the jokes did here, they just weren’t funny at all! (and I haven’t read or watched his other comedic series, Sket Dance, at all so I can’t compare that to WITCH WATCH)
I just need something more engaging than “a boy and a girl are thrown in together because the story demands it” and the unfunny humor rubbed me badly enough that I’m not really interested at this point in seeing if the second chapter is smoother. I’ll keep an eye out to see what other people are saying about the series but right now, for me this is the end of the line.