“Witch Hat Atelier – Preview for 2025”
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Spoiler Alert – many spoilers follow
I have read “Witch Hat Atelier” VOL 1 to 4, but am currently halted at the end of VOL 4 because VOL 5 is not available except from specialty book houses at a premium price. Yes, there are many blogs and websites with fan translated versions, but I want the officially released English translation so I will not skip ahead.
In any case, this is not a work which one can skip ahead. The world of “Witch Hat Atelier” is excruciatingly detailed, and highly plot driven. Skipping ahead in this work is like skipping ahead in Calculus. The material that you skip will come back to haunt you!
Anything said here is based solely on the material in VOL 1 to 4, and be aware, that this review is highly spoilerific. Proceed at your own risk based upon what you like in a story.
The drawn art of “Witch Hat Atelier” is fantastic, and beautiful. The world is wonderfully created, and as mentioned, highly detailed.
Our protagonist is Coco, a young girl in love with magic, but because she is not of a magic family, it is said that she cannot become a witch. In this world one must be born into a witch family.
But this of course is all a lie because magic in “Witch Hat Atelier is not cast by words, but is drawn on paper with pen and ink. There is no special ability needed other than being an artist, and knowing what to draw. The picture if properly drawn, will activate the spell. And anyone can cast this magic. But there are forbidden spells
And there is an Antagonist group called the “The Brimmed Caps” who believe in casting The Forbidden Spells. When Coco was very little, she was given pen, ink, and paper by a Brimmed Cap, and eventually she unknowingly casts a Forbidden Spell which turns her mother into stone.
As the MC Witch, Qifrey says in VOL 1, CH 2, Page 80-81, “All it took was knowledge of prescribed designs….and specially crafted ink. Anyone from any place, could cast….and magic was familiar to all. However because of that….the world was constantly embroiled in war. For when man has the power to do anything, then anything he will do.”
This view contrasts sharply with “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End” where Frieren looks forward to a time of peace in which magic is used by everyone. Frieren’s hopes and dreams do violence to the Krell Solution of the Fermi Paradox which supports the Qifrey view of magic and it’s uses. That a magical society must be built on a lie and strictly controlled by an actual dictatorship, even to the point of erasing memories of those who learn the truth.
No greater conflict in Fantasy literature could be imagined, than this existential conflict between two excellent stories. And the final answer is obscure.
If the production values as shown in the Preview above bear out, then “Witch Hat Atelier” may debut in 2025 with enormous potential to equal “Frieren” or even surpass it.
But as many fantasy fans are saying with “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End”, “Dungeon Meshi”, and now “Witch Hat Atelier”, we be eating good!