English Dub Review: 18if “The Witch of First Love”

Nope! This one isn’t gonna get me! I’ve developed armor for my feels after this last week!

Spoilers Below

Meet Kayo Sugisaki. She’s just starting high school. She’s looking forward to the school festival. She feeds a stray cat in the park every day. And she is very, very dead. So dead, that only her Dream World powers as a witch are keeping her alive, living in an empty recreation of her home town. She lives a Groundhog Day life. That is until Haruto appears. Urged on by Lily and Dr. Kats (as I shall call him from now on), Haruto has sought her out to help her snap out of her dream, hopefully recovering her health. These conversations begin awkwardly but breach the awkward by talking about the cat. It isn’t much for her to take care of the kitty since she lives close. It’s one of the few things she can do with her limited stamina. The next day, or… The next repeat? Dreams are complicated. Haruto arrives with a Vespa. It doesn’t take much stamina to ride that! She hops on with him to see the world around her, starting with the beach. She’s just so happy.

But, when he returns with her to the park that night, she collapses, and a giant red door appears. Kayo transforms fully into a witch, though not as drastically as some of the others. Really, it’s just a different hair style. At first, we’re all afraid she’s going to go homicidal, but… she doesn’t. Instead, she’s got energy and joy! She’s been reborn! But, now that her witch powers are manifesting more fully in the Dream World, her body doesn’t have much longer. Haruto doubles down, taking her anywhere and everywhere to have all the fun she missed out on. She realizes one night that what they’ve been doing might be construed as dating! Does she have feelings for him? She decides to write him a letter explaining all of her feelings while she still can. You see, she overheard Haruto talking to Dr. Kats about her. She knows she’s dying. But, before she can hand him the letter, her heart flatlines. She collapses into his arms… and dies.

Hah! I see what you did there, 18if! You wanted to jump on the bandwagon for “Mess with Marshall Week”. I’m on to you! This one didn’t get me! Good try, though. Yeah, it’s another sad episode, this time about a girl whose fondest wish is to have her first love before she dies. This is probably one of the best episodes of 18if I’ve seen yet, from a writing standpoint. The viewpoint keeps switching from Haruto to Kayo and back, showing the same scenes from each others’ perspectives. To a degree, this is great because it allows us to stay centered in one character’s mindset, and have plot hidden from us. On the other hand, you do get to see several shots over and over again, which teeters between boring and confusing.

Something finally clicked with me and this series theme of the red doors. I don’t know why I didn’t pick up on it earlier since I’ve studied this subject on my own quite a bit. Carl Jung was a famous psychologist whose primary focus in his work was dreams and the collective subconscious. This series is dancing a jig to the tune of his work. One of the most key parts of his career was the Liber Novus, also known as the Red Book, wherein he recorded and illustrated several trance-induced hallucinations. In them, he symbolically struggled between his logical and emotional selves and tackled a great number of other issues. Most importantly, he dealt with The Shadow, a portion of himself that is comprised of all his rejected, negative aspects. In a way, the Witches are the Shadows of those inflicted with Sleeping Beauty syndrome. They have entered into this state because their Jungian Shadow has completely subsumed their personality. In Kayo’s case, she was living in a state where she was denying her current predicament and refused to come back from her dream state. Haruto is helping them overcome their Shadows, thus allowing them to leave the Dream World. The Red Doors may be a reference to the Red Book, which is the most commonly heard name for the folio. If this really is the intent, perhaps Lily is Haruto’s Anima: his feminine, connective unconscious aspect trying to push him to save these girls through the collective subconscious that is the Dream World. That might be why she calls him brother.

So, let’s talk about the technicals. This episode’s art is a step above the others and has the feeling of a completely different show. It feels more like a shoujo anime, which makes sense. Each episode so far has been in a new style, befitting the subject matter, and the quality of the art and animation has been increasing with each episode. If this keeps up, I won’t have any more complaints about errors. The voice acting wasn’t bad. Haruto, as played by Ricco Fajardo, really doesn’t have much going on in the emote division. The character does seem to care, but he doesn’t really have much depth to the way he talks. On the other hand, Jeannie Tirado’s Kayo brought the goods. This seems to be the theme in this show. Each episode focuses on a witch, and THEY are the main character, even though we are following Haruto the whole time. He is bland, so they stand out as stronger characters. Not a bad move, but I should give enough of a care about our viewpoint character to give a rats if he keels over. I don’t. Even then, I give this episode eight Red Books out of ten.