English Dub Review: Witch Watch “A Giant Rookie; Let’s Go to a Diner!; The Flying Classroom”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Nico and Morihito go to school together for the first time, where Morihito tells her to not use magic so she can hide being a witch. Three guesses what happens next.

OUR TAKE

First off, shout out to the BEAUTIFULLY animated Opening and Ending, which instantly perked my mood up and raised my expectations for this episode after last week’s felt kind of basic. And it turns out I was right to raise those expectations because this episode was in fact a lot of fun! While the first episode was about establishing the world and the dynamic between Nico and Morihito, now we meet a bunch of new characters, explore a new setting at their school, and learn more about how they interact with others as opposed to just each other. And also, it’s actually pretty funny! This episode is split up into three segments, though really it could just be given one title since it all meshes together pretty well, mainly focusing on our two leads going to school and trying to hide that they have magical abilities…which they fail basically out of the gate. Nico ends up trying to mess with Morihito with her witch magic and is outed pretty much immediately, which actually ends up making her pretty popular. And later, while she’s using some magic to make everyone fly and help them have fun, Morihito grabs a truck that gets caught up in the spell and saves the driver, outing himself but also getting popular as a result.

While trying to hide their abilities probably would’ve been fun to an extent, having them out in the open actually opens up a lot more possibilities in terms of funny stories, which could in turn help us get to know Nico and Morihito better, but also their classmates and teacher who are currently a bit one note, but that could change later. The teacher in particular is a big manga fan and clearly knows her stuff, but I am wary that her lines may just amount to “manga reference!” and that’s it, though I guess we’ll see. What I think is more notable is what we learn about our leads through this situation, as Nico just wants to make friends and help people, so she’s willing to use her magic for the benefit of others even if its at her own expense, as shown when she uses her own magic to make them fly while she has to stay on the ground. Meanwhile, Morihito cares about her safety and her being able to make new friends, and so beats up some bullies who would have interfered with that. The two clearly care about each other, but will that turn into romance like Nico wants? This show is going for six months so we’ll have plenty of time to find out.