English Dub Review: Witch Watch “Kan & Nico’s Channel; The Tea Ceremony Is a Piece of Tea Cake”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Nico and Kanshi try starting up a Youtube channel. Later, Nico and Morihito help a classmate get ready for a tea ceremony.

OUR TAKE

Hm, let’s see. I can’t just say “wacky antics ensue, this show is still pretty funny” and call it a day, can I? Probably not. Well, this week is indeed more wacky antics, but the two segments are definitely distinct from each other in terms of what KIND of wacky antics. The first one involves, as described, Nico and Kaneshi seeing one of their classmates has a media review channel where they give overly drawn out and uninformative reviews of media. I can identify that it is those things because we here at Bubbleblabber have held ourselves to a hard standard of quality for our reviews which we have never and shall never fail to meet. Anyway, the idea of having a plot focus on the struggles of making a Youtube channel is actually kinda novel since I don’t think I’ve seen many, if any, shows really explore that. I mean I’ve definitely seen characters use Youtube (or a parody of it) but not exactly show them trying to make a channel for themselves. Possibly because it can very easily feel dated if you’re not careful, but social media has also become such a large part of our lives, even if you aren’t on it, that doing this in story form might just become more common as time goes on. And of course maintaining a channel is hard work, so naturally Nico and Kanshi end up giving up after a few vids.

In contrast, the other segment is more focused on traditional and long lived problems for Japanese teenagers, such as being part of a tea ceremony and trying to please your judgy parent. I specify Japanese teenagers mainly because this is a Japanese show but living up to your parents’ standards and the psychological toll of that is something most kids deal with as they enter their adolescence, whether through sports or grades or whatever. Oh yeah, and this is a show that uses magic for comedy, so naturally having it as a shortcut will also lead to that, but of course shortcuts are bad so something has to backfire here. But still, even if some aspects were pretty predictable, it’s all written, animated, and executed pretty dang well, even if it’s nothing exceptional. Even so, this show continues to build good will, so whenever something more dramatic happens, I think it will be able to handle it well enough.