English Dub Review: Witch Watch “Under the Lovers’ Tree”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Nico gets worried when Morihito starts getting popular with the girls, so she tries to get his attention.

OUR TAKE

We’re back to the romantic subplot side of things this week, but while that’s not exactly my favorite part of this show, we’ve had plenty of time having fun jokes and cool animation, so I’m fine with it swinging back for now. Plus, we’ve had time to better get to know Nico and Morihito, so that’s more time to get actually invested their potential romance. This episode pretty much just reiterates what we already know: Nico loves Morihito, while Morihito PROBABLY loves her back but is focused protecting her, so while he won’t be accepting any dates from other girls, he also probably won’t be doing much with Nico until…I don’t know, something terrible happens and he’s forced to come to terms with his feelings, which I would put money on not happening until close to the end of the season (and given that this is a twenty six episode show, we’ll be waiting until near the end of the year for that). And we don’t have any further interference from that other witch this time, so it really just comes down to regular folks who only really exist to highlight how cool and pretty our main couple are so we can think on how frustrating it is that they’re not dating each other already.

And this is why this isn’t really a favorite subplot for me to cover for this show. Not because I don’t like school romance stories (although I’m sure feeling pretty single right now, not gonna lie), but because there isn’t very much to really dig into and write about. It’s cute, they’re cute, it’s all very cute! It’s also meant to grease the wheels of a “will they won’t they” plot to keep viewers and readers interested even when nothing really happens, and based on how long this story has been going on in manga form, how long this anime will go, and how good the animation budget seems to be, it looks like it has accomplished this task more than sufficiently. But it also doesn’t hurt that the other parts of the show have helped me to like and care about these characters, meaning that I actually have something to look forward to when we decide to not spend time on this. Hell, I wouldn’t mind if they decided to start going out early and then we could see the tribulations of high school dating when you’re both magic! But I don’t expect that to happen any time soon, so back to the comedy I guess.