My thoughts on witch hat atelier

Recently after seeing Zoe (go follow) talk about it multiple times I decided to read witch hat atelier! I just finished and decided to write my thoughts and experience with it.

Art

I think the first thing that sells you in this manga is the art, especially clothes and scenarios for me are absolutely fantastic. Both the quality of the drawing and the design of characters. As reference, here is one panel and char design I like:

Characters

I love the characters, and there are a couple reasons for it. All of them have clearly good and bad traits and they are shown in a very neutral way, which makes them feel more human and real. They all have struggles and past stories that fit well with their personalities. A couple examples could be:

  • Coco has problems with being “unworthy” of magic, since she wasn’t suppose to be a witch.
  • Riche has problems with not being original and loosing her essence.
  • Qifrey clearly struggles with pursuing or not pursuing vengeance dilemma. (Similar to oldboy if you have seen it before).

They all have problems, they all have things they are good and bad at and they all have different motivations. This makes the characters believable and easier to like, hook up that with how well they bounce from each other and you have amazing characters with good chemistry and variety.

Themes

I hinted that talking about the characters, but witch hat atelier also has in-story themes sprinkled through out. Things like jealously are especially explored in many different cases, like with Agathe in the Silver Eve festival arc.

But by far my favorite is the initial story of Tartah. The way a simple “block” in front of him causes tremendous pain in not being able to do a thing he likes and is supposed to be able to do. Thinking your view of the world is not even considered a possibility to other people. Feeling alone in the grand scheme of things.

This part encapsulate so many themes at once. Jealousy, Accessibility, hopeless, helpless. Those are all extremely powerful and real problems we can have in our real lives, and one of the why’s this panel hits so hard to me.

Also the resolution for his problems by Coco is a fantastic part! And a good hook up to our next bit… The magic.

The magic system

How could I not talk about the magic system? How could I not have an entire section dedicated for it? It’s one of this manga’s favorite selling points and it’s clear why. But, as someone that didn’t know a couple days ago, I think it can be difficult to properly explain why it’s good, let me try:

With hat atelier’s magic system is beautifully complex and yet pretty simple. All magic is performed through spells, and those can be conjured by using magic circles, or glyphs. A simple glyph is composed by a sigil, keystones and a ring.

  • Sigil is located on the center of the glyph and shows the element of the spell, in this case, Wind.
  • Keystones or signs determines the manifestation of the spell, meaning what size or direction is gonna take. It’s usually draw around the sigil but there are exceptions. In this case we have the levitation sign (the one similar to an arrow) and the convergence one (the triangle).
  • Ring is the circle that encloses the the sigil and keystones of the spell. A spell will only work and activate if a ring is present and completed. It’s very usual that witches will prepare spells ahead of time and only let a gap on the ring so they can just close it to activate it.

Another really interesting part is how clever and creative some of this magic usage can get. A good example would be spell toggling which can be made by splitting a glyph in two different objects and touching their halves to activate it! This and other examples show how creative the usage can get if you think it through.

As a little bonus for the people who got interested, here is a little exercise. if you are not interested in more magic and don’t want to try, skip to the next section called Subtle themes.

If you are here to learn a little bit, let’s dive a bit on the simple glyph I showed you. You already know that it’s sigil is wind and it’s keystones are levitation and convergence. So you can have more information, here is a more detailed explanation of the keystones:

  • levitation makes the spell float above the glyph.
  • convergence makes the spell more focused on a center point.

Okay, having all this info:

  • What this example glyph I showed you does?
Answer
Show more

If you wanna try your own spells head to the wiki (link in the end of the post) and read about the different effects signs have and be creative!

Subtle themes

Now let’s go for the interpretation side of things that I really like to explore in media. There were some things that passed through my head while I was reading this manga. The most obvious one is how the author would sometimes speak through the characters dialog, almost venting out, using her magic world to talk about artist’s struggles. As a good example, let’s look at coco talking:

Not knowing what to draw, staring at a blank piece of paper, always rewriting your work, not feeling the passion… I don’t think I need to continue right? You only need to omit the context to see. You almost forget she is talking about magic! A simple detail that I do believe was intentional.

Another good one is the whole idea of Riche wanting to be original, for me it’s also a way of the author talking to us about struggles she herself has!

Conclusion

In conclusion, aside from a couple nitpicks with parts of the story, Witch hat atelier surprised me. The world building is marvelous, the details are awesome and there is a lot to explore and expect with this story. Hope I shed a new light in details that you can appreciate more, and if you didn’t read it, hope I’ve convinced you of trying out!

See ya, unknowing witch