First Impression: Maebashi Witches

A high school girl stumbles into a flower shop designed by Shaft Studios and is met with a blue rose, a fast-talking pink-haired girl, the promise of a song, and…a fight among the employees? Just what exactly is this place? Cut to the outside world. Yuina, she of the pink hair, is the kind of girl who giggles as she runs, and monologues encouragement to herself throughout the day. When she gets home, a talking orange frog plushie greets her from the shadows (ominous much?) and invites her to become a wish-granting witch because, “we need someone like you” (again, ominous much?). She’s not much bothered one way or the other, but decides to take him up on the offer when he promises to help her achieve the most super max vibing photo of her life if she joins up. Yuina aspires to be a photographer—no, that’s not quite right. She aspires to take photos with really amazing vibes. That’s it. Her entire dream. Anyhow, Mr Frogger whisks her off to the magical realm where she meets four other girls who each embody a trope and learns that by “someone like you,” what Keroppe (as she names him) meant was, a fifth warm body to get the magic shop materialization spell to work, and someone outgoing, ditzy, and a dash reckless to make things interesting for him. And…it works! The Shaft style shop comes into being, and the first customer arrives. And leaves pretty soon after, when the fight breaks out. Have they blown it? Luckily for them, Kermit has powers to manipulate not only space, but time too! After a refreshing picnic and pep talk, they reset the clock and try again. Can they figure out how to grant the girl’s wish? Will there be music involved? And just what is her wish anyway? 

You know what, this was absolutely fine. I was hoping for something ridiculous to poke fun at, and certainly, early on it did seem like the dialogue from Froggie was a little too on the nose, verging on lampshading everyone and everything, but he calmed down a bit, as did motormouth Yuina, with things settling into a more chill slice-of-life pace with the advent of the customer. Also, there is something appealing about Yuina, who runs on instinct rather than thought and generally gets things remarkably right. Case in point, it is the clarity and vibrancy of her childlike imagination—unburdened by anxieties about training and excelling as a witch—that ultimately gives the magical shop form and substance; meanwhile, though the first run-through with the customer ends in disaster, all the elements that ultimately bring resolution for this little encounter come from Yuina and are present the first time around; the girls just need to come together as a team to fulfill the potential of Yuina’s inadvertent vision. In other words, she’s a kind of childlike genius at releasing joy and encouragement, and that’s kinda cool. The rest of the characters are complete non-entities, though, with Azu Azu’s entire library consisting of “Hmph!” paired with a toss of her head. (Guess which trope.) The animation from Sunrise (of Love Live! fame) is fine, ranging from some off-model in-betweens, on one end of the spectrum, to some rather lovely key frames during the magical transformation sequence, on the other. The rock song about believing in yourself and working hard is of milling catchiness, and the CG animation during the performance, mildly cringeworthy, but it was over quickly and didn’t dampen the episode by any means. The entire setup is, however, deeply problematic: Together, the girls need to earn 99,999 points by fulfilling wishes in order to qualify as witches, meaning that this entire series is basically a group work project, and that just brings up too many traumatic memories for me to watch any more. But seriously, this is a decent CGDCT series, neither offensive nor particularly compelling, with the potential for some mild mystery and copious warm fuzzies. These ingredients—and even the more urgent mystery as to why on earth Yuina is using a disposable camera—are not enough to have me tuning in again, but I think it would hit the spot quite nicely if you’re looking for some sweet confectionery to enjoy at the end of a long day. 

Azu Azu is such a mood.

PS Maebashi is a small city halfway between Tokyo and Nagano, and features quite prominently in the episode. Yay local tourism!

Maebashi Witches is streaming on Crunchyroll.

claire
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