It’s almost like Witch Watch read my piece referring to it as a possible gag manga, because this week it goes back to a traditional three-act plot. That’s been a rare occurrence over the course of the series so quite the coincidence. As ever I tend to like this series less when it goes serious, and indeed the first act this week was kind of limp on the whole. After that things improved quite a bit though, and by the end of the episode it had made a fairly strong impression.
If Witch Watch isn’t a gag manga then I suppose it’s more feasibly a romcom than anything else. As such a focus on the “rom” once in a while is probably in order. That includes both potential romances in fact, though most of the focus is on the main pair. Moi-chan finds a letter (same box as last week) that Nico wrote him when he was a kid. While he’s off visiting his mom’s grave, a visiting Nemu (just move in already, Number Five) chats with the others about it, and Nico goes into the aforementioned recollection. It’s mostly nothing we didn’t already know, but it does plant a seed in Nemu’s mind about what really may be going on here.
Kotodama – the power of words – is a pretty important element of Japanese mythology. It’s true, Moi has very much turned into a “stoic boy” after his troubled youth. But his lack of romantic interest in Nico goes deeper than that. A witch’s words have power – that’s what chibi-Nico was thinking when she wrote Moi-boya that letter. She was imbuing that “I’ll always be your friend” with her magical power – and it was seeping into Moi’s brain every day as he stared at it on his wall. The friendzone as a curse is a clever twist by Shinohara-sensei, I have to say.
Worse still, Nemu tells the others they can’t tell either Moi or Nico about this. A witch attacking humans is taboo (as we know) and – intentional or not – a curse is a kind of attack. So if she finds out it nudges her towards the darkness, and if he does he’ll probably spill the beans. Nemu’s idea is that the curse is like a wall, and if Moi’s romantic feelings grow enough naturally they’ll eventually breach the wall and break the curse. So the onus is on the group to push things in that direction without spilling the beans (and Kanshi would be the world’s worst poker player).
The most interesting part of this is the “Feelingram” Nico casts to try and gauge Moi’s attitude towards her – a bug means friendship, a flower romance. She practices on the others with amusing results, but when she offers to cast it on Keigo and Nemu they immediately raise a protest (yeah, that ship is at full sail). When she eventually does cast it on Moi he sprouts two caterpillars – seemingly a bad end. But of course caterpillars aren’t like most bugs – they transform. The symbolism isn’t subtle, but it’s a fun way to foreshadow what seems the inevitable turn of events for the main couple.
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