Witch Hat Atelier Volume 13 Review
Warning – spoilers ahead!
Qifrey and Coco have confronted Lord Engendale on the seashore in an attempt to stop his sorcerous leech attack on Ezrest during the Silver Eve festival. But Coco’s left eye has been injured in the magical battle and Qifrey’s first aim – as soon as he’s arrested the treacherous member of the Three Wise Ones – is to get her to safety. He delivers her into the care of his mentor, Lord Beldaruit, who teaches Coco how to create a smoke-sculpture so that she can ‘accompany’ Quifrey as he goes to find Custas while her body remains in safety.
Meanwhile, Coco’s fellow apprentices have been helping to protect the terrified citizens of Ezrest, aided by young Prince Eoleo and – to Richeh’s surprise and joy – her shy brother Riliphin who manages to put aside his fear of crowds and accompany the prince. Who knew that their spells, specially devised to delight the crowds at the Silver Eve festival, would come in so useful in a state of emergency like this?
And what has become of Custas? The boy has thrown his lot in with the banned Brimmed Caps and learned forbidden magic to keep his minstrel guardian Dagda in the land of the living. But Luluci has tracked him down. This leads to a stand-off between the valiant member of the Knights Moralis and Quifrey and Coco. Can they persuade Luluci to give Custas a chance to explain himself?
With the TV anime for this beloved manga series eagerly anticipated to air later in 2025, it’s difficult not to wonder whether this arc, the most dramatic and potentially tragic so far, will become the climax of the adaptation. There’s much material to adapt before the Silver Eve Saga even begins, so perhaps we won’t see it in the first season. The thirteenth volume is full of incident as the many plot threads Kamome Shirahama has established interact and come to fruition in a very satisfying, page-turning way. The mangaka not only brings her world and characters to life in her signature beautifully detailed illustrations, she also knows how to spin several storylines at once and make them deliver at just the right moment.
If I have one slight (and it is very slight) reservation about this series, it’s something which the mangaka has also been praised for elsewhere and which I would normally welcome – except it’s beginning to feel just a little ‘worthy’ and box-ticking. It’s been great to see inclusiveness in the large cast: we have gay characters (Atwert and Galga), characters coming to terms with physical handicaps (Custas and Lord Beldaruit), people of all different skin colours represented as living alongside each other without any signs of racial prejudice. Queen Zayamaiya of Ezrest is depicted as a person of size and Rili, Richeh’s brother, has suffered physical and mental abuse at the hands of his mentor. Which is all fine and good but sometimes comes across as just a little heavy-handed when – especially this far into this arc – it distracts from the main theme.
Underlying the whole series is the debate about who can and can’t wield magic – and the uses of magic itself. In this world, the Brimmed Caps who used magic for all kinds of nefarious purposes have been banished and the current witch society has very strict rules, sternly enforced by the Knights Moralis (a witch must have their memories erased if they dare to disobey). Coco is the embodiment of both forms of magic as she was deceived and led astray by a shadowy Brimmed-Cap magic wielder but rescued by Qifrey who has trained her alongside his other three apprentices to use the permitted skills of magic, never once revealing that she wasn’t born a natural witch. However, the monstrous leech threatening the citizens of Ezrest was created by one of the Wise Ones who has (we guess) been seduced by the lure of the older banned dark arts.
This volume is not only filled with action but many significant conversations. Two of the most important occur between Coco and Lord Beldaruit – and then Beldaruit and Lady Vinanna, the formidable captain of the Knights Moralis. Will Coco’s passionate defence of Custas result in a change of heart in both these venerable witches and save him in time? Coco might be a mere apprentice but her clear-thinking and desire to protect others shines through. These scenes are not only well drawn, they’re incisively written (and translated by Stephen Kohler with clarity and impact) and are another reason why this series is such a good read. As before, Stephen Kohler’s excellent translation is brough to life by Lys Blakeslee’s unobtrusive but appropriate lettering choices (which work so well in a manga that has a lot of dialogue).
This volume provides some intriguing (and unexpected) resolutions to what’s probably the darkest turn the story has taken for quite a while. But all is far from over – and the volume concludes with an agonizing premonition that doesn’t bode well for what’s about to transpire in Volume 14. We’ve come a long way with the people of Witch Hat Atelier and grown to like (and in some cases strongly dislike!) many of them, so the wait for the next volume (not yet on Kodansha’s release calendar) is going to prove equally agonizing for us readers.
Witch Hat Atelier © Kamome Shirahama/Kodansha Ltd.
Our review copy from Kodansha was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.
