Witches Can’t Be Collared (Light Novel) Volume 1 Review

Magic was once exclusive to the nobility, but as the world modernised, so did magic as it was passed down to the common folks. The use of magic skyrocketed across the world, but especially for crime, with spells to break into safes or change your appearance, it seemed impossible to stop. But two noble families formed the Magic Crime Bureau and recruited new detectives, with raw knowledge and power of magic to keep it under control. Rogue Macabesta is one such detective, known as the ‘Bloody Rogue’ for his overwhelming physical strength, but now he’s ready for a promotion, one away from the streets. Instead, he’s put into a secret Sixth Precinct, a sector where he has to work alongside witches, former super-powerful magical criminals who have been collared and must use their powers to solve crimes as their sentence. The task is to capture ‘Lifetaker’, a criminal who’s stealing the life of others and has eluded capture so far. But can Rogue trust these witches? Or will they destroy him before he can catch the elusive Lifetaker?

Yuri Yumemi currently only has this title to their name, There are three volumes (still ongoing) and a manga adaptation that’s just released its first volume in Japan, but so far only the light novel has been licensed for English. In the afterword, Yuri Yumemi mentions that this book was inspired by the Silence of the Lambs novel, loving the idea of having to work with someone incredibly dangerous, and also being a fan of stories with horror vibes. I thought that was interesting and could see her passion shining through in this light novel. The Sixth Precinct is filled with multiple witches, with different powers and backstories, but the main one Rogue works with is Misera (code name ‘Puppeteer’) who’s several thousand years old, with the power to manipulate people like puppets on a string (hence the name) but also has many other tricks up her sleeve. Rogue doesn’t trust Misera at all, and the only thing giving Rogue any sense of security is a collar all witches are forced to wear, preventing them from using too much mana or killing someone. But even then, Misera is shown to be more powerful than the average person. Even with said collar on, she’s very smart, sarcastic, and thinking multiple steps ahead, often wanting ‘attention’ or a promised favour from Rogue before giving him any kind of help. There are also moments when she manages to convince Rogue (or least plant a seed of doubt) that she wants to help catch these criminals, and she can be helpful. It’s this uncertainty that makes her a fun read, as you never know what she’s going to do on the next page.

Witches Can’t Be Collared is a typical crime/mystery novel, but with a magical world twist, meaning that there’s a crime to solve, with the team working through evidence and crime scenes, to find out who the killer is, there’s also a big reveal of the villain, a twist in the final act and conclusion, like in most novels of this type. However the book has a similar issue to Lord El-Melloi II’s Case File (another series that was a crime-type story set in a magical world) in that it’s not the kind of crime novel you can follow along and maybe figure ‘who did it’ along with the characters, because in a world where magic exists, and the criminal can literally do anything, it’s almost impossible to figure it out on your own. The book does try and give some clues, like the physical description of the killer is hinted at early on, but as the book makes very little attempts at world building, you’re basically having to follow along the plot and be introduced to new spells and motivations as the book decides to tell them to you. The lack of world-building also hurts the book overall; there is a small attempt at the beginning to explain how the Magic Crime Bureau came to be, and some mention of spells at the start to give context, but there’s moments where we’re left in the dark or expected to just go along with it. For example: Misera figures out that Rogue is ‘Voiceless’, and it’s never explained what that is. I assume it means that Rogue can’t cast spells by speaking them, but it’s never given more detail or reasons why being ‘voiceless’ is such a big deal, considering a lot of the spells some of the witches cast in the book don’t require speaking at all.

Rogue is more of your traditional detective protagonist; he’s tough, dedicated to his career, and asks questions but is not afraid to get violent. He also hates criminals and has little time or patience for their antics, so he clashes heads with the witches a lot. Despite the book being from his POV and being in his head a lot of the time, I felt very disconnected with the character. Maybe because he’s a very cliché detective character, but we also learn nothing about him as a person, why he became a detective, if he has family, why he is so good at his role, etc. It also doesn’t help that in the final act, whilst up against the killer, he’s affected by a spell that physically alters him drastically, but we get little from him in terms of how he feels, only that he’s so focused on punching the killer and stopping him. That could be fine in the moment, if he’s driven by shock  and reflects on it later, but that never happens either. Maybe the author plans to dive into him more in future volumes, but here I felt that you could have replaced him with a number of characters of his type, and the story wouldn’t have had to change much.

Art is provided by Wata, whom I can’t find information on (the one name makes it quite hard) but their art is a mixed bag. There’s no denying that the cover is very striking, showing the alluring witch wielding power and wearing a stunning dress. The glossy, coloured opening pages also make a good first impression: a fold-out page introducing each of the characters with names and brief synopsis. But the art within the novel itself is a let-down. I don’t know who chooses which incidents get the art treatment, whether it’s the editor or the artist themselves, but whoever did so made the most boring of choices here, because each image is just a mid-to-close-up of the characters, usually the witches. I understand that being the case in the first half of the book as it makes sense to have the moments captured when the protagonist meets the witches. But in the second half it sticks to the same style, and this means that all the investigating in different locations, the spell casting, the chasing of the killer, action scenes, and so on, is in only in the text. We never see any art of the exciting moments or even the locations being described, which feels like a huge missed opportunity. The closest we get is a shot of a character dying towards the end via a spell, but it’s angled in such a way that you can’t really see clearly what’s happened without the text context.

Andrew Cunningham translates the book for Yen On, and it’s a easy read.

Witches Can’t Be Collared has some very interesting ideas and a cool story premise, but is let down by the lack of world-building, poor art choices and bland main characters. If the concept sounds intriguing, by all means give it a go, and hope that the story improves in future volumes.

Our review copy from Yen On was supplied by Yen Press.