Wicked Spot Volume 1 Review

Wicked Spot takes its reader on a wild journey as a clumsy, century-old witch discovers social media and decides to be an influencer— but internet trolls won’t let her!

Sadako is a 100-year-old witch who looks like a young woman. She’s been a recluse in a broken-down cabin in the woods all her life, and never really had interactions with humans. Throughout the years, paranormal hunters came to find the witch to disprove her existence, but they always ended up dying one way or the other. The tools they left behind are taken by Sadako, and accidentally she discovers cell phones and the world of social media.

She ends up believing that influencers are loved by everyone, so she decides to become one and leave her cabin behind to explore the human world. She gathers follower after follower and couldn’t be happy. However, it’s when she announces that she’s a witch that trolls start to have a go at her. What Sadako finds out though, is that all those bullying messages come from only one person who created multiple accounts to leave the malicious comments. Although Sadako is naïve in the way of the modern world, she’s certainly not naïve on how to deal with this kind of person, so she goes looking for the one who posted those messages.

Hanako has been called a witch all of her life thanks to her superhuman strength, although she’s just a human. Now the word ‘witch’ triggers her, so when she starts hearing her adoring Sadako calling herself a witch, she decides to take her down a peg. Things don’t turn out too well for Hanako, as Sadako wants to meet her, and the two of them get entwined with other witches who are not that happy with Sadako announcing to the world the existence of witches.

There is a lot going on in this first volume, however, readers are able to learn straight away about the main characters, Sadako and Hanako, and their personalities, thanks to some hilarious events they find themselves in. Sadako has been a recluse all of her life as that’s what her mother told her since she was little: humans are bad and witches shouldn’t mingle with them. It was just the two of them for a while before Sadako was left all alone. Sadako is unworldly about human customs, however, she’s not afraid to fight fire with fire and she takes a liking to Hanako, even if she bullies her.

On the other hand, we have Hanako. She’s been bullied all her life and her only friend actually takes advantage of her over and over again, but Hanako can’t let it go because she thinks he’s the only person who’d be friends with her. She finds solace in following Sadako before the influencer admits she’s a witch. After that, all bets are off. This is a triggering term for Hanako, but what she doesn’t realise yet is that Sadako is telling the truth when she calls herself a witch. The two are bound to encounter some slightly dangerous and hilarious situations which preface the first volume.

Wicked Spot starts with a handful of full colour pages before turning into black-and-white text. The illustrations are detailed and in some cases exaggerated to add to the comedic effect of the story. The translation reads nicely, and the story faces modern social media issues with an hilarious twist to lighten them up.

Although the series has been presented as a yuri manga, it hasn’t been represented as such in the story, but things might still change in the next volume.

Wicked Spot is written/drawn by Sal Jiang, translated by Mei Amaki and published by Vertical in the English language. There currently isn’t a release date for Volume 2, which will end the manga as it was recently announced that this series has been cancelled.

Read a free preview at the publisher’s website here.

Our review copy was supplied by Turnaround Publishing Services.