Witch Watch

Episode 5

As delightful as Nico and her pair of familiars are, the scope of this show would get a little boring if the focus was always on them, so I appreciate that they take a bit of a back seat this week. We instead get to spend more time on some of the show's ing cast, and zero in on the escapades of Nico's homeroom teacher, Ms. Makuwa, as well as a new character named Nemu, who's out to make Morihito her familiar. Although it does feel a little weird to see the show pull away from our favorite wacky witch, the rewards are well worth it, as this episode successfully proves that it has plenty of other options for good comedy.

The first segment of the episode reintroduces us to Nico and Morihito's homeroom teacher, Ms. Makuwa, who is secretly a closet Shonen Jump reader, feels like a pretty accurate potshot at most of their battle series). One of those students, a girl named Ureshino, reveals to her friends that she draws Uron Mirage fan art, and after overhearing her talk about her follower count, Ms. Makuwa realizes that Ureshino is her favorite fan artist. Given how awkward this revelation is, Ms. Makuwa decides to just respectfully ire Ureshino's work from afar, which makes things all the more hilarious when Ureshino notices that Ms. Makuwa is also into manga and starts asking her a barrage of questions about what she's into. While I'm sure this moment hits below the belt for any nerds with teaching jobs, as someone who also tends to downplay my otaku interests in public, I feel Ms. Makuwa's pain here, and it's equal parts funny and painful seeing how desperate she is to maintain the facade of a normal teacher, even as she lets it slip which arcs of Uron Mirage are her favorite. In the face of seeing how unashamed Ureshino is of her nerdy hobbies, Ms. Makuwa finally allows the mask to crumble and its that, for all her posturing, she'd like to have someone to talk to about her favorite series. It's as cute as it is relatable, and for as much as I laughed through this entire segment, I'm happy that they were able to find kindred spirits in one another.

This brings us to our newest addition to the cast, who answers a very scientific question: “What's better than one failgirl witch? Two of them!”. Meet Nemu Miyao, a witch from the next town over, who has heard tales of how Nico got her hands on a powerful ogre familiar and wants to recruit him for herself to further bolster her power. The problem? She's way too shy to talk to any boys her age, and doesn't have a clue how to approach them. Thus, her “solution” is to transform herself into a cat and spy on them from a distance, a solution that quickly backfires as Nico and the gang can't help but notice the cute kitty that's been following them around and decide to take her home with them. Since Nemu hates being touched, she snaps at any attempts Nico and Kanshi make to pet her, but as the resident cat lover, Morihito knows the proper way to lower a cat's defenses to pet them, and the poor girl folds like a chair. This brings us to a strange yet hilarious sequence where Morihito is petting her cat form while she imagines him gently coming onto her, and I once again have to commend both Beheneko: The Elf-Girl's Cat is Secretly an S-Ranked Monster! aired but a scant few weeks ago. All this affection eventually makes Nemu sleepy, but it just leads her into an even bigger crisis, as falling asleep will revert her to human form, and she can't bear to endure the shame of being known as “a woman who allowed herself to be petted.” While she is inevitably taken over by sleep and changes back into a human, she gets the opportunity for a clean getaway when Nico and the others are distracted by some action figures, and survives with her dignity intact. As you might guess from her prominence in the show's OP, this won't be the last we see of this awkward catgirl, and the series has plenty more to wring out of this bizarre little joke.

With how much I laughed at these two segments, I was surprised that the weakest section of the episode was the one that most prominently featured Nico and the others. This one involves Nico using her magic to help a boy named Hara who's felt anxious ing the bathroom at school ever since a group of kids made fun of him for pooping at school when he was little. Nico's spell involves him crossing his arms in a pose to reduce his presence and let him take a dump without anyone noticing, but maintaining this pose makes it hard for him to make it to the bathroom, and that's the entire joke. This isn't un-funny and parts like Hara trying to open a door while maintaining the silly pose, or Morihito having to do it order to draw attention away from Hara when he's almost caught are pretty good, but when sandwiched between two significantly funnier shorts, being merely okay makes it feel like a bit of a downgrade. On the bright side, it at least led to a surprisingly wholesome ending where Hara makes it to the bathroom only to realize none of these high school kids care if you take a dump at school anymore. This helps him to finally conquer his anxiety, and allows Nico to further prove to Morihito that she was right not to hide her magic from the other kids. This segment is also short enough not to overstay its welcome, so even with it being the awkward middle child of this week's shorts, I'd still rate this as the show's funniest episode to date. While I'm sure we'll see things shift back over to Nico next week, it was good to see that the show doesn't need to rely on her magical mishaps as its sole source of comedy, and we know now that it's plenty capable of still being a riot, regardless of who's on screen.

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Witch Watch is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.