Manga Thoughts: Witch Hat Atelier 7
Mar. 14th, 2021 09:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerTrying to stay aware of upcoming manga releases, I took special note of the approach of the seventh volume of Kamome Shirahama’s Witch Hat Atelier. Once I’d received a copy of it, though, I did let it sit waiting for a month. A certain amount of “trying to work through previously accumulated bits of other series” was mixed with still grappling with uneasy uncertainties about “when is it safe to handle anything brought in from outside” (and mostly letting something like sheer, “eventually I can touch it” laziness deal with the matter). I did notice the front cover had returned to the main character Coco, if now with her “brushbuddy” mascot-type critter companion, and sported logos for winning Eisner and Harvey Awards (which has me contemplating what kind of “comics” I read and what kinds I brush by, and the appearance of officially translated manga in the “black and white comics boom” of the late 1980s).
At the end of the sixth volume, revelations about Coco’s master Qifrey had been promised, and they soon showed up in this new instalment, including an explanation as to why one lens of his spectacles is black. With these explanations, though, Coco sets out for the Tower of Tomes, long promised in the story as an ultimate destination holding out hope of resolving the fundamental problem that brought her into the circle of the witches. There are grotesque monsters, a rallying back to action, and a fundamental either-or choice before the action is resolved; I suppose that while reading these new chapters for first time I did consider how stories can get stretched out to keep them selling, and took the artwork for granted. Going back to the story again as I put this post together, I was a bit less analytical.
There is a chapter’s aside in this volume featuring Olruggio, Quifrey’s old friend but also current overseer, that delves away from the specific matters of witches to deal a bit with how they try to aid others and broadens the fictional world. After that, the “all’s well that ends well” resolution gets a bit more ambiguous, but that leads straight into the promise of a festival of magic. Further complications there might well be expected, but I’ll just have to wait for another volume to see them.
At the end of the sixth volume, revelations about Coco’s master Qifrey had been promised, and they soon showed up in this new instalment, including an explanation as to why one lens of his spectacles is black. With these explanations, though, Coco sets out for the Tower of Tomes, long promised in the story as an ultimate destination holding out hope of resolving the fundamental problem that brought her into the circle of the witches. There are grotesque monsters, a rallying back to action, and a fundamental either-or choice before the action is resolved; I suppose that while reading these new chapters for first time I did consider how stories can get stretched out to keep them selling, and took the artwork for granted. Going back to the story again as I put this post together, I was a bit less analytical.
There is a chapter’s aside in this volume featuring Olruggio, Quifrey’s old friend but also current overseer, that delves away from the specific matters of witches to deal a bit with how they try to aid others and broadens the fictional world. After that, the “all’s well that ends well” resolution gets a bit more ambiguous, but that leads straight into the promise of a festival of magic. Further complications there might well be expected, but I’ll just have to wait for another volume to see them.