Manga Thoughts: Witch Hat Atelier 8
Dec. 22nd, 2021 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAs I worked my way through a shipment of manga (but not the latest shipment I’ve received), I wound up saving the eighth volume of Witch Hat Atelier for last, hoping to enjoy Kamome Shirahama’s artwork again and find interest in the unfolding story. The last volume had left off with the promise of a great magical festival. Tartah, the boy witch introduced back in the third volume (and promoted from the back cover there to the front cover here), first mentioned the festival but wound up having to spend the night at the atelier. When he offers to get a feel for just how Coco holds a spell-casting pen before carving one for her, there’s one of those moments where one character comes to an embarrassed realization but the other remains oblivious. I have to admit to having had a few “this sort of thing can be a bit more obvious than when the two characters are the same sex, isn’t it?” thoughts, and then thinking again of how wearying relentless insistences towards both mixed-sex “shipping” and same-sex “slashing” can get for me.
Preparation for the festival has barely begun before Coco and Tartah run into another boy from a previous volume. I did have to riffle through my older instalments before finding Custas in the second; he’d been a “civilian” caught in an accident but rescued by Coco. Now, though, he happens to get around in a walking chair. I did remember the far grander walking chair the witch Master Beldaruit had used in a more recent volume, but a few thoughts did cross my mind about how there’d been “plucky kids in wheelchairs” in stories from my own youth. The whole matter of who gets shown in stories and how always seems to get sticky fast when trying to discuss it.
In the case of this story, though, there are complexities to how Custas reacts to what’s happened to him. As ever, the magic witches are allowed to use isn’t permitted to heal or otherwise affect human bodies directly. (There’s a moment partway through the volume with its bearing on the responsibilities witches have taken onto themselves and denied others, when Olruggio is lamenting how he can’t sell a “safe fire” spell he’d invented at the festival because of the risk of it getting confused with real fire; Coco’s fellow apprentice Agott declares it wouldn’t be their fault if particular children aren’t taught to tell the difference, but the risk is still judged too great.) Coco and Tartah wrack their brains about what they can do, and come up with something that had me thinking all the way back to the first volume of the series. It made for a satisfying “plot arc” conclusion at first glance, but the story did keep turning afterwards, and the “Brimmed Caps” just happened to make an appearance at the end of this volume with promises of magic without limitations. Once again, I’m waiting for the story to keep unfolding.
Preparation for the festival has barely begun before Coco and Tartah run into another boy from a previous volume. I did have to riffle through my older instalments before finding Custas in the second; he’d been a “civilian” caught in an accident but rescued by Coco. Now, though, he happens to get around in a walking chair. I did remember the far grander walking chair the witch Master Beldaruit had used in a more recent volume, but a few thoughts did cross my mind about how there’d been “plucky kids in wheelchairs” in stories from my own youth. The whole matter of who gets shown in stories and how always seems to get sticky fast when trying to discuss it.
In the case of this story, though, there are complexities to how Custas reacts to what’s happened to him. As ever, the magic witches are allowed to use isn’t permitted to heal or otherwise affect human bodies directly. (There’s a moment partway through the volume with its bearing on the responsibilities witches have taken onto themselves and denied others, when Olruggio is lamenting how he can’t sell a “safe fire” spell he’d invented at the festival because of the risk of it getting confused with real fire; Coco’s fellow apprentice Agott declares it wouldn’t be their fault if particular children aren’t taught to tell the difference, but the risk is still judged too great.) Coco and Tartah wrack their brains about what they can do, and come up with something that had me thinking all the way back to the first volume of the series. It made for a satisfying “plot arc” conclusion at first glance, but the story did keep turning afterwards, and the “Brimmed Caps” just happened to make an appearance at the end of this volume with promises of magic without limitations. Once again, I’m waiting for the story to keep unfolding.