Witch Craft Works: Episode 1 – “Takamiya-kun and the Flame Witch”

She’s giving you a rubber. She wants the D.

Initial Rating: 5

Pros:

• Okay Music
• Alluring Female Lead
• Good CG

Cons:

• Derp looking characters
• Spineless Male Lead

Pretty average start I would say, all things I’ve seen done before. Don’t know about in the same show, but we’ll see how things progress.

Synopsis:

Takamiya Honoka is a regular student whose only problem seems to be that he sits next to Kagari Ayaka, the school’s #1 beauty. They have never spoken to each other before and any small interaction between them immediately results in her fanclub beating him. Yet when a falling part of the school’s building is about to send him to the afterlife, it’s Kagari that comes to his rescue. Only… she’s dressed as a witch, carrying him in her arms and floating on a broom?! Kagari tells him it is her mission to protect him and that now she can finally protect him openly rather than undercover. (From MU)

Characters:

Honoka Takamiya(多華宮仄か)

VA: Yuusuke Kobayashi
Honoka is the male protagonist. He is very boring and powerless. He allows himself to be easily overwhelmed.

Ayaka Kagari(火々里 綾火)

VA: Asami Seto
The School Chairman’s daughter, Ayaka is the most popular student in school and a strong Fire Witch who has the ability to manipulate fire, she often goes ballistic when on the attack. Her legions of fans refer to her as “Princess”, she belongs to a group of witches who were called the ” Workshop Witches” which is a group of witches who establishes workshop or studios in every major cities to monitor and keep in check other witches who might use their powers for evil purposes . She is taller than Takamiya and she takes her mission of protecting him very seriously that she will not hesitate to go to any extent to keep him safe. She is also capable of fighting without the use of magic.

Tanpopo Kuraishi(たんぽぽ倉石)

VA: Shiori Izawa
A Tower Witch targeting Takamiya. she specialize in using illusionary magic and she has massive numbers of mechanical bunnies called “Hunters” who serves as her familiars. She along with four other of her fellow “Witches of the Tower” have transfer to Takamiya’s school in order to get close and capture him at the same time, that is if she and her fellow witches can get past Ayaka.

Rin Kazari(鈴飾)

VA: Momo Asakura
One of the new students who transferred to Honoka’s class with Tanpopo. She has a musical note for a hair pin, which may serve to reveal her specialization of magic.

Kotetsu Katsura(虎轍桂)

VA: Natsumi Hioka
One of the new students who transferred to Honoka’s class with Tanpopo. She carries a sword on her person.

Mei Menowa(冥目野輪)

VA: Yuuko Iida
She is Tanpopo’s colleague and she and four of her other fellow “Witches of the Tower,” form the ‘Ivory Quintet” who are a group of witches assigned to transfer to Takamiya’s school with the task of capturing him.

Kanna Utsugi(宇津木環那)

VA: Shiina Natsukawa
She rounds out the rest of Tanpopo’s colleagues. She has a very disturbing look on her face.

Discussion:

I am only interested in this show because of Ayaka. Her derp look and long hair….her figure…

The show itself? I do not know. There really is not anything to say I liked, I’m neutral on this for now. I would like to take a stance, if I had to i guess I could be positive and say its okay, but once again that’s just neutral… Originally I wasn’t super interested in WCW, and I’m still not super interested. I do not even know why i decided to pick this up. So I hope this was my sixth sense of good anime kicking in. If not this is getting dropped or lackluster reviews will be written with a lot of vitriol. (I also think Kotestu looks kinda cute, because of those glasses.

But WCW seems pretty uninteresting. It is uninteresting plotwise, it feels like another Full Metal Panic, but less “fanservice-y” I hope. The main characters are very…bland. Ayaka and Honoka wear the same listless expression all the time. Honoka rarely shows much emotion, and there is nothing to draw you to him. At the moment, Ayaka seems to be the only character that may appeal to a few people. Tanpopo as well, because nekomimi. Did I mention that people seem to have the same face? And why is the muscle of the bully group named Obama?

Moving on… I think we should boycott the boob jiggle in anime though. It’s a little irksome to see. Women can be busty without that. The unnecessary camera angle when Ayaka got on the bus was a little…fgqwuoigiqbriyg to say the least.

Why is Takamiya being protected? Why is Tanpopo and her gang trying to capture him? What makes him so special? Based on the OP it seems he may also end up being a witch or something along those lines.
I’m sure this will be answered sometime soon.
I can ask all the questions I want, but I can’t really answer them with anything except that we’ll have to wait till the next episode.

The fanclub is suffocating to watch, so I hope this is the last time we have to deal with them this series.
After a little discussion with Cloo as well, the CG seems to be done pretty well. The animations were fluid, and things were lively. If the show keeps the CG production at that level I believe it might end up with a better rating by the end of the season.

But my main fear is the plot, how will this progress? Who are the enemies we saw in the opening, and what is their ultimate goal. Will this be something really intriguing and well executed, or just another flop?

And lastly the opening and ending were okay. Sometimes a song gets me, other times I have to listen to it a bit to like it, so we will see with this one. That ends it for the discussion.

Predictions:

I predict Kagari-sama lookin’ good as always. Seriously, I just see a lot of action, and attempts to subdue Honoka being foiled. As we see in the preview an outing to the mall turns into a heated situation… (I’ll kill myself now.)

If I am made of fire, how do I keep a physical form?