There’s only two episodes of Witch Watch out right now, but I’m certain that the character I relate to most isn’t bubbly teenage witch Nico, her stoic ogre familiar (and childhood crush!) Mohito, or any of their classmates. It’s actually their homeroom teacher, Ms. Makuwa — who in addition to having to wrangle a class full of magical teenagers, also has to pretend to be #cool in front of them.
In the episode where Nico and Mohito attend school together for the first time, Ms. Makuwa leads the class in a simple icebreaker, where each student introduces themselves with a fun fact. She kicks off the introductions with her name, but stops herself from blurting out that her favorite thing to do is to read manga.
Instead, she saves face(???) by over-enthusiastically announcing that she enjoys mambo dancing instead.
Ms. Makuwa does not want a class of teenagers tearing her to shreds for enjoying manga, so she keeps it a secret. Yet during the entire icebreaker, she keeps making comparisons to her favorite manga characters. When one of Nico’s spells backfires and accidentally makes Mohito’s hair shoot up in size, Ms. Makuwa compares him to Adult Gon in her head. Then, she promptly decides she isn’t going to worry about it and reminds herself that Kurapika is her fave anyway (this is why we’re kindred spirits).
I’ve been there. I get it! I go through life thinking, Wow, this really reminds me of X fictional character/situation. A lot of times, those situations and characters are from anime. When I make instant coffee, I giggle and think about Tamaki drinking the “commoners’ coffee” in Ouran High School Host Club. During my weekly swim team sessions, I pump myself up by thinking of Haikyuu!! and other sports anime. If I need to think of what to make for dinner, I reminisce about my favorite episodes of Food Wars. When you’re that enthusiastic about fiction, it seeps into real life in the most delightful ways.
So, it’s particularly fun to see a character have that same approach, even for something like her student’s weird hair. And I completely understand why she wants to hide it from her students! I’m lucky that most of my friends, and also my coworkers, totally understand when I say “That guy was so ripped; he reminded me of Toji Fushiguro without the worm.” But if I said that to my mom (who somehow still can’t remember that I like Pokémon), she’d probably think something was wrong with me.
Then there’s the added layer of Ms. Makuwa being a character in an anime, making comparisons about real life manga and anime. Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku did something similar, since all the characters involved were major dorks who loved video games, manga, and anime. But in Witch Watch, it takes it to another level, because it’s not a slice-of-life anime about anime-lovers. Instead, Ms. Makuwa is a side character in a story where the over-the-top shenanigans that she reads about in Hunter x Hunter and Demon Slayer can and will happen. There’s a fun sort of self-awareness in that and I can’t wait to see what other magical hijinks Ms. Makuwa witnesses and what other anime she’ll reference — or if she’ll ever be comfortable to share those references with the class.
New episodes of Witch Watch drop on Sundays and stream on Netflix, Hulu, and Crunchyroll. The English dub comes on April 27.
