Witch Watch

Episode 6

After pulling away from our main duo last week, this episode swings back around to focus on Nico and Morihito's romance, or lack thereof. While Nico's crush on Morihito is obvious to everyone but him, Morihito's feelings on their current dynamic are a lot harder to read, and it doesn't help that he's so self-serious that it's hard to get a read on how he feels about anything that isn't related to fashion choices. This week's episode attempts to address that as Nico doubles down on her efforts to make him fall for her, and while that all leads to some expectedly hilarious results, it is also incredibly sweet.

Despite Nico's previous efforts to downplay Morihito's best qualities, all the other girls in school noticed he's started getting more popular. This doesn't sit well with her, and the fact that Morihito still hasn't shown real interest in her only makes her more frustrated with their current relationship. Surprisingly, it's Kanshi who steps in to give Nico a hand with her love life, and given how easily the show could have had him competing with Morihito over her, it's refreshing to see him operating as Nico's wingman instead. To that end, he tries to help her get to the heart of Morihito's supposed indifference towards Nico. Kanshi speculates that while he's a bit too married to the job to let himself see her in a romantic light, she is still important to him, and all they need to do is change how he sees her. Their method of attack here is to use Kanshi's wind powers to have Nico's hair flutter in the wind and catch Morihito's attention. When his eyes are more glazed over than a dead fish by this, they turn up the wind power and have Nico walking up towards Morihito like she's Storm from the X-Men, which might be among the show's best visual gags so far.

While this plan fails pretty spectacularly, things only get more complicated when one of the boys in Nico's class asks to meet her privately. Nico doesn't think much of it since she's never met him, and can't quite comprehend that she's started becoming pretty popular herself. When she tells her other friends about it, they insist that it might be related to their school trip, and a legend that whoever confesses their love under a special tree will end up with their crush. When the day of the trip arrives, though, this theory is quickly shot down as it turns out that the boy just wanted her to make him a love charm, and all the other guys in class have heard stories of her ability to help people with their love problems. As Nico tries to get out of this, she stumbles upon an actual love confession and sees one of the other girls asking out Morihito. Morihito responds to this with the same level of aloofness he has in everything else, and bluntly tells her that he doesn't have any interest in someone he's never met. When she asks him if he has anyone he likes, he claims that he doesn't, but that he does have someone he needs to look after, and that's all he can focus on.

This isn't enough to turn the girl away, and when she asks him if there was ever a moment where he felt like he might be in love with the person he's looking after, Nico finds herself thinking back to the moment she first fell in love with Morihito. For as much as Nico has problems controlling her magic in the present, it was even worse in the past, and one of her attempts to use magic destroyed half of her house. The fallout from this caused some friction between her parents, and ultimately resulted in her father abandoning her since he couldn't handle staying with a witch. When Nico started crying about missing her dad and that he'd never hold her again, Morihito offered to do it instead, and it's a sweet enough gesture that it's easy to see why this moment left such a big impact on her. It also seems to have left an impact on Morihito too because he finds himself thinking back to it too, and while it might not mean that he's in love with Nico the same way she is with him, it's clear there is something there, even if he isn't aware of it himself. Adding to this, Kanshi discovers that the actual tree behind the legend is a different one than where Morihito was confessed to, and we see Morihito and Nico sharing a moment under the real one, which seems like a good sign that things will work out between these kids eventually.

With how well this show has been handling its comedy, I would have been fine if there wasn't much in the way of romantic progress between these two, but it's good to see that the series can hit just as hard as its jokes. It was also greatly enhanced by the effort of the episode's key animator, Enshi Oshima, who gave all of the characters a much softer look than usual, which adds to the romantic vibes of the material, with the way the episode visually conveys Nico's emotions during this whole ordeal. Since Shonen Jump hierarchy, I was ready to settle for a fairly average adaptation, but the team working on it seems to have a good handle on every aspect of what makes this series work. Whether it's going for laughs or romance, this show continues to be almost effortlessly charming, and even in a season with plenty of strong competition, it's still giving plenty of reasons to keep watching this witch.

Rating:

Witch Watch is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.

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