Manga / Witch Watch

A witch and her faithful familiars

Witch Watch is an ongoing comedy slice-of-life manga series written and illustrated by Kenta Shinohara that began serialization in Shonen Jump in February 2021.

The story follows Nico Wakatsuki, a clumsy and cheerful teenage witch who, after finishing her magical training, moves in with a longtime friend named Morihito Otogi, who is actually a human-looking ogre. Nico plans on making Otogi her familiar, thinking it will help strengthen their relationship as a possible couple.

Nico’s magic leads to all sorts of unpredictable trouble, with both magical and non-magical situations on the rise for the two.

The manga has been officially translated with a simultaneous Japanese and English release available on VIZ Media.

Witch Watch contains examples of:

• Absurdly Powerful School Jurisdiction: Nico and company need special permission from their high school to stay at Morihito's house, which the student councilor threatens to revoke if any of them fail an exam.
• Acting Out a Daydream: Nico acts out a romantic fantasy she has of her with Morihito while flying on her broom.
• Bait-and-Switch: At the end of the "Day of the Disaster" arc, the audience is led to believe that Nico sacrifices her life to revive Morihito, who has just been lethally shot by Kishimi. However, she instead purges herself of all her memories and experiences from meeting Morihito onward, which has the side effect of reverting her back to a 5-year-old child.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Sometimes the comic is self-aware about their medium and throwing trope speaks here and there freely. The Student Council chapters are perhaps the biggest example of presentation.
• Crazy Memory: As soon as Morihito’s father brings up Nico’s name, Morihito is flooded with memories of Nico’s magic going haywire, leaving him with messy hair, a shocking experience riding backseat on a flying broom, and the back of his shirt being ablaze thanks to Nico’s early days of using magic.

• Dramatic Unmask: When Nico uses her magic to create magical facsimiles of the ogre writers from Morihito's inherited Ogre Qigong text, three of them show their face right off the bat, while the fourth inexplicably wears a mask. He doesn't take it off until the end of the chapter to reveal that he is Mogari Otake, the father of antagonist Ran Aotake.
• Goroawase Number: Morihito's (1) house eventually becomes hosts to Nico (2), Miharu (3), Kanshi (4), and Keigo (5). Once the last of them move in, they get appropriately numbered placards for their rooms. Another major character that doesn't live in the same house is Nemu (6).
  • During the "Day of the Disaster" arc, Kanshi's opponent, the Dreamweaver Witch, traps him in a dream where said witch has replaced him within the Otogi household. The witch's name is Tokiyo (4), still fitting the naming theme perfectly.
• Familiar: Nico wants to make Morihito one of these for herself.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Chapter 48 is a chapter of the in-series manga Uron Mirage. It's used again for the Milestone Celebration of the 100th chapter.
• From Roommates to Romance: Nico moves into Morihito’s house, where they both live unsupervised because Morihito’s father goes away on business right after. They have some romantic tension, mostly on Nico’s side, but don’t come close to doing anything sexual.
• Incapable of Disobeying: If Morihito goes against Nico’s orders as her familiar, he’ll revert into a primal amalgamation of several ancestral animal familiars as per a curse. Nico has yet to enforce this, both because she's too kind to want something like that and knows Morihito is much more levelheaded than her.
  • It's also suggested that this was an outright lie from Morihito's father to prompt him to be Nico's familiar.
• In-Series Nickname: Morihito is called "Moi" by Nico, which is what she's been calling him since childhood when she couldn't pronounce his name right.
• Lunacy: Keigo being a "werewolf" doesn't make him become wolflike, but instead he has a more violent alternate personality that comes out whenever he sees a crescent moon. It doesn't have to be the actual thing; basically, any picture or legible drawing of the symbol will have the same effect.
• Monster Mash: Much of the cast is a mix of youkai and horror movie monsters, all of which are able to pass as human. The main two characters are a witch and an ogre, while later additions include a werewolf and vampire. Several of them are the descendants of humanoid familiars witches made from animals.
• Oblivious to Love: Nico's crush on Morihito is obvious to everybody except for the boy himself. Though many chapters imply that he might reciprocate more than he lets on, it's just that he's such The Stoic that you can't tell with him most of the time.
• Paper People: Nico accidentally uses a spell that makes her as thin as paper.
• Parental Abandonment: It just so happens that Morihito’s father is going to be absent for a very long business trip right before Nico’s arrival.
• The Prophecy: Before leaving for his trip, Morihito’s father tells his son that it has been prophesied that disaster will fall over Nico over the next year.
• Rotating Arcs: Witch Watch is pretty episodic in nature, making reader easy to access or start reading from any chapter. To date, every week rotates between shenanigans at the Otogi household, Morihito and Nico's relationship, Kanshi's Part-Time Job Diaries, Nemu's recurring visits to Keigo and Wolf, Miharu's day at his school, student council-related chapters, and Uron Mirage-related chapter, among others.
• Speak of the Devil: Just as Morihito says he can’t wait to meet Nico again, she literally comes flying through the window and breaking glass everywhere, showing that while she may have learned some new tricks she’s still clumsy as ever.
• Stylistic Suck: The chapter of Uron Mirage the readers can see is pretty much complete nonsense, both because it's shown outside of any context and because the series itself is pretentious, needlessly oblique, and indulges in gratuitous invoked Faux Symbolism. It's implied the series is really only popular because its fans are the kind of people who enjoy interpreting something far more meaningful than the author ever intended.
  This popular manga is famous for its vague world-building, mystery-laden dialogue, and obscure plot. In fact, so much of the story is just suggested plot threads that go nowhere, unclear events, and scenes that can be interpreted any number of ways, that many readers drop it immediately because it's too confusing.
• Suppressed Rage: Morihito has this when he willingly let several bullies beat him up in Chapter 1, as he was afraid of hurting them too badly with just a single punch.
• Time Stands Still: One chapter focuses on Kanshi having Nico cast a spell on him that causes him to move to perceive time at ten times normal speed. This proves horribly inconvenient when the things and people around him remain slow. And the spell can't be stopped once cast, he has to wait until it ends after three days—which is thirty days from his perspective.
• This Is Reality: Nico and Otogi call out the entire Student Council for being so Trope-tastic.
• We Can Rule Together: Tenryu attempts to recruit Otogi into the Student Council and even gives him his own trope in the form of Kung-Fu Kid, but fails miserably yet persists in recruiting him.

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