YMMV / The Witch and the Beast

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Guideau simply on a persistent manhunt for Angela due to being cursed? Or has it something to do with a deal (if what Angela says is true) that both Angela and Guideau made decades ago.
  • Is the Global Holy Church and by extension, both the Paladin Corps and Executioners justified in their merciless hunting of witches? Sure, the sheer power a witch can bring out is apocalyptically frightening indeed and that a particularly cruel witch (Of which there are some) can literally rule entire continents with an iron fist. However, a number of witches are just normal women minding their own business and that the Paladin Corps and especially the Executioners are overly excessive and brutal in their ideological approach.
• Awesome Art: From its clean linework to the Art Nouveau-inspired paneling to the Art Deco design. The Witch and the Beast has some fantastic jaw-dropping artwork.
• Awesome Music: The OP sequence sokoninaru by soumonka.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Helga Velvette is easily one of the most popular characters in the fanbase. Being not only one of the first nice witches the readers meet, but also due to her fun and more lax personality which helps lighten up the mood in a series that was progressively getting darker and gloomier. Her innocent Butt-Monkey status and struggle in getting a boyfriend also makes her both endearing and relatable, not to mention that a lot of fans like her simple attire and iconic flat cap.
• Friendly Fandoms: Most fans of The Witch and the Beast would inadvertently be fans of Witch Hat Atelier despite both mangas being tonally the complete opposite of one another. This maybe because both are traditional fantasies (A genre becoming increasingly uncommon with the advent and over-saturation of isekais) published in Kodansha, both series were released in 2016, both are seinen, both have excellent paneling and art direction and both are relatively underground series that had an anime announcement within the same year of 2022.
• Ho Yay: Several fans shipped Guideau and Helga which doesn't help that after being captured by the Global Holy Church, Helga begs Guideau to escape with Ashgan and makes her promise to save her.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Part of The Witch and the Beast's appeal is because it has Art Deco in its art, which is rare for manga. Another reason for its appeal is in its art itself which in some panels, can rival Berserk. Another subset for why fans were attracted to the manga is because of the drip from the character designs.
• Periphery Demographic: Although its dark, gloomy noir atmosphere, seinen genre and hyperviolence may allude the series to a more male dominated demographic. The fact that almost every single female character has agency, could hold their own, is well developed with zero fanservice and are Action Girls themselves with equal limelight if not, more so than their male counterparts, meant that it also has a lot of female fans as well. It doesn't help that the majority of the male characters are either Bishonens or Hunks in design, which makes The Witch and the Beast stand out from its contemporaries.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • The average joe is never gonna guess that Oscar is a dude since barely anyone calls Oscar a male pronoun until much later on.
  • Guideau currently resides in a female body, but their true body is as masculine as they come. You would think this would this would be one of their biggest gripes with their curse, but the apparent gender difference is never brought up. Ashaf, the only character who would have any reason to know their preferred pronouns, always calls them by name, while other characters rely on Guideaus outward appearance.
• What Do You Mean Its Not For Little Girls?: Well...it is more accurate to say women, but the point still stands. As aforementioned above, the cover art of The Witch and the Beast is known to fool readers (Usually of the female demographic) that they are gonna read a romance-type manga with magic and stuff. The first volume cover for example, has Ashaf and Guideau dressed in very formal attire, with Guideau specifically wearing an evening dress holding a rose. All the while standing behind a very nice-looking dimly-lit mansion surrounded by even more roses. Seriously, no one would have thought it is going to be an ultra-dark noir story with zero romance in it.