Witch Watch

Episode 15

With last week's episode shaking things up a bit so we could get an early premiere of the new season of Uron Mirage, this one continues the shakeups as the show returns to the subject of warlocks. While the gang's last encounter with one was stuffed with lore, this one is a lot more straightforward, and also forces them to confront how to deal with such threats in the future. This encounter is also balanced out by the introduction of our newest main cast member, and in the process, bringing him into the fold, we get a clear idea of what Witch Watch has been shaping into this entire time.

When Nico and the others receive a prophecy about “an ancient retainer who can exorcize evil,” they meet up with an old friend of Nico's mother named Masumi, in the hopes of acquiring something that can help fend off warlocks. Once they get there, they also get acquainted with Masumi's middle school-aged son, Miharu. Although Miharu has the face of an angel, his mouth has all the bluntness of a sledgehammer. He lacks any filter for the things he says, leading to him making comments like mistaking the others for Nico's servants, or noticing how strong the couple vibes are between her and Morihito. He's delightful, and it's great witnessing how poorly the others react to his sass. When Masumi reveals that he works as an exorcist, everyone starts to believe he might have been who the prophecy was referring to, but rather than worrying too much over that, they decide to treat this trip like a vacation and have some fun playing in the river nearby. Predictably, this leads to some bits of fan service on behalf of Nico and Nemu, but it is at least entertaining to see Morihito's bewildered look at seeing Nico in a swimsuit, and it shows that he isn't stone-faced when it comes to what he thinks of her.

All their summer fun gets interrupted when a new warlock shows up looking to capture Nico, and with none of the others having their weapons on hand, they have no way of fighting back. It falls to Miharu to save the day as he turns out to be an even stronger exorcist than his dad, but when he gets injured during the fight, he reveals a much more important secret, namely that he's a vampire. Keeping in fashion with the rest of this show, his lineage no longer functions under normal vampire rules. Rather than sucking blood to drain people's vitality, he can do so by absorbing their energy through their skin and giving them a little pinch, which is simultaneously one of the funniest and creative spins I've seen on the concept of vampires. We also get to see where these powers could come in handy when everyone decides how to deal with the warlock once the fight is over. Morihito is surprisingly on board with killing the guy if it'll keep him from going after Nico again (though if any of these kids were to do a murder, it probably would be him), but Nico herself isn't willing to go that far. Instead, they decide to use a combination of Miharu's energy draining and Nico's healing magic so they can drain the warlock of his magic powers without killing them, and realize this might help give them a more non-violent way of dealing with them in the future.

This approach also gives them a chance to learn that the warlock isn't as malicious as he seems, as he's mostly just been driven by going through life as a constant failure until he awakened to his powers and was coerced by the mysterious figure targeting Nico. The backstory here isn't anything too fancy, but it does help to lean into what was mentioned before about how anxiety is what turns witches into warlocks, and gives the series room to explore that concept in the future as we meet more of them. The warlock isn't the only one we learn more about though, as Miharu reveals that while he might not need to suck blood to drain people of vitality, his body still craves the vitality of others, and draining it from his friends and family has started to take its toll on them (although the tragic circumstances here are made at least a little funny by discovering that his father has been his main source of nourishment and his mom still looks pretty young). Because of that, Miharu has given up on going to high school, but Morihito recommends that he come live with him and the others since the familiar boys have a lot more vitality than the average human, and he doesn't think it's right for Miharu to miss out on a normal school life. Thus, Miharu becomes the newest addition to Morihito's household, and compared to how disinterested in other people he was at the start of the show, it's sweet to see him gradually going out of his way to look after others.

Miharu joining the main ensemble marks something important: that Witch Watch has been drip feeding viewers a reverse harem all along. Now you might be thinking: “What are you talking about? There's only one love interest among these boys, this can't possibly count as a harem!”, to which I say: Nay! Yes, I suppose if we're being technical, you do need multiple love interests to make for a proper harem show, but as anyone who's dug into the genre long enough can tell you, sometimes it's more about the vibes, or character types, than the actual numbers. I can think of at least a couple of shows labeled as harem entries where there are only really one or two actual love interests, and the other girls are largely just there as window dressing. If we can accept such loopholes for regular harem shows, I see no reason why Witch Watch should be discounted as a reverse harem. Especially when we've got all the archetypes right here! There's Morihito as the serious childhood friend, Miharu as the sassy little brother, Kanshi as the fun-loving jokester, Keigo as the quiet loner, and Wolf filling the role of the obligatory sexy bad boy.

The series might be using these archetypes for laughs as often as it plays them straight, but they're still here, and the fact that Miharu even points out how weird it is to have all these teen boys and one girl under the same roof means that Shinohara knows exactly what he's doing here. That he somehow managed to smuggle a stealth reverse harem into the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump is a pretty impressive long con, but the fact that it was successful at all just shows how flexible this series truly is. Being a wacky comedy, a teen drama, an occasional action series, and now a (platonic) reverse harem, feels like a level of genre blending that shouldn't work, but that might just be the real magic of Witch Watch. Now that we've seen this genre mash-up take full form, I can't wait to see just how far the show is willing to go with it.

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Witch Watch is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.