Witch Watch

Episode 10

If there's one thing you can count on for a high school anime comedy, it's that there will always be an absurdly competent student council. No matter the time or era, there'll always be a group of high schoolers who are given all the dignity and power of real politicians, and even a series as off the wall as Witch Watch is no exception to this. At least that's what I should be saying, but as you've probably come to expect from this show, Witch Watch never does anything normally. This episode puts its own spin on the obligatory student council, and while it's certainly funny, it also results in a joke that threatens to wear out its welcome.

Although Nico has become popular among her classmates for helping them with their problems, some within the school are less than pleased by this. Chief among them is the student council, who try to claim that Nico's magic could be dangerous and wants her to stop using it at school. When Morihito tries to protest against this injustice, he quickly finds himself distracted by the bizarre assortment of anime tropes that make up the student council. This includes the Vice President, who dresses like an exhibitionist and throws roses around everywhere (though I do have to deduct some points here for not giving her the ojou-sama laugh), her co-Vice President who always sounds like he's up to something and always has his eyes closed, the secretaries who are pair of lolita twins, and a kid hacker treasurer who straight up looks like he was pulled from an entirely different anime. My personal favorite of the bunch is one of the heads of General Affairs, who is just a Mad Max goon that likes licking knives, because if there's one person you can count on to help keep things in order, it's this guy. This assortment of weirdos is capped off by their president, Tenryu, who seems fairly put together, save for the fact that he walks around in a military uniform and is forever stuck doing that one cool sci-fi anime pose where the captain tugs at his cap. When pressed about this, the others claim that it's the same phenomenon behind Jotaro Kujo's hat being melded into his hair, and as hilarious of a reference as that is the fact that they don't even bother trying to hide his face makes it even better (sometimes corporate brand synergy can be a force for good). For someone who is eternally stuck playing the straight man to a bunch of quirky personalities, these guys are Morihito's worst nightmare, and when Tenryu claims he'll let the Nico issue slide in exchange for adding Morihito to the council as their designated self-serious fighter dude, our boy can only flee in terror.

As hilarious as parts of this were, this felt like a case of throwing too many jokes at the audience at once. Aside from the exhibitionist vice president, we aren't given enough time to fully digest each of these characters' tropes before Morihito points out how weird the next one is. It feels more like they're trying to be random, rather than using the show's usual laser-precision comedy. I did laugh at most of these characters, so I can at least say that this bit managed to be funny despite this hangup, but it's the closest this show's humor has felt to being exhausting, and I wish the punchlines flowed a little better.

It would also be a lot easier to give all this , if not for the fact that the second segment of the episode repeats the same joke. This time it's in the form of Morihito watching a promotional ad that the council put together, and while we do get a few quips about how it was put together, most of the jokes are still centered around Morihito pointing out how weird the council are (though I did chuckle at the Mad Max guy accidentally nicking his tongue because he kept licking his knife too much). About the only major distinction here is Morihito's feeling an inexplicable sense of kinship with Tenryu, which only makes sense to him when he realizes that Tenryu is the only member of the council who does any work, and realizes it's all too similar to his relationship with his housemates. This moment of empathy still isn't enough to convince Morihito to give in to Tenryu's demands. Still, it makes it easier for Morihito to tolerate him, and hopefully, that new understanding will be reflected in the show having a wider variety of jokes about the prez the next time he makes an appearance.

At least the last segment of the episode manages to break things up a bit, as we get to check back in with our local failure witch girl Nemu, who's still stalking Morihito. Since she hasn't mustered up the courage to talk to him, she defaults back to disguising herself as a cat, and once again finds herself being taken into his home to be pampered. This time, Nico accidentally spills some juice on her, and Morihito is left with no choice but to give Nemu a bath, which is a prospect that raises red flags for both her and the audience. Luckily, the show once again manages to deftly weave past any raunchy humor this scenario would provide by having her view this like a spa treatment, and she finds this so relaxing that she just narrowly avoids being caught when this breaks her transformation spell.

It might sound hypocritical that I complained about the previous two segments repeating the same jokes, but I am more or less fine with this being played out similarly to Nemu's first appearance, and while I won't deny this, there are a few key differences here. Firstly, there's been a decent gap between Nemu's appearances, whereas the student council stuff was back to back, and its lot easier to forgive that kind of repetition in jokes when they're spaced out. Secondly, this is just a much funnier gag, and the fact that this part of the episode is structured around that singular joke makes it a lot easier for it to land effectively as opposed to how the student council parts were tossing around a bunch of ideas at once. I enjoy Witch Watch's tendency to swing for the fences with the kinds of jokes it provides, but there is a difference between taking the time to experiment with a gag and just rapidly pumping out a bunch of absurd concepts in the hopes of a laugh, and the first two parts of the episode veered a bit too close to the latter for my taste. As this show is usually more clever with its humor than that, I'm more than willing to forgive this, but I'd be lying if I said I thought the first two parts of this episode were a good example of the series' best jokes.

Laughs aren't the only thing that Nemu's part of the episode provides, as it also comes with a bit of ominous foreshadowing. After fleeing from Morihito's house, she finds herself in the woods where she stumbles across a mysterious pair who seem to be plotting something involving Nico. One of them claims to be a Warlock, and while we don't yet know what that means within the context of this series, hearing the term spooks Nemu enough that she feels the need to try warning Nico and the others about what's coming. As I've been waiting for the last few weeks for the show to get to this point, I'm excited about what this shift in tone represents and to see how well the anime handles what lies ahead. Hopefully, it'll be worth the wait, and with how flexible this show has been with its content so far, it'll be interesting to see how it handles itself when that flexibility is put to the test.

Rating:

Witch Watch is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.