Flying Witch charms the soul.
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Chihiro Ishizuka
Translation: Melissa Tanaka
Production: Grace Lu, Tomoe Tsutsumi
What They Say:
Makoto Kowata, a novice witch, packs up her belongings (including a black cat familiar) and moves in with her distant cousins in rural Aomori to complete her training and become a full-fledged witch.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
To say Flying Witch is charming may be an understatement. Reading through the first volume, I just felt wave after wave of peace come over me, knowing I had more and more pages of Makoto, Chinatsu, and Kei to read through. Flying Witch is a series that makes it very easy to flip through the pages and read. I never felt like a significant amount of time was passing, through it’s been a good 40 or so minutes.
The story itself is not much to comment on, or at least it isn’t much yet. Its anime adaptation follows the source manga pretty closely, so there’s no new material. The first volume sets up all your characters. Makoto is the airy witch-to-be who never knows which direction she should go and has kindness welled up from her heart to others in every moment that allows. Kei is the caretaker who’s perhaps a little too laid back. And Chinatsu, the little sister who’s somewhere between chill and riled up about something.
There are a few other characters—Kei and Chinatsu’s parents, who haven’t had much yet, except their dad is a great farmer; Nao, the nearby friend of Kei whose parents run a liquor store; and Makoto’s sister, Akane, who’s flighty and a brilliant witch—but they haven’t had enough page time to really delve into them.
More than anything, though, Flying Witch is a chill manga. This is something that’d be great to read next to the stereotypical / proverbial fire and sipping a glass of whisky (or your drink of choice).
The art is kind of rough though, not gonna lie… It gets better by even the second chapter, but the first chapter looks super rough. Let’s just say the cover isn’t completely indicative of what the rest of the manga can look like, though it sometimes does live up to that wonderful cover art.
In Summary:
I love Flying Witch. I loved the anime and was super hype when Vertical announced they would be releasing the manga. The manga doesn’t disappoint in its delivery, though I dunno how something as chill as Flying Witch could get too different between its anime and manga forms.
Content Grade: A-
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Vertical Comics
Release Date: March 28, 2017
MSRP: $10.95
