On April 6th, 2026, an anime by the name of Witch Hat Atelier started airing. I had heard of the manga briefly before, but it never looked that interesting too me…boy was I wrong.
One minute into the first episode, I was hooked. By ten minutes in, I knew this will be something special.
The show starts out with Coco, a pretty ordinary girl who is interested by the world of magic around her. Only people who are born with the ability to use magic can use it, and of course our protagonist Coco was born just a normal human. Her life takes a quick change when she meets Qifrey, a witch who visited her parents shop to look for fabric. After a carriage breaks outside, Qifrey says he can fix it, but it must be done in absolute privacy. Coco spies on him and that’s where she learns the truth: Magic isn’t something you’re born with, it’s something that is drawn, meaning anyone can use it.
I have quickly fallen in love with this series and I have no doubt its going to quickly become one of my favorites. You can see the love put into the backgrounds and the insane amount of detail that stays throughout.
The lighting is amazing and you can feel the texture in the backgrounds. This is the quality I want to produce when working on my own art and animations and it is something I work towards with all of my drawings.
While scrolling through Youtube looking for videos on Witch Hat Atelier, I found this animation process video that I found to be very interesting. It has English Closed Captions, so I highly recommend checking it out!
It touches on the work that they’ve had to put into working on this and some of the different roles that are put into this process. The thing I found most fascinating is that they made the hats and costumes to use as references when animating! I hadn’t though about making a prob before to help with animating and it’s definitely something I’ll think about doing.
Be sure to look out for my next post!