Witch Hat Atelier 8
by Kamome Shirahama
2021
Last time on Witch Hat Atelier, the girls and their teachers returned home from the Great Tower, and Tartah, the wand maker's grandson, invited them to help him run a stall at the upcoming festival. We also learned that Coco has been struggling with her feelings about forbidden magic. Any spells cast directly on the body are forbidden - so there might not be a way to rescue her mother from being turned to stone without breaking witch law.
Now in volume 8, the girls talk Master Qifrey and Olruggio into letting them help out. Agott's the only one who's not excited - I think because she's not looking forward to seeing her family at the festival, and Tartah's prominent booth makes a run in that much more likely. Tartah was planning to assist his grandfather in running the booth like usual, but his grandfather took a fall and is healing up in the hospital. Tartah isn't an apprentice yet, so Coco and the others are the only other witches he knows to ask.
Also, I was right, this is a date. Or at least, kind of. Tartah clearly does like Coco, and she likes him too. They're both like 10 or 12 though, so these feelings are new and unfamiliar to both of them.
Tartah and the girls will need to work together to prepare for the festival. Coco goes back to the wand shop with him, and they stop by the hospital to visit his grandfather. (There's no mention of it here, but I wonder if Qifrey erasing a bit of the wand maker's memory might be part of why he got dizzy and fell...)
In the hospital, they also see Custas, the boy who was injured when the bridge washed out back in volume 2. He's got a walking chair now, like Master Bel, and without realizing what it means, he mentions to Coco that Tartah's been teaching him to read and helping him learn about medicine. Because they're forbidden to use magic on the body, witches are also forbidden to learn medicine. Tartah confesses to Coco that he has been studying, and he has serious doubts about the laws that forbid, for example, magical healing. Coco doesn't confide her own doubts back (yet?) but she does help Tartah keep his secret.
Coco and Tartah work together to make an alternative to the walking chair for Tartah. He and his adopted father are traveling entertainers, and the terrain they cover is simply too rugged for him to return to that life with the walking chair as his only mobility aid. They make him a cloak that lets him hover off the ground, and has built-in crutches for when he wants to stand. Custas really wishes he could be healed, but Coco and Tartah lie and assure him that it's impossible, that magic only works on objects and not on living things.
I find the representation of disability in this comic interesting. We've now seen three people with physical disabilities - Tartah is profoundly colorblind, and Master Bel and now Custas need walking chairs to get around. In most other stories, magic healing means that we don't usually see lifelong injuries or assistive technology.
I'm not sure if Coco and Tartah are going to date or be friends, but I suspect they're going to become a conspiracy of two. They're both thinking about breaking the rules, and witch society is draconian, so much so that they could be punished just for speaking their doubts aloud, let alone acting on them. It's a place where they might only be able to rely on each other.
Throughout the series so far, we've seen that forbidden magic cause terrible individual harm and wreak destruction on a geographic scale. So there's a reason witches have their rules, and a reason they keep it a secret that anyone could do magic ... with the right tools and the right techniques. But the rules are enforced with violence - by erasing people's memories to censor any forbidden knowledge. The memory erasure spell isn't just used on witches who cast forbidden magic, it's used on non-witches who learn the secret, and on anyone who's been a victim of it. (The memory spell should, by all rights, be forbidden too.) Potentially helpful forms of magic are forbidden alongside the obviously dangerous stuff. It's no wonder Coco and Tartah have doubts. I have them too.
At the end of the volume, Custas reunites with his dad and they get ready to resume their traveling show. They're attacked by bandits, and the father left for dead. Afterward, a young witch, a girl who might be Coco's age, finds Custas and his dying father, and offers them true magical healing. She's one of the witches who uses forbidden magic...
Now in volume 8, the girls talk Master Qifrey and Olruggio into letting them help out. Agott's the only one who's not excited - I think because she's not looking forward to seeing her family at the festival, and Tartah's prominent booth makes a run in that much more likely. Tartah was planning to assist his grandfather in running the booth like usual, but his grandfather took a fall and is healing up in the hospital. Tartah isn't an apprentice yet, so Coco and the others are the only other witches he knows to ask.
Also, I was right, this is a date. Or at least, kind of. Tartah clearly does like Coco, and she likes him too. They're both like 10 or 12 though, so these feelings are new and unfamiliar to both of them.
Tartah and the girls will need to work together to prepare for the festival. Coco goes back to the wand shop with him, and they stop by the hospital to visit his grandfather. (There's no mention of it here, but I wonder if Qifrey erasing a bit of the wand maker's memory might be part of why he got dizzy and fell...)
In the hospital, they also see Custas, the boy who was injured when the bridge washed out back in volume 2. He's got a walking chair now, like Master Bel, and without realizing what it means, he mentions to Coco that Tartah's been teaching him to read and helping him learn about medicine. Because they're forbidden to use magic on the body, witches are also forbidden to learn medicine. Tartah confesses to Coco that he has been studying, and he has serious doubts about the laws that forbid, for example, magical healing. Coco doesn't confide her own doubts back (yet?) but she does help Tartah keep his secret.
Coco and Tartah work together to make an alternative to the walking chair for Tartah. He and his adopted father are traveling entertainers, and the terrain they cover is simply too rugged for him to return to that life with the walking chair as his only mobility aid. They make him a cloak that lets him hover off the ground, and has built-in crutches for when he wants to stand. Custas really wishes he could be healed, but Coco and Tartah lie and assure him that it's impossible, that magic only works on objects and not on living things.
I find the representation of disability in this comic interesting. We've now seen three people with physical disabilities - Tartah is profoundly colorblind, and Master Bel and now Custas need walking chairs to get around. In most other stories, magic healing means that we don't usually see lifelong injuries or assistive technology.
I'm not sure if Coco and Tartah are going to date or be friends, but I suspect they're going to become a conspiracy of two. They're both thinking about breaking the rules, and witch society is draconian, so much so that they could be punished just for speaking their doubts aloud, let alone acting on them. It's a place where they might only be able to rely on each other.
Throughout the series so far, we've seen that forbidden magic cause terrible individual harm and wreak destruction on a geographic scale. So there's a reason witches have their rules, and a reason they keep it a secret that anyone could do magic ... with the right tools and the right techniques. But the rules are enforced with violence - by erasing people's memories to censor any forbidden knowledge. The memory erasure spell isn't just used on witches who cast forbidden magic, it's used on non-witches who learn the secret, and on anyone who's been a victim of it. (The memory spell should, by all rights, be forbidden too.) Potentially helpful forms of magic are forbidden alongside the obviously dangerous stuff. It's no wonder Coco and Tartah have doubts. I have them too.
At the end of the volume, Custas reunites with his dad and they get ready to resume their traveling show. They're attacked by bandits, and the father left for dead. Afterward, a young witch, a girl who might be Coco's age, finds Custas and his dying father, and offers them true magical healing. She's one of the witches who uses forbidden magic...
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