Status Updates From Atelier of Witch Hat, Vol. 3

oh my god????? so healing witches tried to resist the denouncement of forbidden magic of COURSE they did!!! i wonder how their faction was eventually silenced or if some (or many) of them joined the brimmed caps

(cont.)
and coco is the only one who is awake, hugging her pillow and looking wistfully down at the candle as a pillow shaped like an eye watches her back. she is stuck at a perpetual crossroads. haunted by the weight of what she has lost and yearns to get back

this illustration seems rife with meaning so lemme overthink for a sec
richeh has bundled herself up in a blanket, she wants to hide from adulthood. tetia has her arms flung open, she wants to give to the world and receive thanks in return. agott has one hand clutched by her heart and the other clinging to the pillow beneath her, she is full of angst and insecurity and desperately wants to prove herself (cont.)

....hey qifrey
hey bud
you're starting to freak me out a little bit, just a tad
my heart is genuinely racing i know we're still so early on so it could take several volumes before we get the extent of his backstory but GOD is this riveting. the not knowing is killing me, WHAT IS HIS PLAN WHY IS HE SO OBSESSED HAVE I FALLEN IN LOVE WITH ANOTHER DOOMED WHITE HAIRED CHARACTER JUST TELL ME NOW

the brimmed cap telling coco in her nightmare that when the world falls apart, it'll be her fault, AND THEN THE PANEL ITSELF SHATTERS??? i eat that shit up every time

okay so not ALL of witch society comes from a long line of nepotism, but it is still significant that the most prominent and well respected families are those that are descended from the original 3. so it's more likely that it's a mix of nepotism and intellectual elitism, with disciples being chosen to pass on the secret, and then their children and students, and so on and so on

the clear contrast between tetia, richeh, and agott is so fascinating. richeh wants to stay childlike forever, while agott wants to be an adult as soon as possible, and lovely tetia has the healthiest mindset of all. she has a clear goal of traveling the world and helping others, and she's excited to achieve that, but she's not rushing herself past her limits. we've all been all 3 of these kids at one point

(cont.)
it's more difficult, and most of the time it feels like society is trying to bleed it out of us at all costs bc it has no capitalistic "value", but if you care enough about it like richeh clearly does, that wild creativity will never be snuffed out
this manga makes me so emo about art and how vital it is to this world and how terrifying it is for people to devalue it constantly

oh richeh too real
i get it though!! the price of the freedom of adulthood is responsibility, and that can feel like such a shackle to creativity. but i like to think that as we get older and are constantly forced to do things we don't want to do, we just have to make more of an effort to carve out the proper time and energy to continue cultivating the raw creativity that still lives inside us from childhood (cont.)

TETIA YOU ARE SO ADORABLE i love the reasoning behind her pigtails design that's so fucking cute (and makes me feel more vindicated for overthinking qifrey and olruggio's designs)

oh. oh qifrey *no*
and right after lecturing about the preciousness of memories and being so fatherly and gentle with coco when she feels bad for tartah oh GOD. how tragic it is for the "good guys" to sink to the same lows as the "bad guys" in service of what they deem to be the greater good. and we still don't even know what qifrey's greater good IS. but he's truly morally grey okay got it cool cool cool

so it's not caused by working around silverwood trees? it's just a genetic abnormality from birth? .....i'm still suspicious
but i adore that circular panel of tartah, almost as if he's in an eye himself
and a bit more of qifrey's disdain for witch society!! it does seem absolutely ridiculous that tartah wouldn't be accepted as a witch bc he has silverwash. genetic purity is part of the requirements too, how shocking

Qifrey is a freak and I KNOW IT. I just can't prove it yet ( ＞Д＜；) this mf is living rent free in my brain and I'm afraid I got the itch to draw him in certain situations...

silverwash????? is that some magical version of colorblindness that comes from being around silverwood trees?? why does tartah have it but not nolnoa? or maybe he does but he's just more used to it and has ways around it to make sure he can keep his inventory straight. they did say the silverwood trees were poisonous to people when they're ready to be extracted for ink right? of course that would have lasting effects

is tartah colorblind or something? would that somehow make him unfit to be a witch??

i LOVE these glimpses of impulsive, obsessive, potentially dangerous to himself and others qifrey. there MUST be some personal connection between him and the brimmed caps for him to cast aside all reason and his usual gentleness whenever he gets even the faintest lead

qifrey's first thought after seeing that the stationer's is closed is that they should go in through the skylight????? he really is a problem child huh i wonder just how rebellious he's been and in what ways exactly.......and if a certain grumpy wine connoisseur has had to bail him out several times

oh shut UP they are so married they're coming up on their 10 year anniversary

I FUCKING KNEW ITTTTTTTTTT
i was right on two accounts oh my god this never happens

QIFREY IS AN AMAZING TEACHER OUCH
i love that, without saying it so obviously, he’s basically rewarding agott for her teamwork with coco more so than for her individual skill. he recognizes how important it is to praise her for a job well done and well collaborated upon, even if he wishes they’d been more careful in the first place

it feels inevitable that we will at some point meet someone whose memory has been wiped bc they were exposed to magic and i wonder what it does to a person. surely it’s not a foolproof spell, and i’m sure it’s gone wonky in the past and accidentally removed too much. our brains are way too intricate to simply pluck out one specific memory without affecting other memories and facets of the mind, right??

okay YES i was wondering!!!!! bc the brimmed cap said that they were giving coco a gift before they all escaped the dragon realm, but we never saw them actually GIVE anything to her. and she didn’t discover anything on her person afterwards…….so what was the gift?? did they switch out her ink??? or some other amplification contraption that she wouldn’t notice slipped into her stuff??

DAMN RIGHT HES IMPERTINENT how percy jackson of him
god i love him more and more with every page and i cannot stress enough how much i REQUIRE backstory