Anime Review: Witch Hat Atelier (Season 1)

The Spring 2026 season, while it didn’t have that many shows that quite grabbed me, did have some series with gorgeous animation, and probably one of the best of those was the first season of Witch Hat Atelier.

Still from the Witch Hat Atelier Season 1 OP.

Witch Hat Atelier follows Coco, a young girl who is infatuated with magic in a world where magical knowledge is closely guarded by witches (which is a gender-neutral term), and no non-witches know how it works. Coco’s most prized possession is a “Magic Picture Book” given to her some time prior by a Witch with a wide brimmed hat and a mask that looks like a massive eye. When she sees how a travelling witch, Quifrey, uses magic to fix a flying carriage’s ability to fly, she realizes the picture book has real magic spells, and the “Magic Wand” it came with was actually a pen and a vial of ink, she decides to try a few spells out. Tragedy ensues, of a kind that leaves Coco’s mother imprisoned in crystal. Quifrey rescues her, and after she says she could recognize the witch who gave her the book, and what the spell was, Quifrey agrees to take Coco as one of his apprentices.

The show has a very strong storybook visual style, with faux pop-up book images, and incorporating the characters into metaphorical visuals to convey emotional weight. This is on top of incredibly fluid animation in the scenes where magic is being cast, and fantastic landscapes (in multiple senses of the term). This is a show that puts a level of fluidity and detail into some episodes that normally gets put into movies – either because the money truck got backed up, or because the staff is that passionate about these characters and this story.

The visuals also do a good job of balancing some of the lightly comedic elements and with the dark and somber elements of the story. The more cutesy expressions of some of the characters, particularly Coco and her fellow apprentices, serves as a light dusting of sugar to cut the bitterness of some elements of the show’s story.

To be clear, this show can get dark. Beyond the start of Coco’s story, Quifrey’s other apprentices have had bad experiences with bullying and mistreatment from their previous mentors and even family members. The Knights Moralis – the Witch Cops responsible for keeping the secrets of magic under wraps, and hunting down the Brimmed Caps, the witches who want to release the secret to everyone, are, frankly, bastards. The Brimmed Caps are also horrible, who have no problems with kidnapping, torturing, and forcibly mutilating any number of innocent people in their mission to get the secret of magic out. Quifrey sucks in his own way, but he’s nowhere near as bad as the other two groups.

All of that said, the season ends on a massive cliffhanger, and while a second season has been greenlit, we don’t have a release date as of this writing. I’m definitely going to watch it, but I’m possibly going to start reading the manga in the meantime.

Witch Hat Atelier is currently available for streaming on: