The Witch and the Beast anime adaptation came as a surprise for me. I just recently read the first three Volumes of the manga and found it to be a very interesting little dark fantasy manga with a super cool world, fantastical art, and a very cool depiction of mages and witches. It also has a super unique aesthetic, especially when it comes to character design. The Witch and the Beast manga, in short, looks super dope, so finding out that we’re getting an anime adaptation THIS SEASON had me foaming at the mouth. It was all good until I saw which studio was adapting the manga.
Yokohama Animation Lab doesn’t do action well
At the start of last season, a friend of mine (who also wrote a great review about the Great Pretender; go read it) recommended The Kingdoms of Ruin, a sci-fi shounen with a ton of edgy stuff. Right up my alley, so I decided to let it release some episodes before watching it. However, over time, I noticed a lot of negative talk about the show. I did some research and boy, all it took was one click to see which type of anime Yokohama Animation Lab usually makes. Now, let’s be clear here: the animation industry is the pinnacle of cancer and toxic work culture. The staff working on these anime deal with terrible work conditions, shown most with Mappa’s JJK fiasco. But we can’t ignore bad adaptations.
I was absolutely smitten the first time I saw some of these panels. Using these mystical frames for some of the scenes was a fun way to enhance an already impactful moment. Then the anime just took that and inserted it into the anime. There was no translation from a manga to an anime where they maybe added an animation over that scene or something that would work better in an animated piece of media; they straight up copy-pasted that panel and added color to it…
It’s safe to say The Witch and the Beast anime adaptation isn’t trying too hard. I mean, I get it; this studio’s best work is Miru Thights, an anime about stockings and legs and thighs… They aren’t exactly experts when it comes to creating fluid action scenes, but man… How do these super intense, edgy, violent, gritty, and action-heavy manga fall into the hands of studios like this? I’m getting One Punch Man Season 2 vibes here, and those are the worst vibes you can get from a brand-new anime adaptation of a super cool manga.
The Witch and the Beast Episode 1 already made me depressed
Ok ok, everyone will say I’m a hater, which is totally true. This time, however, my hatred is justified. Why? Because when the first two or three chapters of a manga tie up a very interesting little battle with a witch with some truly badass moments, and the anime coughs up some third-rate animation in EPISODE 1, you know something’s wrong. A ton of studios like this will go all out in the first couple of episodes to attract and retain viewers. When the animation goes hard in the beginning, you’re more willing to invest yourself into the story and its characters. It looks cool and pretty, so you keep watching. That way, even if the later episodes fall off and the production gets worse, you’re already invested in the story and characters, so you watch it entirely for the most part. Simple, right?
But what about the show that already drops the ball in the first episode? The Witch and the Beast episode 1 was a wild ride, that’s for sure. Wild in the sense that I cannot fathom that the higher-ups thought it would be a good idea to release episode 1 in this state. Some scenes look very enticing and sharp (not the action scenes, though), which makes sense since this is not a studio that can transfer the feel and look of kinetic force from a panel and make it look well-animated. Which again makes me wonder, why are they making this adaptation?
The Witch and the Beast: Manga vs Anime
To end this with a bang, let me describe the final confrontation between the witch and Guideau. Throughout the story, we already establish that witches are insanely powerful. But Guideau is a hotheaded little punk, so she engages with the witch nonetheless. In the manga, scenes like this often skip the part of the “action”, as we just see the beginning of the confrontation and then the end, which serves to showcase the power of the enemy, as they defeat our protagonist instantly and the author doesn’t bother to show how as it doesn’t matter, the witch is overwhelmingly powerful. That works in the manga, as it’s impactful and chaotic and efficiently displays the power difference.
In the anime, it’s the same way. They didn’t bother to add some action between that skip to build up the tension, showing Guideau struggling before ultimately showing her defeat. No, they do the same thing as in the manga. It’s just that in the manga, that page flip and complete turning of the tides works. In the anime, it’s just lame.
Wasted Potential
This is just incredibly depressing. As I said, some scenes do look good, but the majority of them are so bland, so boring, and so very disappointing. The color pallet in some scenes is vivid, expressive, and sharp, combined with a darker color pallet. It truly looks like a dark fantasy show at those moments. The show manipulates you into hoping that some of that will happen during the action. Then the action scenes come, and it’s a bunch of subpar animation, cuts everywhere, and absolutely no sense of force or destruction shown. You can’t feel the weight of the movement, the power of the punches, or the destructive capabilities of the magic.
The disparity goes overboard in scenes that are supposed to be that one cool moment, you know? Like when the main character gets a power-up, and the anime puts all their money and budget (which is like $50) into that scene. If everything else looks like doo-doo, if that one super epic moment hypes you up so much that you get the need to do push-ups and punch walls, the anime did its job. So, how does The Witch and the Beast handle the scene where Guideau shows her/his/something? true form, which is like a badass medieval demon knight thing? Well, see for yourself:
It looks alright, yeah, nothing too horrible, nothing too special. That’s exactly the issue. IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE A SUPER COOL SCENE, NOT A STILL SCENE, BASICALLY JUST THE SAME PANEL FROM THE MANGA, JUST WITH COLORS. NO ANIMATION AT ALL.
It’s very sad this adaptation makes me very sad, and I hope this studio doesn’t do gritty action shows anymore. It isn’t something that they do well. If you want, you can watch The Witch and the Beast anime on Crunchyroll. I wouldn’t bother.
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