Witch Hat Atelier Director Unpacks His Biggest Worry About the Anime

Ayumu Watanabe talks about what made him nervous about working on Witch Hat Atelier.

By Evan Valentine

Ayumu Watanabe has played a major role in the anime industry for some time. To date, the anime director has had major roles in the likes of Komi Can't Communicate, Great Pretender, Doraemon, Ace Attorney, and many more. While Watanabe has been an experienced creator in the medium, Ayumu is taking on a hefty new challenge with the upcoming anime adaptation of Witch Hat Atelier. Finding serious success with its manga long before the anime adaptation was confirmed, we here at ComicBook recently had the opportunity to chat with the anime director regarding what he is most nervous about when it comes to animating Coco's story.

At this year's Anime Expo, we talked with Watanabe about the upcoming anime adaptation and what made both the director and the team nervous about the major 2025 release, "No flattery or lies here – everyone on the production team, all of the staff, are huge fans of Witch Hat Atelier. On the one hand, of course, having a team that really likes the franchise is great and reliable for the director. But because they love it too much, a lot of the scenes are taking longer than I would like to complete... I'm quite happy, but still, the schedule has started to concern me a little bit."

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Witch Hat Atelier – 2025's Biggest Anime?

Witch Hat Atelier's won't just be brought to life by Ayumu Watanabe, but by the production house known as Bug Films. The studio might be best know for their work on the likes of Zom 100: Bucket List of The Dead, Mononoke, and The Ancient Magus' Bride. 

If you have yet to dive into the world of Witch Hat Atelier, the English iteration of the manga is available via Kodansha. Here's how the publisher describes the series, "In a world where everyone takes wonders like magic spells and dragons for granted, Coco is a girl with a simple dream: She wants to be a witch. But everybody knows magicians are born, not made, and Coco was not born with a gift for magic. Resigned to her un-magical life, Coco is about to give up on her dream to become a witch...until the day she meets Qifrey, a mysterious, traveling magician. After secretly seeing Qifrey perform magic in a way she's never seen before, Coco soon learns what everybody "knows" might not be the truth, and discovers that her magical dream may not be as far away as it may seem..."  

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