Witch Hat Atelier Creator Is Still Humbled by the Series’ Success

Witch Hat Atelier will be making the jump from manga to screen with the anime’s debut next year, and the creator behind it all is still humbled by all of the franchise’s success. Kamome Shirahama’s original manga series first made its debut in the pages Kodansha’s Morning Two magazine in 2016, and has since gotten massively successful for both fans in Japan and worldwide in the years since. It’s one of the franchises fans have been waiting to see an anime announced officially, and now that one is in the works, the creator is going to be launched into a whole new realm. 

Speaking with ComicBook during Anime Expo 2024 earlier this Summer, Shirahama opened up about their reaction to the series‘ success and how they went from imagining a small audience to where it is now. “Initially, when writing the original manga, I was imagining then I would be doing it for a small audience who could really resonate on a very deep level to what I was trying to express,” Shirahama stated. “Oftentimes, I would draw or do whatever I wanted. The realization that a much wider audience was able to resonate with Witch Hat Atelier and kind of understand the themes was humbling. It was a very humbling experience.”

What Is Witch Hat Atelier?

Witch Hat Atelier is now in the works for a release some time next year, but has yet to confirm a release date as of the time of this publication. Ayumu Watanabe will be directing the anime for Bug Films with Hiroaki Kojima producing, Kairi Unabara handling the character designs, and Yuka Kitamura composing the music. Witch Hat Atelier will be exclusively streaming with Crunchyroll when it premieres for fans in North America, Central America, South America, Europe, Africa, Oceania, the Middle East and CIS. Kodansha USA has licensed Kamome Shirohama’s Witch Hat Atelier manga for an English language release, and you can find the manga on shelves now. 

They tease the series as such, “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…”