Maddies Manga

In a world where both the government and your neighbours are constantly on a witch hunt, can a young witch really live a stable life?

You can check out volume one of this series for yourself below

What’s this manga about?

In a small village, a witch lives in hiding with her mother. The one rule that the two must always abide by is that they can never let the fact that they’re witches slip. To anyone. Ever.

In this world, witches are feared and hated by regular humans, and hunted down and captured by the government. The fear and hatred can mostly be accredited to the constant fear mongering done by the government. While witches actually only use their magic to do helpful things like repairing broken items, the government would have you believe that they use their magic to steal and then eat babies. So, keeping their identities a secret is an absolute must.

In a world where constant witch hunts are being performed, everyday townspeople become especially nosey. Peering into your neighbours windows, and keeping track of your neighbour’s grocery buying patterns are well commonplace. So, even within the confines of her own home, our protagonist Nona is taught to never ever use her magic. Having never experienced the true cruelty of humans, can Nona really continue abiding by all the rules her mother has put on her? Surely she can use just a little magic so long as she makes sure the blinds are closed, right?

My thoughts

My god this was a good chapter. As in, stop reading my review and go read it for yourself. That good.

I love a well-written shounen with a female protagonist, and I have really been on a witchy manga kick recently. It’s kinsmic that I was able to get my hands on a sample of the first chapter of Witchriv. Nona is a protagonist that you can really root for. As a teenger, sure she does a little bit of rule breaking, but it always comes from a good place. It’s not like she sneaks out to terrorize the town—she uses a bit of her magic to help her friend. Who wouldn’t? As genuinely no one would have been able to guess just how cruelly the government would act, you can’t blame her for her actions.

I am very curious to see where this series will go from here, as boy did the first chapter end with a bang. I hope to see Nona develop her magic to be as powerful as her mother’s one day, as the power disparity, once revealed, left me dumbstruck. There is a reason that humans should fear witches, but the government is only creating reasons for the witches to use their powers for violence. The revelation that government-worker humans are looking to capture all of the witches and make magic a thing that they can only use themselves heavily reminded me of Eden of Witches, in the best way possible.

Will there be a full, drawn out war between the government and the witches? As of right now, the witches are all in hiding, but I don’t see that lasting for long. Not with the atrocities they’re being forced to watch coming at them left and right.