Majo
Witches

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Witches is a series of short stories set in the same universe, and connected by the themes they share.

Most prominent among these is the idea that humans cannot see the real world. It is uniquely expressed in one story: an average person explores their room, confident they know everything from wall to wall; a wise person will open the door to reveal a house, and spend their life learning the mysteries of that house; all the while, every living person leaves the windows shut, never knowing the vast world outside or the epic space beyond the planet.

The art conveys these messages much more ... elegantly than the dialogue. Backgrounds in particular carry painstaking attention to detail. Cities, houses, trees, vehicles, oceans, and clothes are constructed in a realistic, yet still surreal way. On one occasion, a neighborhood may melt as if made of super-heated plastic, starkly contrasting the restrained character designs; in another scene, these same characters who once seemed plain will be drawn alongside fantastical creatures, becoming one with the things so far from existing.

There are moments when this manga’s humble origins are revealed. Usually, they manifest as off-model faces, a surprising artistic flaw considering the effort put into most panels. These can be easily forgiven though, since the drawings are just that good and the author probably can’t afford many (if any) assisstants.

Witches’ biggest weaknesses are the predictable, poorly-developed people. Personalities feel generic, tacked on only because they must be. More concerning is that we’re consistently presented one character with knowledge, and one without. This is because the writing is very didactic, so the wise person is the author while the ignorant one is the reader. Being what some may call preachy is not necessarily bad, but when someone possesses the artistic talent of Daisuke Igarashi, there is no need to voice each and every thing.

When the pictures do the talking, Witches is sublime. The same cannot be said of the manga as a whole, especially the writing, pacing, and structural diversity. Despite these drawbacks it is still good, and very much worth reading.

I read this book after reading Children of the Sea by the same Mangaka which I absolutely loved. Having now completed Witches, I have mixed feelings about it for sure. I think the stories in the second half of the book are far stronger than the stories in the first half. If all the stories had that same quality, I would be rating it a 8/10. I would say the first half of the book ranged from 5-6/10, with the opening story not being one of the stronger ones.

The surrealism is really fun and the art is good (if you like the artist's style - ... it is a bit scratchy/drafty at times). Compared to Children of the Sea, many of the panels can be hard to follow and the flow of the stories are often clunky. At times it was hard to follow what exactly was happening, I had to read through and piece it together. Sometimes it feels like there are too many frames for a specific area of the story, and other times it feels like critical ones were left out. The shorter stories really suffer from this while also feeling either half-baked or lacking a real fun "point" to it all. I can certainly do slice of life stories, but the shorter stories don't quite feel like that. They seem more as though they had a point to make, but it was either too superficial presented or poorly done to have the intended impact.

The three longest stories in the book are the best and drag the rest across the "worth reading" line. I think if you've read other work by the Mangaka and you like their art style - this is worth looking at. However, it is indeed an anthology series with no real connection (it said they were interconnected but not really) story to story and I think generally worse than Children of the Sea in most ways.

If you read Children of the Sea and liked it, go into this with no expectations of similar quality. If you didn't quite like this book, do not let it put you off from Children of the Sea (unless you hated the art style - which is largely similar).

TL;DR: This manga misrepresents and bastardizes foreign cultures for the sake of a cool aesthetic. It spreads misinformation and is based on poor/no research. It is basically an orientalist work I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.


I was perhaps fortunate to be familiar with the setting of the first story, Turkey, as it is so wildly off base that it read like a piece of orientalist literature. That meant I didn’t read the rest of the stories that would have misinformed me about cultures I know less about. This work is part of a style that bastardizes foreign cultures for outsiders to gawk at, and one ... that I find no value in. Elements of the story and the setting are cobbled together from disjointed information. It mixes time periods in Turkish history and presents a nonsensical version of Turkish culture. The story apparently takes place sometime in the 70s but nothing is consistent with that period in Turkey.


The most egregious example is Istanbul being called the capital, which is not only a mistake no Turkish person would make but shows that the writer apparently couldn’t even bother to look at a map. We are shown the story of a girl with a spindle, living 1000km away from the “capital,” Istanbul. So she isn’t even Turkish, but a Kurdish villager. We are then told that their “tribe” is nomadic and shown that they dress in Central Asian style Turkic clothing. She then takes a truck alone to the capital and is ordered to buy “rennet” by her mother while there.


Now, none of this makes any sense. By the 70s there weren’t any nomadic tribes in Eastern Anatolia, and if they were they wouldn’t be herding sheep in Central Asian clothing. A small Kurdish girl wouldn’t be allowed to travel to Istanbul alone, as the Kurdish society is highly patriarchal and at that time in a remote village familial bonds and rules would govern that kid's life. Also, those poor villagers couldn’t afford to make leisure trips to Istanbul, they just wouldn’t have the funds. Even though the age of the girl isn’t stated she is clearly over 6 years old meaning her family doesn’t send her to mandatory primary school a family like that isn’t going to tolerate a woman, let alone a girl, going to some faraway city alone. She would also be taken in by a state official to be returned to her family when her papers are checked since she would be a runaway, and she couldn’t leave her province, let alone enter Istanbul without having that happen. And finally, she would not only not need to buy “rennet” from Istanbul she would also know what it is. Because it is called “peynir mayası,” literally meaning “cheese yeast,” in Turkish. It is produced using the stomachs of cows and sheep etc. So it would be produced in the provinces where this girl originates from, where animal farming is done, and she would be more likely to sell it than buy it in Istanbul. Of course, if she were speaking Kurdish maybe this wouldn’t be the case since it is also called “rennet” in Kurdish, but not only does she speak Turkish, as she has no communication problems, that would still mean she wouldn’t need to buy it from Istanbul.


This is all the issues in just the first few pages. The Istanbul storyline of a witch trying to buy out the grand bazaar and build a shopping mall there is also nonsensical. The grand bazaar is a shopping district, not a corporation. The stores there would deal in gold, foreign currency, spices, clothing, etc. It isn’t something someone controls or something that can be demolished without state approval and probably great protests. So the villain's motivation doesn’t make sense.


Now we come to the weirdest part where the villain attempts to give a history lesson based on orientalist books and tourist brochures and apparently nothing else. We see the Hagia Sophia where she is criticized for being in because it is a place of faith, and then she goes on about the changes that happened there when it became a “temple.” But in the 70s the Hagia Sophia was a museum, she would have had to get in line and buy a ticket to enter. It wasn’t a place of faith. She also talks about how the last byzantine emperor is buried in the Basilica Cistern and that is why it is called “sarayı,” meaning “palace,” and not because of the pillars. However, it isn’t called that at all, it is called the “Yerebatan Sarnıcı,” which literally translates to “Yerebatan Cistern.” It also wouldn’t have any statues, or even water in it in 1970, and doesn’t today. This truly baffles me as they must have picked up a Turkish dictionary to look up “saray” but apparently either lacked the ability to read or didn’t even do the most basic research.


There are more mistakes in her “history” lessons for example Empress Anastasia wasn’t murdered, even though her husband was murdered. How Janissariers weren’t bodyguards but were the standing infantry army of the Ottoman empire under the direct command of the Sultan. Literally, every single piece of "information" about Turkey or Turkish culture is either wrong or misrepresented in some way.


Now there are also general mistakes in the manga like a street seller selling mineral water, and a girl from Eastern Anatolia, where mineral water is produced, not knowing what it is. Also, she pays “50 Lira” which equated to ~3.5 USD, nearly 20 USD in today's dollars, and around half a week’s wages for a salaried employee at the time for a glass of it. Also, the tea trays shown in the manga are inaccurate, they aren’t literal trays they have a handle on top, and they are quite distinctive. And there is a hilarious example where the villain purchases sheep heads and while eating them says she is eating “koyun başı” which is the literal translation of “sheep head” but is incorrect. The correct translation would be “kelle” which also means head. However “baş” is also used to indicate the head of a penis in Turkish, so since you wouldn’t say “baş” for the sheep’s actual head she is saying she is eating a sheep’s penis.


I haven't talked about the story as there is barely any besides the villain being rejected then dishing out misinformation and then being defeated by the girl. The main draw is clearly supposed to be the bastardized version of Istanbul and Turkey since the story is so incredibly simple when you remove that "flair." That is what an entire culture is reduced to in this manga, a cool mysterious foreign background for a simple story and a shoehorned message.


I would recommend this to no one and would recommend something that takes its setting seriously and bothers to do research about it instead of misrepresenting a foreign culture and reducing it to a cool aesthetic for foreigners to gawk at. I rate this manga sheep penis out of 10.