I don’t read much manga, but Hakuri’s newly serialized Witchriv (available in English on MANGA Plus) stirred my interest thanks to its one-shot predecessor Meririrarariri. Set in a world where most humans detest mages, magic in Meririrarariri requires composure from the caster — get flustered or panicked by the situation, and you won’t be able to use magic to save your life. That becomes something protagonist Meriri, born to a mage mother and a human father, has to surmount when her life is directly threatened by a witch hunter.
The composure requirement was a big reason I was curious about Witchriv — when you face constant discrimination and danger, and your best means of defense is remaining calm no matter what, how would that affect the character development and worldview of the protagonist in a serialized work? Sadly for me, Witchriv opts for a different system where each mage specializes in one particular type of magic (based on what’s been shown so far, at least). Nona, the protagonist in Witchriv, has sewing powers, while her mother has surprisingly lethal and destructive comb magic, with its ability to slice up people highlighted in a couple of large, violent panels.
Another big difference (among others) is that instead of living in seclusion in a forest, Nona resides in a town and even has a human friend who keeps her identity as a witch a secret. This creates a situation later in the first chapter that bluntly showcases the terror of state-sanctioned and -enforced persecution and othering (something that easily recalls events from the past and the present), although the predictability of the development and the alright panels nip at its impact.
I warmed up to Witchriv a bit more with the newly released second chapter. After being separated from her mother (whose fate is unclear), Nona ends up in one of the Bureau of Magical Surveillance’s prisons. There, she meets Mira-Mira, another captured mage. Mira-Mira once inherited the will to live freely from her brother, but a failed escape attempt that sent said brother to the dreaded Urval facility has rendered her content to remain as forced labor for the prison guards.
It’s not strange that Mira-Mira chooses defeat and resignation in exchange for a relatively safe and continued existence. Unfortunately, even this world comes crashing down for her when, one morning, a guard informs her that she’ll be framed for an officer’s accidental killing of a civilian and sent to Urval after a trial. The explanation from the guard suffers a bit from feeling like dry exposition, but it does highlight something important. Being submissive and obedient in exchange for a semblance of peace may seem like a wise choice, but it’s very easy for that to backfire eventually when the people you’re dealing with are unreasonable assholes.
The other thing that stood out to me, and the reason I started developing an interest, was the contrasting moments of defiance from Nona. She’s witnessed the death of her friend and her friend’s parents, even though said parents had no knowledge of Nona’s mage identity, at the hands of the Bureau, and so she remarks to a guard that “The only ones they [the Bureau] protect… are the good little humans who obey them, right?!” Later, despite Mira-Mira’s efforts to convey the hopelessness of their situation, Nona stages an escape and gives the guard some rough treatment, forcefully tying him and threatening to stab his eye with a needle.
I’m usually the type that gets frustrated by characters who leave their unrepentant opponents alive, but edgy revenge porn doesn’t strike a chord with me either. Witchriv could’ve very easily been the latter, especially given the familiar ingredients in the first chapter. Instead, it currently provides a protagonist who, after what she has witnessed and experienced, will be rough when dealing with evil oppressors, without reducing her to an excuse for gratuitous violence (she’s also not driven by revenge; instead, she wishes to find her mother and live in peace). Such characters may not be as rare as I think, given how many manga I haven’t touched, but it’s nevertheless a balance I find myself liking for now.
I’m not all-in on Witchriv yet, and story elements like the Bureau researching magical tools and wanting to collect all magic don’t intrigue me much at this stage (although this “rules-for-thee-but-not-for-me” mentality and desire for power helps further establish them as unequivocal bad guys who can’t simply hide behind the “magic is dangerous” argument). However I’ve become a bit of a fan of Nona now, and thanks to that I’m curious how her journey will unfold next week.
