“the things that make you who you are never disappear”
Back in 2024, I was on a blind date at a local bookstore on West Broadway. She was telling me about her favourite Jamaican food, particularly oxtail and—
“Wait, hold on”
That caught her off-guard, and to be honest, me too.
“What’s this?”
I grabbed the artefact: Volume 1 of Witch Hat Atelier (WHA). Told her the illustration blended styles from the fairy tale books I used to read as a kid and the manga I’ve read since my teens.
“Right…” (😭)
The date ended as you’d expect. I didn’t buy the book, and we never saw each other again. But when I got home that night, I binge-read the whole series. Plenty hooked me: the pen work, earnest characters (villains included), their ethical dilemmas and the way the hard magic system treats spellcasting as craft.
It’s been years and WHA is still in my top three! I’m now re-reading it slowly, buying each volume as I go. Just finished Volume 5, and one of its chapters keeps coming back to me.
Richeh, one of my favourite characters, is an apprentice witch with a strong sense of self. While her cohort conjures water columns to climb, she’s wondering whether to make a sparkly bridge or a ladder of ribbons. Her parents sent her to a stricter school to change this, but she refused to learn anyone else’s spells (felt like losing herself).
Teacher: “Rest assured…we’ll have no trouble straightening this one out.”
(spoiler: they didn’t)
Eventually, the cost shows up. In Volume 5, the apprentices are guiding myrphones (penguin-ish creatures) through a cave when a rogue witch ambushes them and ruins everything. Euini, a shy apprentice with shaky hands, gets caught in the worst of it. She transforms him into a monster.
The remaining witches need someone to escort the myrphones out while they hold off the villain. The pick is obvious.
She pushes back at first, but accepts and runs for the exit.
Once she clears the cave, Richeh sits on a ledge while the myrphones waddle around her. She realises she’s still got Euini’s cloak on—somehow ended up on her during the chaos inside. As she takes it off, his spellbook slips out. She flips through and something stops her. They’re all primer spells—the rote stuff she refused to learn—but each one has Euini’s modifications stitched in. He couldn’t draw clean lines, so he’d built the shake into the design.
Euini was still back in the cave somewhere, unrecognisable. But this was him. And the trap she’d been holding all this time—
“If I do what the adults say, I’ll stop being myself. But if I shield myself from change, I can’t help when it’s needed.”
—cracks open. She thought she had to pick between two losses. Euini hadn’t. He took the rote stuff and made room for himself in it.
And boom—knot cut.
I love this move of cutting through false dichotomies. The manga just shows it. It can’t be forced though. If you find yourself both/and-ing your way through every contradiction, you’re probably just doing mental gymnastics to justify whatever bullshit you’re up to.
The real version is emergent. Richeh didn’t argue her way to it, she stumbled into Euini’s spellbook. Less a clever argument, more a knot coming undone. Mostly you just wait.
Aside: BTS: April 26, 2026 ~12 PM
Finished this post at the JJ Bean on Hastings near a notoriously stubborn back door.
Been amusing watching what people use…shoulders, backsides, legs, one guy with full hands used his knee! Helped an elderly person who couldn’t budge it.
So many personalities, just as many ways to open a door.
A big theme in this post was manifesting right in front of me!