Jake’s Anime Club Presents Witch Hat Atelier Season One

**Jake Young** (0:17)
Greetings, otakus and otakets. This is the preliminary meeting of Jake's Anime Club, Anime Club President Jake Young speaking. Members present, Holden McNeely.

**Holden McNeely** (0:30)
Here, I.

**Jake Young** (0:31)
And Mike Lawrence.

**Mike Lawrence** (0:34)
Where's Kamo Club?

**Jake Young** (0:37)
After, next week.

**Mike Lawrence** (0:39)
I know, I know.

**Jake Young** (0:40)
This week, I wanted to highlight a show. I feel like we did a good job with our Dungeon Crawler Carl episode, kind of a meeting to discuss and evaluate critique and just go over a thing that I found incredibly compelling this year.
It's Witch Hat Atelier.

**Holden McNeely** (0:57)
Yes.

**Jake Young** (0:57)
A magical fantasy series by Bug Films based on the manga by, hold on, I got this, Kamome Shirahama.

**Holden McNeely** (1:08)
Yeah, you sound like Chris Farley in the Japanese game show sketch.

**Jake Young** (1:12)
Kamome Shirahama.

**Holden McNeely** (1:14)
Oh, Kamome Shirahama.

**Jake Young** (1:17)
Correct.

**Mike Lawrence** (1:17)
Look, I think it's cool that our female protagonist episode, which I'm sure everybody loved, this is a female created female starring show.

**Holden McNeely** (1:30)
Yeah, we had just done our video game female protagonist problem episode is what Mike's referring to and now we're right onto this anime.

**Jake Young** (1:39)
So I didn't even realize this was a thing, but when I was in college, like high school to college, the big deal in anime, this like revival that kind of has carried us through this modern kind of weeb moment in our culture was the quote unquote big three, which was Naruto, Bleach and Holden, you're literally repping for it.

**Holden McNeely** (2:01)
One piece, baby. One piece.

**Jake Young** (2:02)
These massive shounen action anime, all kind of like the children of Dragon Ball Z, and they kind of exploded in popularity, pushed the boundaries of what was possible with the art form. And we're kind of having this same moment now with fantasy in anime, where there is Delicious in Dungeon, Dungeon Mesh-y, if you're nasty.
That's the one where it's on Netflix, like they go to the dungeon, they like cook recipes based on the monsters they fight. There's Free Run Beyond Journey's End, which is kind of this heady kind of a contemplation on like what happens to the immortal elf character, like a hundred years after the quest ended.

**Holden McNeely** (2:41)
I was interested in watching that, because now I'm like, you got me back on Crunchyroll. Yeah.

**Mike Lawrence** (2:46)
I know about all these shows because Facebook will send you AI generated, white girls dancing, and then turn into the cosplay.

**Jake Young** (2:54)
Yep. A hundred percent. And the newest one to kind of come across the finish line is Witch Hat Atelier, which just finished its first season on Crunchyroll and I was enjoying it. And a lot of these series all kind of share similar things, like it's not in Isekai, which is one of those things where, oh, I'm dropped into the world of the video game, or like I'm a vending machine in the world of the overlord.

**Holden McNeely** (3:22)
That's what I feel like, is it what, is it a trend happening at the same time, or is it kind of like taking over from the trend of, I'm now in a video game world, which I feel like is, bring up our Dungeon Carl to Carl episode, I feel like it's still having a surgence in different formats.

**Jake Young** (3:38)
Oh, absolutely, but these high fantasy shows are all have similar through lines, one of which is all female Mengaka created series.

**Holden McNeely** (3:47)
Oh, wow, okay.

**Jake Young** (3:48)
Where all with a really deep artistic love for a specific topic and headier themes than just leveling up and waifus and such. And also these shorter, more high production seasons of anime adaptations, as opposed to One Piece or Dragon Ball or a lot of shows we had growing up where it was just week by week getting it out as quickly as possible, even if it meant entire minutes where nothing's moving on screen and it's just mouth flaps.

**Holden McNeely** (4:22)
Yeah.

**Mike Lawrence** (4:22)
Yeah.

**Jake Young** (4:24)
And so I guess we'll cut off at a certain point for spoilers halfway through the episode. But just initially, what did you guys think about this world?

**Holden McNeely** (4:37)
Well, let me first start with a bit of a personal gush of why this feels very tailored towards me.

**Jake Young** (4:44)
Okay.

**Holden McNeely** (4:44)
I really love specifically like and to actually a lesser degree Harry Potter and in much even much lesser degree since the politics stuff has happened with JK. Rowling. But I've always like weirdly really been drawn to stuff with like schools of magic. So Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell is like one of my favorite fiction novels.