Sixty fans of The Owl House and Witch Hat Atelier joined under one roof for a special Q&A session with creators Dana Terrace and Kamome Shirahama. After many years of mutual admiration, the two fantasy writers had a public discussion about each other’s work. Shirahama wore her usual Iguin cosplay while Terrace donned a black pointed cap. Together, they shared insight into their individual creative processes, such as how they craft a fantasy world, as well as fun trivia about each other.

Shirahama has openly expressed her love and admiration for The Owl House and Knights of Guinevere, but admits she didn’t think she would be able to speak with Terrace. The opportunity was just as unexpected for the Guinevere creator as she mentioned Witch Hat Atelier spoke to her as “an artist, creative, and as a human.”

Going straight into her questions for Shirahama, Terrace was curious to know how long she’d been developing Witch Hat. Shirahama shared that it took about “Six years in the making,” as she developed it while working on Eniale & Dewiela. “It took me one year to draw the first chapter.”

Regarding her distinctive inking style, Shirahama was heavily influenced by Western artists such as Arthur Rackham and Alphonse Mucha. As for manga, she was inspired by Katsuhiro Ōtomo and Moto Hagio. She also watched a lot of Studio Ghibli movies and happened to share Terrace’s favorite: Princess Mononoke. “I liked that the story wasn’t about defeating the monster god.”

Out of curiosity, Terrace asked Shirahama if she thought she’d become something other than a manga artist. Originally, Shirahama debuted as an illustrator and later became a manga artist. However, after watching the Witch Hat Atelier anime, she’s “curious to see what an anime creator would be like.” Terrace added that she’d love to see an anime adaptation of Shirahama’s manga, but the manga author lamented that her “team would suffer a lot” because she describes herself as “nit-picky.”

Switching topics, Shirahama shared her interest in classical and folk music, having played the flute “for a long time.” She also enjoys stage and musical theater. To follow up, Terrace asked whether Shirahama would be interested in composing music for the anime. She was already so in awe of Yuka Kitamura‘s composition that she was just happy to be on the sidelines admiring it all.

Turning back to Witch Hat Atelier, Terrace was fascinated by a previous interview in which Shirahama mentioned that the story is about possibilities. She was curious about what drove the Witch Hat creator to write such a story in which the world doesn’t require someone to be born special to create something magnificent. “What drove me was that kind of message gave me a lot of hope.” Shirahama shared the example of how humans don’t start off knowing how to walk. The mere process of becoming independent is full of possibilities and “makes it easier to try new things.”

Adding to that statement, Terrace admired the unique take on standardized school systems as well as the main cast’s approach to learning. Regarding how each character approaches problems, Shirahama explained in detail for each of the quartet. Coco is curious and optimistic but bound by a sense of responsibility. In contrast, Agott is rather simple as she’s rushing to a point where she can feel confident. Riche has a “difficult artist element” to her, which makes her “easy to empathize with what she says.” Tetia would make a great producer as she’s fun and positive, which is needed on every team. “I think she can teach the readers how to have fun while learning.”

Before they moved on to fan-submitted questions, Terrace asked Shirahama what she does when she’s in a creative rut. “Even if I’m in a rut, the deadline doesn’t wait,” admitted Shirahama. “I wrack my brain to get through it, and I apologize to my editor over and over again, and I ask for an extension on my deadline.” Going for a walk and getting some sleep as a mental reset helps her push through until she gets to the end, which Terrace found “extremely relatable.”

Both Shirahama and Terrace were asked whether they envision a story’s conclusion from the start or whether it evolves as it progresses. “I have an idea of how the story will end,” said Shirahama. “In my mind, there are two options, and I have to decide which one I want to go with.” The crowd cheered with “oohs and ahhs” to Shirahama’s remark, and she responded with her hands in a boogeyman gesture, causing the entire room to laugh.

“As for me, I have a single emotion that I’m trying to communicate,” Shared Terrace. “Even if the ending fluctuates by necessity or design, as long as I get through that North Star, I think I would feel satisfied.” Shirahama agreed that having “a single emotion” is so powerful because it can carry a story that is relatable to viewers. “Having a North Star whenever you get into a funk helps you reset,” added Terrace.

They were then asked what their magic specialty would be if they lived in a fantasy world. Shirahama thinks she’d still be drawing while Terrace wanted to be a magic animal whisperer. “I just want to pet a dragon,” said Terrace. Here, the Witch Hat author interjected with a surprise. “The story after Silver Eve is actually them going to a dragon island, and we’ll see some people with dragon pets. I’ll draw a house that’s yours, Dana-san!”

After a brief moment of excitement, they turned back to the fan questions. When asked what the most challenging part of creating spells is, Shirahama admitted that remembering what magic spells she’s created is the hardest part. Terrace explained that developing the Coven System was incredibly difficult, as was the general magic everyone shared.

“Specifically what luz would do with the glyphs, and how to combine them. It got a little confusing,” laughed Terrace.
On a more technical question, the speakers were asked whether left-handed witches struggle more with spells because of ink smudging. For magic seals, since they don’t have a direction and can be drawn however one wants, it doesn’t make a big difference. As for The Owl House, luz is the only one doing glyphs for a while: “It’s not a problem for her either because she did whatever worked.” Luckily, “magic is a kind tool for the left-handed,” according to Shirahama. “The circle is the perfect shape.”

To wrap it up, the speaker asked both what their zodiac signs are. Shirahama is a Taurus and shares a birthday “close to Coco’s.” Although the speaker said Taurus signs are determined, Shirahama wasn’t so sure about everyone born in May. Terrace is a Sagittarius, but admits she doesn’t know much about astrology.

When is it too soon to let your feelings be heard? In this series, seemingly never. Ponsuka (aka The Klutzy Class Monitor and the Girl with the Short Skirt) might be one of the loudest romcoms about its feelings. How could it possibly be a quiet pairing of the uptight Hall Monitor and the Bad Girl in class? Sakuradaimon and Poem could not be more different, seemingly, but they’re equally strong personalities that push them closer with every bout. It’s easy to guess maybe they’re not so different, but the opposite turns out to be true: their differences are exactly what they need. And they’re not alone.

If I had to lay out this series’ appeal, imagine a classroom where everyone has extreme levels of gap moe. The disciplined student is somehow worse at math than the delinquent. The health monitor used to sock thugs in the face. The librarian is a prince near bookshelves, but a sniveling rat anywhere else. Even the stereotypical salaryman used to drop bars in the streets during battle rap sessions. The moment anyone seems like a stereotype, they jump scare you with who they really are. That’s where this series shines. It explores how everyone is, to some extent, a living contradiction, and it just takes two of the right ones to complete the puzzle. Because just like magnets, opposites attract.

Sakuradaimon and Poem are the core examples of this magnetic relationship. When kept alone or staying in their lane, they are walking disasters. Poem is more accustomed to social norms, but is brash and easily embarrassed. Sakuradaimon is honest about how he feels, but can’t read the room and wants everything done by the book. But when actively trying to get closer, they bring the best out of each other. While she makes him less of a dunce (both mentally and socially), she hears how much he treasures her in ways most boys wouldn’t have the balls to. It reminded me a bit of Nagisa Fujita’s Extremely Straightforward Boyfriend x Girlfriend: loudmouths unashamed of how they feel.

This extends to both Poem’s gyaru friends and the remaining Student Council Members, but the real stand-outs here are President Yamato Nadeshiko and Vice-President Kogori Kaoru. These two stole the spotlight anytime they were on-screen. What happens when the most commanding presence in school absolutely slays in an outfit even the Gyarus would blush at? What if the hulking brute enforcer was also a rich kid conscious of how his privilege gets in the way of his morals? Now imagine these two are childhood friends, and one dons her sexy fit like a superhero costume to make this hunk of morals blush. It’s a dynamic that’s entertaining enough to be its own series.

For a good chunk of its run, this all works really well. Throughout many visits and gatherings, our main couple gets more comfortable in each other’s space while addressing as many misunderstandings as possible. A study group session that could’ve gone awry gets addressed simply by one person acknowledging who they’re doing this for. During a lengthy beach arc later, we see Sakuradaimon realize in real-time the opportunities they missed by stubbornly sticking to what they thought was right. It was Poem welcoming him into her life that made him reconsider: he had no problem admitting what he wanted, but this time he’d no longer deny actually asking for it. The resulting confession is incredibly sweet and left me very satisfied. Unfortunately, the show wasn’t.

Romcom anime have recently changed how they treat confessions. Whether it’s Horimiya or You and I Are Polar Opposites, it’s almost guaranteed that you will see the couple formed by the end of that season. Even when titles like My Dress Up Darling or The Dangers in My Heart take multiple seasons, anime being less stingy with sequels in general has prevented cases like Nisekoi, where the big finish is left in the manga. And to some extent, I get it. After years of will-they-won’t-they that may not even be resolved in the last episode, it’s nice to know that your patience will be rewarded. But this leads to a recurring problem that modern romcoms like Horimiya have fallen into: they’ve reached the finish line but still have episodes left to fill.

To be fair, some series like Polar Opposites have managed to remedy this by addressing the day-to-day happenings of maintaining a relationship. When done well, they can work as tips for new couples when it comes to their own troubles. Other times, you can focus on the side couples now that the main relationship is settled. The last stretch of Ponsuka doesn’t really do either, opting for the traditional school festival arc. They do try to spice it up by modeling after American proms, and the Vice President does seem to come out of it with a less antagonistic view of school couples. But none of the couples really came closer than before this arc started. In fact, it needlessly dragged our main one into a misunderstanding that they’ve spent most of the season avoiding. It doesn’t ruin the series overall, but it definitely left me a bit sour.

The music wasn’t anything to write home about. It’s not actively distracting, considering it has four composers credited, but that’s led to a score that disappears into the background. Visually, though, this series has a surprising amount of flair to it. Zero-G is usually a very reserved animation studio (Grand Blue Dreaming), so I was blown away by how zany this looked. The style takes a lot of cues from western comic books, with heavy use of ink dots, saturated colors, and thick outlines. It’s the kind of cartoony look that complements its bold and brash characters more than something realistic. This works especially when it gets to just gush out for other genres in its many parody scenes.

All the classics like Aim for the Ace! and Tomorrow’s Joe get a shout-out here, but there are even some obscure references like the fat twins in 20th Century Boys. There’s a spot-on recreation of what it’s like to watch a Precure movie (including the audience participation), and there are two rap battles that, dare I say, come close to Miyuki Shirogane’s redemption set in Kaguya-sama: Love is War Ultra Romantic. If you want to know how cultured the creators are, go watch the opening. It goes from Powerpuff Girls and Godzilla to Superman and magical girls, all culminating in Kamen Rider transforming into the prince in a Disney film. This is Daiji Iwanaga‘s debut as a series director, though he is credited as chief director in The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window. If this is what he has to showcase, Zero-G might have a star talent.

On the whole, Ponsuka was pretty underrated among this season’s romcoms. While it stumbles a bit at the end, the main dynamic and two showstealers kept me hooked throughout. It’s also quite refreshing to see a studio I once considered mid pull off one of the more visually engaging series this season. If you want something sweet to cleanse your palate, give this one a shot. It’s cute seeing a couple that’s too honest about how they feel, even if they reach the finish line a bit early.

My introduction to Hide and Seek went thusly: 70’s shoujo manga focusing on children who meet horrible ends. I heard “70’s” and “children who meet horrible ends” and immediately thought of Ringing Bell, which (cold take, I know, but) to this day is still my gold standard of old-timey animanga horror stories, rich in both its antiquity and unhinged ability to plunge into the darker side of children’s fables. Now, “happy to report” is far from the most appropriate response when it comes to reading such narratives. Perhaps chillfully delighted? Horribly amused? Twistedly joyful? Either way you want to look at it, the bottom line is that Hide and Seek provided a similar thrill I got out of Ringing Bell, and for that, I applaud it. This is a merciless story penned by a long-forgotten mangaka, resurrected to provide a chilling venture into shoujo manga’s past. Given that you have the heart and stomach for it all, of course.

Hide and Seek is the seventh volume of Smudge, an ongoing anthology of vintage horror manga collected and reprinted by the publishing company Living the Line. Naono Yoshiko’s manga serves as an anthology within an anthology; a trove of short stories she penned for various shoujo magazines in the early 70’s. And it stands as a calculated blend of traditional ghost stories and horrifying odes to the Kafkaesque. Stories involve everything from sibling rivalry gone horribly wrong, to a haunted house and a headless demon, to schoolyard gossip and diaries, and to a reimagining of the tale of Orochi.

Connecting all of them is the recurring theme of making a childhood mistake so severe and traumatic that it bars one from experiencing happiness ever again. Children who thought that the worst thing to happen to them was, say, embarrassment brought on by grandma’s overalls, or not being born into the right family, lead to drownings, beheadings, disappearances, and so on. Naturally, all of Yoshiko’s stories end on downer notes, made even darker by the sudden, dramatic last-second twists. Some are a bit too open-ended and quick of a rug pull—I still don’t know what to make of the endings of “Rainy Days,” or the eponymous “Hide and Seek.” Might just be me, though.

The ghost stories read like standard stuff. Not to discredit them (I still like them!), but if you’ve read even a single ghost story, then you already know that Yoshiko’s more or less on the note of “and they were never heard from again.” The story of the headless Lady Otsuta is the best instance of this; a tale of survival horror where two young girls have to defend themselves against an evil spirit who stalks them at night. It lacks the same twisted morality as a lot of other Hide and Seek‘s stories do, since our two leading lasses do not sin. It is, however, bleak and well-paced enough to remain interesting enough to keep our attention.

The Kafkaesque stories have more originality to them. Barred from anything supernatural means that the situations and the characters are handled with an everydayness that feels more real and hits harder as a result. Really, they almost feel like they could happen to you.

Here’s what I mean. My favorite story of the bunch (and massive spoilers, by the way) is titled “Our First Family Trip.” You can tell right away that the flowery title is done in jest; no family would actually want to keep this in the memory log. The story involves the young girl Sachiko, who is about to embark on a big vacation that her family can barely afford. Right as she’s leaving for the ferry to Kyushu, Sachiko goes through the very real fear any paranoiac will have: she forgot to turn everything off in the house. Specifically, her iron, which threatens to burn her house down. Sachiko can’t tell her parents what happened, otherwise they’d have to turn back home and cancel the trip. She is left with a look of wide-eyed terror that looks like Edvard Munch’s Scream for a panel (the manga wisely uses this image on the cover of the book). A seemingly wise old man tries to reassure her by saying that praying will solve Sachiko’s problems, since praying solves his. Sachiko is left relieved, thinking that God will protect her and the house. But unbeknownst to her, the old man doesn’t pray to God; he prays to the whiskey bottle he constantly sneaks sips of. The story ends with Sachiko’s house burned to the ground, juxtaposed with a panel of a relieved Sachiko enjoying her vacation with her family, completely oblivious to the scorched reality that awaits her. It begs the question of what is worse: immediately knowing your house might burn down, or delaying that revelation in exchange for short-term denial and fleeting joy? This story is even more impactful and horrifying when you have family on vacation. Which I did at the time of writing this review. No, really.

Yoshiko’s art here isn’t groundbreaking, but it is still very interesting. Characters’ mortified faces, bleak environments, and psychotically, spirally speed lines make for a horror show art style. In an afterword essay included at the end, Yoshiko writes that despite her early love of shoujo, she eventually became “turned off by the big starry eyes and saccharine stories.” Her manga’s art style, combined with some extra and more detailed (if not also violent, creepy, and sexual) illustrations included in her afterword essays, can be interpreted as a direct contrast to the flowery shoujo she read during her childhood. Is it no surprise that her first work, Experiment, was published in the same Garo magazine that housed the ultraviolent The Legend of Kamui?

Victims of childhood traumas have stories to tell that they would very much rather not. Hide and Seek doesn’t shy away from telling those dark stories. It goes to the very end with them. This is a manga so unabashed in its darkness, so shocking and dramatic in its presentation, that you can’t help but be in awe over the sense of fear and depression it leaves.