Did you hear that? It’s the sound of whimsy returning to our screens in 2026 with the premiere of Witch Hat Atelier! After a year’s delay, the anime adaptation of Kamome Shirahama’s popular manga arrives April 2026.
The series was first announced in 2022. Then, in 2024, it was announced that Bug Films would bring the anime to life. Considering Bug Films has only done Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, it’s easy for fans of the manga to be nervous. But, hear me out: the artists did an amazing job with Zom 100. The animation, music, and overall presentation were brilliant.
You can tell that the animators put their everything into bringing it to life, and from what we’ve seen so far, it seems clear that they’ll do the same for Witch Hat Atelier. Additionally, the brilliant Ayumu Watanabe (Children of the Sea, Summer Time Rendering, and the upcoming Akane-banashi) is taking the lead as director of the series. So it’s bound to be great.
Witch Hat Atelier is off to a strong start with casting.
Witch Hat Atelier follows Coco (Rena Motomura), a young girl who wishes she were a witch. However, only people born with the ability to cast magic are witches, and, unfortunately for Coco, she’s not one of them. But when a witch named Qifrey (Natsuki Hanae) shows up in her town, she witnesses him use magic sigils and ink to cast a spell. This inspires her to test it out, resulting in devastation as her naivete leads her to turn her mother to stone. Due to the laws witches must follow, Qifrey takes Coco as his apprentice to protect her while also continuing his research into a dark coven that doesn’t follow witch laws.
Bug Films not only dropped the trailer earlier this week, but the official Witch Hat Atelier website also announced the voice actors for Coco and Qifrey. While Motomura is relatively unknown, with her first credit appearing in 2021, Hanae is a well-respected talent, voicing characters such as Tanjiro in Demon Slayer and Okarun in DanDaDan. Despite not knowing the rest of the cast (yet), it’s easy to assume the rest of the lineup will be just as strong as the first two.
The manga does an amazing job of exploring topics such as accepting oneself, ambition, social classes and their inequality, overcoming adversity, and much more. A large part of the manga also focuses on treating others with kindness. It’s the thread that connects each character throughout the entire manga, no matter what faction they might be part of within the plot. It raises questions that you might not otherwise ask yourself.
Despite the whimsy, the series also explores deeper themes.
Additionally, the LGBTQ+ representation in Witch Hat Atelier is nothing to scoff at. Galga and Atwert are a canon gay couple in the universe who get the focus in a particular, later arc. Their relationship is written with love and consideration throughout the manga. Not only that, several other characters are also queer-coded, such as Qifrey, Olruggio, and Tetia.
Witch Hat Atelier also touches on disability and what it means within this world. The most obvious example is Beldaruit, Qifrey’s master and one of the Three Wise, a group of three powerful witches who preside over the laws, foreign relations, and education within the universe. Despite being such a powerful witch, Beldaruit has various health conditions that leave him bed-bound, requiring a mobility aid called a sealchair to get around. He’s not the only one to use a sealchair—Custas, a friend of Coco’s, has to use one to get around after an injury.
It’s hard not to be excited about Witch Hat Atelier finally premiering. I’ve been reading the manga for a few years and absolutely love every bit of it. It’s one that everyone should watch and/or read at least once in their life, especially to bear witness to the detailed and fleshed-out world that mangaka Shirahama has created. How the anime translates her rich illustrations from page to screen is one of the adaptation’s more interesting aspects. Witch Hat Atelier is the perfect, dark, whimsical anime we need to fill the Dungeon Meshi-shaped hole in our lives. It’s an emotional manga that will surely translate perfectly to the screen.
Watch Witch Hat Atelier on Crunchyroll this April 2026. Watch the trailer below.
Images courtesy of Bug Films and Crunchyroll.
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