Before I wade in on this episode itself, just a little observation. When Nemu came swooping in on her broom, it struck me – she looks like Kiki (as in Delivery Service). Like, “all she needs is the black cat behind her”. And then it hits me – she is the black cat. So Nemu is like Kiki and Jiji (he’s a boy but let’s not quibble over little details) in a single body. I don’t know whether Shinohara was actually g0ing for that, but once it clicked I couldn’t unsee it.

But setting that aside, the episode. A “season finale” of sorts (as acknowledged in the preview), though there’s no cour break upcoming. Credit where it’s due, Witch Watch didn’t linger over this “serious” arc. Two episodes and it was done, so we can pretty much get back to the fun stuff next week. I’m very happy that’s the case – this was fine, but it’s not really what I watch this show for. The werewolf vs. ogre fight was a good brawl, but for the most part this was a pretty simple and straightforward matter (even if the true big bad is – of course – still out there somewhere).

With Moi-chan otherwise occupied and Kanshi and Nico having no idea where, it falls on them to deal with the dog pack in the park themselves. Which, of course, was exactly what the warlock had planned out. The pair combine their strength and a couple of Nico’s spells (invisibility and duplication) to try and get the jump on the warlock. Eventually Nico’s “Alert” leads them to an afro dude amongst the dogs, but puzzlingly it turns out he’s not the warlock (that their thinking otherwise may answer the question of whether males can be warlocks – or even witches).

The answer, amusingly, is that the warlock is very, very tiny. And as much once they’ve smoked her out, defeating her is rather rote. Turns out she traded her size for her witch’s powers and longevity, though it doesn’t sound like it gave her the happiness she was looking for. So basically the mastermind lured the warlock into the plan to capture the Thousands Witch with false promises, and she in turn lured Keigo in with false promises (since she’s not a natural witch she has no witch’s magic medicine) the same way.

So Moi and Keigo battle it out in the pocket reality, pretty evenly in fact. Moi’s attacks are too predictable (as befits his orderly mind) and the wolfman may be getting an upper hand. But the difference is that Moi has allies and Keigo is fighting alone. Eventually this ends the way we knew it was going to in every sense. Moi wins, with the help of Nemu, Kanshi, and Nico. They try to show some mercy to the warlock, and get her to tell them who the real mastermind of the plot is. But just when it seems she might, a spell kicks in and her magic powers are sucked out of her. Which, apart from getting a lot bigger, proved to be an entirely negative experience.

Never a doubt that Keigo and the others would reconcile (even if he hadn’t been all over the PV for the second cour). Too good a character for anything else to happen. The tricksy bit was that he had a formal pact with the warlock, meaning if she died he did. But when her magic got sucked out the pact did too. And it turns out Keigo didn’t want the healing potion for himself anyway – he says he’d recovered and only stopped skating for fear his werewolf genes would give him an unfair advantage. No, he wanted it for this mother, who was still in a wheelchair from the accident.

Nico offering her one and only dose to Keigo’s mama is a huge deal – that’s her emergency exit sealed forever. Fully friends again though – and in fact Keigo winds up moving into the Otogi house when his now-mobile mom goes to Europe to pursue a project she’d shelved due to the accident. I sort of knew the story was headed towards a kind of Halloween boarding house vibe (Keigo may be the newest resident but he won’t be the last addition). I think that’s a premise Witch Watch can carry off very well, and I look forward to a second cour mostly driven by comedy just like the first. All in all this series has been a real pleasant surprise, one of the biggest of the spring.