If I’m totally honest here, I’m not that nuts for Kanshi as a character. He’s fine, don’t get me wrong. So far at least there are no characters in Witch Watch that I dislike (Keigo and the cat girl stand out as the best). But I find Kan a bit comedically one-note (and he talks too loud). I think he works better as a condiment than as an entree, so the fact that an entire episode devoted to him wasn’t that great is not a shocking development.

Still, it’s the nature of sketch comedies that the range from chapter to chapter and week to week is going to be pretty wide. And there were certainly amusing moments here. The driver of events is Moi pushing Kanshi to get a job so he can actually pay for his living expenses (he pisses away his allowance on kid stuff every month), and Kanshi not wanting to take that step into adulthood. And for the record, I get where both of them are coming from. Kanshi wants up taking a job in the “Otto-man” hero show at the amusement park – “popular with kids and moms (but not dads)”.

There were a couple of chuckles here. My initial take on the name was the gag that showed up at the end (I knew that pun could never be coincidental). But the main joke was the director doing a depressing relationship drama with the hero stuff being strictly window dressing. Otto-man’s enemies are called “Black Company”, and he gets dressed down by his boss for taking a long lunch to save the world. It’s cute, if a few minutes too long.

The second work debacle involves Kan’s side gig putting screws in zipper bags, which even for someone who isn’t a 15 year-old boy with the patience (and intellect) of a grasshopper has to be indescribably boring. Kanshi begs Nico to put a spell on him to make him faster, and ignores the warning label to choose the 10X package. As with most of Nico’s spells “Kwi-Kwick” turns out to be a bit of a disaster – the job is every bit as boring, and Kan can’t even talk to Moi and Nico (who are terrifyingly slow). Another okay concept that drags by the end. Hopefully next week we get back to the series’ A-game.