REVIEW: ‘Witch Hat Atelier’ Episode 3 – “The Dadah Range Test”

Witch Hat Atelier Episode 3 makes one thing abundantly and wonderfully clear: the premiere was no fluke. Produced by Bug Films and based on the gorgeous manga by writer and illustrator Kamome Shirahama, the adaptation is a lavish, detailed, and expressive take on this fantastical, deceptively cozy coming-of-age story.

As promised by the end of Episode 2, Coco (Rena Motomura), unknown to Qifrey (Natsuki Hanae), is about to find herself in a dangerous situation due to Agott’s (Hibiku Yamamura) animosity. While other series might see this challenge as an opportunity to drag out a training story, Witch Hat Atelier Episode 3 condenses it into a single 23-minute runtime. The effect is magnificent despite a stripped-down narrative, with Coco and her ingenuity driving the story as she works on her own with magic for the first time since the accident with her mother. 

While the bulk of the episode focuses on Coco’s personal journey and growth, we check in momentarily with Qifrey. This sequence further develops the story as we see him in the Great Hall speaking with another witch, Alaira (Kotono Mitsuishi), who seems to understand some of the true motives behind Qifrey’s decision to take the young girl in as an apprentice.

Witch Hat Atelier Episode 3, albeit subtly, draws the first parallel between Coco and Qifrey.

And it ties to the Brimmed Cap witches. It’s not a long scene, but the direction and use of spiral staircases and shadows elevate it, suggesting that there’s more to Qifrey than he’s presenting to his students while also highlighting Shirahama’s superb character designs. In Alaira’s eyes, Qifrey is the “problem child” of the Great Hall, an idea at odds with how he’s been depicted. The visit to the Great Hall, which resides on the sea floor, also shines a light on the stunning artistry of the settings, the animators ensuring each backdrop is packed with painstaking details. 

But the real story lies with Coco. Coco, who, under Agott’s suggestion, makes the seemingly terrible idea to set forth to try and accomplish the Consent of the Crown on the Dadah Range. It’s here that, if she’s able to collect a flower, she’s told she’ll be able to graduate to real apprentice status.

While she’s eager to prove herself, Coco also lacks the fundamental tools and experience, something Agott is banking on. For whatever reason, Agott isn’t too keen on Coco’s presence. And while she loans Coco the shoes that allow her flight, she later divulges that it’s all in the hopes of forcing Coco to leave. 

Coco speeds through a training arc in “The Dadah Range Test.”

The supporting character moments are interesting and help in fleshing out the world, but the spotlight is rightfully on Coco in Witch Hat Atelier Episode 3. Her fearlessness and ingenuity are on display as she enters the Dadah Range, realizing that the flower she seeks, red and furled like a crown, rests atop floating, sphere-shaped patches of earth.

We watch as she stumbles with the flight shoes, trying to make use of a tool she’s never had to use before. It’s, unsurprisingly, an arduous effort, even as she befriends a mystical creature, Brushbuddy (Misaki Kuno), who is a fantasy story requisite for any protagonist.

Despite the repetition of her attempts, Witch Hat Atelier Episode 3 never defaults to repetitive visuals or sequences. Instead, there’s some lovely, understated work that highlights the passage of time, the sky transforming from molten golds to royal blues, illuminated further by the body of water beneath. It casts an otherworldly glow on the story, perfectly in sync with a character who is in over her head, removed from her home, and forced to adapt, and quick, to a world of magic. 

Witch Hat Atelier allows stillness to tell as much of a story as the action. 

It’s so easy to overlook graceful animation these days in a genre dominated by loud, flashy styles and sakuga-dense work that almost seeks to dizzy the viewer, rather than allow them time to exist in the tactile world created simply. There’s a place for this method, but it can be over-relied on. There’s movement here, in Episode 3, but what makes it all click into place is that the story takes as much pains to depict stillness as it does motion. The scenes of Coco sitting in the boat and deliberating on how she approaches the challenge ahead are just as crucial to the story as the ones where she, later, races through the wind. 

It all speaks to the work the witches of these ateliers do, where magic is drawn, literally, rather than conjured. There’s tangible, methodical, even meditative attention to drawing the spells they’ll use. A practicality to their efforts is seen when Coco accidentally destroys Agott’s shoes; the spell is scrubbed off the bottom of the shoes. Everything has a purpose and a design, and by letting us sit with these revelations, it offers us a textured sense of running our hands over the spells themselves. 

And it makes the moment when Coco regains her confidence all the more powerful because we see how the forced solitude and the brainstorming propel her forward. In an added scene, Coco thinks back to working with her mother, the latter of whom showed her how to cut cloth with the roughened stone tool she defaulted to. The scene is warm yet melancholy and speaks to one of the series’ crucial thesis statements: we all learn differently, and it’s not so much about what you know as about how you use it to perform magic. 

Kamome Shirahama’s story understands that we all see and learn from the world differently. 

Coco doesn’t have Agott’s skills with using the shoes to fly, but she has the determined, practiced hand of a seamstress’s daughter. She’s a craftsperson, drawing magic in a way that speaks to her instincts and the love her mother guided her with. The flashback sequence is a nice reprieve, shifting more into Shirahama’s storybook style and transitioning to the present, drawing a literal line connecting the past to Coco’s current challenge through a spark of starlight. We create based on what we know. And what we create is built on the accumulation of minor yet transformative efforts.

With that history, she builds a magical glider and uses it to ascend to where the flowers reside. Witch Hat Atelier Episode 3 breaks into a breathtaking sequence here, as the sun rises and the world topples, in flux with the glider as water spills over the boat. 

From the flex of her hands to the way direction captures the kinetic ricochet of the boat, “The Dadah Range Test” in a few short sequences firmly declares the series one of the best of the year. Again. By adding another anime-only addition that has Coco having to try multiple times to grab the flower, further enforcing her tenacity and the idea that magic isn’t something you’re simply born with but something you have to work for, Witch Hat Atelier highlights its grandiose visuals while also doubling down on the astonishing storytelling. 

With brilliant visuals and an emotional story, Witch Hat Atelier Episode 3 triumphs. 

Coco passes the test by retrieving the flower. And while Agott is annoyed and Tetia and Qifrey are concerned, it still earns her a cloak and a pointed cap, a signifier of membership in Qifrey’s atelier. It also, in an ominous ending note, suggests why the Brimmed Caps might be interested in her innovative, reckless, and rough-around-the-edges use of magic.

The hierarchy of the world is still being established, and the series doesn’t seem too interested in a plain Chosen One narrative, but there’s no doubt that there’s some spark of Coco’s that either being stoked or sought for the sake of extinguishing. 

Witch Hat Atelier Episode 3 is more proof of the series’ seeming brilliance. The technical aspects are superb, and Rena Motomura is doing marvelous work as Coco. There’s the score from composer Yuka Kitamura, which blends classic fantastical motifs with a sense of urgency and whimsy. At the same time, Katsuya Oshima’s direction helps define the depth of the test Coco is taking. There’s not a single wrong note, and even still, there’s no doubt the series is capable of scaling even more tremendous heights. 

Witch Hat Atelier Episode 3 is available now on Crunchyroll. 

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