Holiday Review: THE WITCH AND THE BEAST

 But that's enough of high fantasy.  Let's wrap up this subject with some urban fantasy aimed at an older audience.

THE WITCH AND THE BEAST (Majo to Yajuu), by Kousuke Satake.  First published in 2016 and first published in North America in 2020.

PLOT:

Ashaf and Guideau are a strange pair.  One is a mage who works on behalf of a mysterious organization.  The other is a monster trapped inside the body of a slender young woman.  Together they will hunt down witches one by one until they can find the one that cursed Guideau in the first place to make her remove it.

STORY:

Reading The Witch and the Beast feels like getting plopped into the middle of some C-tier supernatural novel series.  You know, the sort you only pick up at places like airports, thrift shops, or your grandma's shelves.  It's strange because there's plenty of exposition about who these people are and what's going on but it's delivered so slowly and so clumsily that for a while the reader is left to infer what's going on.

It doesn't help that Satake doesn't give the main duo much in the way of personality.  Ashaf is aloof, Guideau is mad, and when they are not battling witches they snipe at one another.  There's no chemistry of any sort between these two, which makes it hard to root for them.  In fairness, nobody in this book has any sort of personality, be they witch or mere bystander so that absence doesn't stand out as badly as you might think.

Satake can't even seem to muster up much enthusiasm for the witches' wicked plots.  There's a fair bit of surreal imagery and quite a bit of blood, smoke, and explosions, but it's little more than sound and fury signifying nothing.  There's just so many elements here that feel like they should work but there's just not enough energy or interest to get the reader invested.

ART:

The cover art would suggest a dark, elegant looking series, but what you get inside is far different.  Satake's linework is much more rugged.  There's a touch of elegance to the character designs, but the effect is spoiled by their dead-looking eyes.  They do redeem themselves a bit when it comes to the fights, though.  Satake is really good at drawing effects: smoke, magic, flower petals, and other such things.  He's also good at using perspective and speedlines to create the illusion of perspective and dynamic action.  

RATING:

The Witch and the Beast compares itself to xxxHolic and Noragami on the back cover.  While there's touches of both in the premise, this series has neither the atmosphere of the former nor the charming characters of the latter.  All it can offer is some murky, bloody action and a lot of sour characters talking of underwhelming plans to the interest of no one in particular.  If you want a fantasy series in a modern setting, you're better off keeping up with The Ancient Magus's Bride and its spin-offs.

This series is published by Kodansha Comics.  This series is ongoing in Japan with 7 volumes available.  3 volumes have been published and are currently in print.

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