OK, I need to cover a witch manga that's as traditional as you can get with witches. Broomsticks, pointed hats, magic, the whole nine yards! And one that's actually good!
Thankfully, Studio Trigger provided us with something that fits the bill perfectly
LITTLE WITCH ACADEMIA (Ritoru Witchi Akademia), based on the original series by Studio Trigger and Yoh Yoshinari, with art by Keisuke Sato. First published in 2016 and first published in North America in 2018.
PLOT:
Ever since she was a little girl, Atsuko "Akko" Kagari admired the witch Shiny Chariot and yearned to be a witch just like her. She even went so far as to apply to the same school Shiny Chariot attended: Luna Nova Academy. The problem is that every other girl there is a witch born and raised, while Akko struggles with the basics and knows nothing of the witching world. Nonetheless, she manages to make some friends while having some wild adventures of her own.
STORY:
There's a lot of anime and manga that have taken the Harry Potter formula and ran with it. You know how it goes: seemingly ordinary kid goes to magic school, makes friends (or a harem in the hornier ones), has struggles with bullies, goes on adventures, etc. It's been done to the point of tedium, but Little Witch Academia feels like the best and purest distillation of the formula. At the very least, it's one you can enjoy without the TERF-y baggage of its inspiration.
Alas, I can't speak to how this works as an adaptation because I have only seen the original Little Witch Academia OVA (I know, I know! I'll get to it eventually!) and this is an adaptation of the anime. That said, it's not a 1-to-1 adaptation, as Keisuke Sato notes at the afterword that he mixed in his own original stories alongside those from the show. Luckily for him, LWA is based on a formula that's very accommodating for original material and it's novel to find an adaptation in this day and age that's willing to be more than just the source material slapped on the page frame for frame.
It's hard not to love Akko. She has big shonen protagonist energy. She's not very bright, stubborn as a mule, extremely energetic, kind of childish, and prone to wandering into trouble, but she's also good at winning over rivals and making friends (particularly with others who are as equally oddball as her). In Akko's case, she's got the straightlaced, nervous Lotte and the sly, snarky Sucy to balance out her personality and try to manage the chaos that follows in her wake. The rest of the cast are fairly archetypical: a tough girl, a haughty rich girl, the fat kid who thinks only of food, etc., but most of them get at least a moment to demonstrate a bit more depth.
What I really admire is how organically the show writers weave in the beginnings of a larger plot among all of Akko's antics. While the kids are getting into trouble, the teachers talk amongst themselves of darker forces gathering and stealing notable artifacts. It's only when they do so that more clever readers might realize how odd it is that Akko and her friends keep running into powerful magical objects in out-of-the-way places and maybe start to connect some things. I have to imagine it's a damn good narrative hook for the anime viewers because combined with everything else it's certainly effective here at making me want to read more.
ART:
Keisuke Sato is a fairly new mangaka whose body of work mostly consists of isekai LN adaptations, but damn if he doesn't have a knack for translating the look of a Studio Trigger anime to the page! Not only did he capture the charm of Yoh Yoshinari's original character designs, but he draws them in a way that evokes the squash and stretch of animation (mostly with Akko and her reactions). It's a very high-energy style that works perfectly with the material, particularly the comedy, and the panels are laid out in a way to match without devolving into visual chaos. It's just a visually appealing manga all over, and that's something I can seldom say for anime-to-manga adaptations.
RATING:
This manga is published by Yen Press. This series is complete in Japan with 3 volumes available. All 3 were released and are currently in print.
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