Awesome / Witch Hat Atelier

"Witness...one of the prettiest manga covers you will ever see..."

Specific Chapters

• Chapter 4: Coco faces an obstacle that she's practically doomed to fail by Agott, sending her off to a testing location despite the fact that she had nothing more than a few days of understanding with magic. She takes what little magic she knows and combines it with the lifetime of experience working under her mother and handling cloth to make a hang glider with its own wind-power that carries her over to the top.
• Chapter 12: The sister-apprentices showing up to save Agott and Coco from having memories erased.
• Chapter 17: Credit where it's due for Tartah. The moment Coco's fever spiked, he acted to cure her by working around his disability to identify medicines that, due to his colorblindness, he couldn't distinguish by color. First, he removed water from the liquid medicines, leaving behind the substances that were dissolved into them to narrow the medicine he needed down.
  • And when he hits a roadblock when the narrowed down medicines look identical, he and Coco come up with a magic that can reconstruct the powders into looking like their original form so he can use his memory to identify them.
• Chapter 20: When the group runs across a puzzle that requires stepping on the proper tile in order to advance without failing their test, Agott uses water to check where the tiles are broken and they pool so that they know where to go.
• Chapter 29: It turns out that while the girls' collective knowledge couldn't actually turn Euini back to normal, they did restore his mind. The Brimhat himself is actually impressed.
  • Richeh managed to create a Portal Door using the knowledge that gained from Euini and the others.
  • Coco managed to steal the Magical Accessory that can allow Euini to regain his human form.
• Chapter 34: In order to pass their next test, all the girls work together to create an elaborate picturesque scene. An Parroting Pouch guides the sage and several children to a narrow entrance that expands and leads them down to a chamber, revealing a sight that none of the children who'd lived under the sea had seen before: rain and the sunlight from the skies above (via Gate Parasols) that form a rainbow. It works wonderfully.
• Chapter 43: Tartah finds Custas at the mercy of a gang of contraption thieves. As a child against a group of adult men, he has no chance in a fight, so he uses quick thinking to trick the men into believing he's calling a witch over, managing to scare them off and save Custas.
• Chapter 45: After struggling to come up with a way to help Custas, Coco and Tartah end up coming up with a brilliant solution: a combination of a cloak, walking crutches, and levitation magic known as a wingcloak that allows Custas not only mobility but the ability to fly. It not only involves an impressive bit of mechanical trickery for two young kids to figure out, but Coco has the great idea to hide the levitation spell in the inner lining of the cloak in order to not break the rules. After seeing him struggle through out the volume, witnessing Custas take to the skies alongside Coco and Tartah is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
  Just look... and see. Find the shape the problems and difficulties around you take. Stare at them head on, and you'll find endless ways to solve them. There's an answer waiting to be fashioned. Every time.
• Chapter 63: Coco improvises a magical flamethrower to defend Estheath from the curtain leech mouths that were rushing his blind spot, having had only a moment to draw out a glyph and aim it (all while being carried over Quifrey's shoulder and flying through the air).

In General

"Just....breathtaking..."

"We ain't joking when we meant breathtaking."

• Shirahama's art in general, especially when it comes to her linework and panelling is just...Breathtaking.
  • Her landscapes and worldbuilding are notable to the point that, frequent comparisons with the likes of Studio Ghibli has become the norm. This is not surprising given the sheer amount of Ghibli Hills presented in her artwork that one can literally say, that reading WHA is the closest one can get to reading a modern Studio Ghibli film.
  • She is also unique in the sense that she is one of the few mangakas who use traditional etching in her linework, creating a vintage feel akin to Alice in Wonderland.
  • Her character designs especially when it comes to medieval-esque fashion should also be noted as being well...pretty to look at. The level of Pimped-Out Dresses is really eye-catching.
  • Moreover, her art style, specifically in terms of architecture and panelling design is heavily inspired by Art Nouveau, making it not just gorgeous to look at under an Art Nouveau lense, but also making WHA one of the few rare manga that utilises Art Nouveau as a stylistic choice as shown from the images on the right.
  • Last but not least. Shirahama's pannel art and panelling, in general, is second to none. The way her panels wrapped around each other, interact with the environment and the sheer artistry of some of the panel borders is to the point that, according to most fans, is a character in itself. Suffice to say, her panelling is Speaking in Panels on a completely different dimension as can be shown here.
    • Her panelling is so important for WHA storytelling that when unproven rumours of an anime came out in late October 2021, the WHA fandom was thrown in a mixture of excitement and cold-sweat, due to how unique her panel art is. The difficulty in incorporating Shirahama's panelling into animation is noted to be on the levels of adapting Berserk. Ergo, Witch Hat Atelier without the panelling is akin to Star Wars without the Force.
  • Shirahama pretty much outdid herself with the cover art of Volume 10 as shown above. Many fans adored the cover as the starry background not only resembles Vincent van Gogh's "The Starry Night", but it highly complements the colour palette of Ininia, who is already considered to have one of the prettiest character designs in WHA. So what happens when you mix the background of a beautiful set piece with a pretty character? One of the most stunning cover designs ever made in manga history.
  • Basically, if you want to see a small collection of WHA's artwork, this list shows a wide variety of absolutely gorgeous art pieces, with many more examples being found either in the manga, in promos or in the collector's editions itself. This includes:
    • A leather-bound artwork of Coco sleeping.◊
    • The Notre Dame promo.◊
    • The absolutely ''drippy'' 2021 New Year's celebration.◊
    • The 2022 Halloween artwork.◊
    • The absolutely mesmerizing July 2021 Morning Two cover art.◊
    • The heavily Art Nouveau-style French Collector's Edition for Volume 7.◊
    • The heavily Art Deco-inspired Reproduction Selection Art Book.◊
    • A very surrealist panelling on Chapter 8.◊
    • The absolutely insane nightmare panelling of Chapter 14.◊
    • The extensive double-spread page in the beginning of Chapter 20.◊
    • This wonderful dichotomous double-spread page of Chapter 38.◊
    • The ''first'' mind-trippy double-spread page of Chapter 47.◊
    • The ''second'' mind-trippy double-spread page of Chapter 47.◊
    • The ''third'' mind-trippy double-spread page of Chapter 47. Now in playable board game form!◊
• Shirahama herself is known to interact a lot with her fanbase and is known to complement and promote the artwork created by her fans. This is a lot more wholesome than say...what happened to Tite Kubo or Sui Ishida for example.

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