As many of you may know, I’ve come to manga and its cousins a bit later in life, so a huge part of my reading is back catalog. Which is 100% awesome and I’ve not only discovered some great series but also great series that are finished, which means I don’t have to wait months on cliffhangers for the next installment. (Looking at you Given. And Perfect World.)

That doesn’t mean, however, that I’m not reading the new stuff as well, and I’ll admit to a little swell of pride when I get in on the ground floor of something I think is going to prove really excellent. Some of these books are digital first, but until someone comes up with a tablet big enough for me to be able to read text and view an entire comic page at the same time (yes, I am an old, I’m fine with it), I’m an analog girl and I’m careful to avoid spoilers, so I’m fresh going into new releases like Kousuke Satake’s The Witch and the Beast from Kodansha (October 27, 2020).

Prepare yourself for something that’s going to be more rave than review, because I really, really liked this book.

The Rundown

Guideau is a very angry young woman with fangs, a rose tattoo on her neck, and feral eyes. Asaf is an extremely polite man who goes almost everywhere with a coffin strapped to his back.

They are a seemingly mismatched pair of witch hunters.

Why are they hunting witches? Well, I’m not going to ruin the story for you, but they each have their reasons – and those reasons are personal enough to justify their intense methods and even Guideau’s lack of regard for innocent bystanders.

And just wait until you see the damage they can do on vacation…

The Review

As you might have surmised from the title, The Witch and the Beast is a reimagining of Beauty and the Beast, a story that was one of my favorites as a child but one I found more and more problematic as I grew older, learned about Stockholm Syndrome, and started to wonder why Belle had to get married instead of having her own goddamned library.

So let me tell you how I feel about the beast being, to a very large extent, at the mercy of the beauty in this book…

I love it! The Witch and the Beast  is absolutely, positively, no question my new favorite version of this fairy tale. Don’t bother trying to change my mind. It’s not happening.

I love that the women in this story have so much power. They can fight. They wield extremely powerful magic without blinking. They can conjure massive creatures and burn cities. They can save lives or take them.

And while our “heroes” are very certain all witches are evil, the readers – who are privy to the witches’ point of view – aren’t entirely sure the world of men didn’t have it coming. Asaf might be willing to pause and listen, but Guideau isn’t; she’ll maim, tear, and kill other people for what they are without pausing for even a moment to find out who they are, which means she is as morally gray as her targets.

Kousuke has matched this message with the art in their book; there is a lot more shading and many, many more shades and tones of gray in The Witch and the Beast than there are in a typical manga. The lines aren’t as clean and the shapes aren’t as well defined. These are deliberate decisions that create a much more fitting world for these particular characters to inhabit than the usual sharp, clean, duochrome style would.

The only very, extremely slight… complaint is too strong a word… vague whine? I have about Vol. 1 is that there are a few places both between issues and within issues where the story feels disjointed – as though a plot detail were missing or there’s been a time slip during which some important action has happened and the reader hasn’t been made aware. I’m not sure if those spots are meant to build suspense or if they’re translation-related misalignments or continuity slides. As I said, they were significant enough for me to notice but not even close to being problematic enough to kick me out of the narrative so…. minor peeve at most.

If you’re looking for a nice, dark, juicy story to get you through the early evenings, The Witch and the Beast is an excellent choice. I’ve already preordered the rest of the collected volumes, and I can’t wait for them to arrive.