Maebashi Witches – Episode 1

What’s it about? Welcome to Maebashi City, Gunma, home to Akagi Yuina. Life is pretty normal until one day, a mysterious frog named Keroppe shows up and asks her if she wants to become a witch, launching her into a dream come true as she finds her magical groove and helps improve the lives of everyone in her city.

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I’m a sucker for magical girls and always will be. As a child, I dreamed of racing around Japan as a member of the Tokyo Mew Mew crew or soaring through the skies as a member of W.I.T.C.H. or the fairies of Winx. Magical girls were a deeply formative part of my ethics, personality, and continue to inspire me to make mundane magic of my own through kindness.

So it makes perfect sense that I picked this premiere, especially once I found out these were magical girl singers. And boy howdy, do they sing, but first: we’ve got to explore everything before they hit us with the best anime girl boss song of 2025. Ready to transform your life with the Maebashi Witches? Well, you better be because here they come! (Along with my review!)

Episode 1, “What’s Wrong With the Status Quo?!” starts us in the titular city of Maebashi, tucked in Gunma, with a group of girls that become the type of magical girl capable of blooming into whoever they want to be. Enter the Witch-verse, a place of life-changing magic that feels like a happy marriage of Infinity Nikki and Pretty Cure, complete with bubbly colors and a bit of slapstick comedy.

But being a witch isn’t all fun and games: we have to go back to the beginning to find out how protagonist Yuina got to this point.

Yuina’s life is pretty normal: she’s a kid like any other kid, living in a more rustic part of Japan above her family’s manju shop. She likes fashion, wants to become trendy, and yearns for a bit more. That “more” comes in the form of an green-eyed orange frog named Keroppe, who promises Yuina the “killer-max-vibe” of becoming a magical girl alongside multiple other girls who crave a bit more from their existences.

However, the path to witchdom is lined with trials: namely, Yuina and her new friends have to open up a shop and earn thousands of points before they’ll be able to wield magic freely. Together, our cast of five girls they’ll have to combine all their skills to make a wish, open a shop, and manifest their dreams.

I’ve got to admit that Maebashi Witches charmed me pretty instantly. Yuina is such a prime example of a teen girl who just wants life to be like, twenty percent more exciting, and when she meets her gaggle of magical girl friends, she really gets to start down the path to capturing that special excitement so many of us yearn for. The same goes for the wider cast that accompanies Yuina in her sudden hop, skip, and leap into being a magical girl.

This also pairs well with the shop concept: not only are our witches well, teen witches, they’re also charged with helping others, starting with Eiko, a young woman who is coping with fears about her future and the expectations heaped upon her by her parents. Things go as you expect with her, of course, because these witches aren’t a team yet: they’re just five girls who happen to be brought together under a common-enough cause. Still, I found this enticing enough to make this watch engaging, especially when it got into the tasty feminist tidbits that hint at more depth than may meet the eye.

Maebashi Witches seems to be going the way of a coming-of-age story where magic is the vehicle to personal freedom, rather than device to harm young women. I say that because in many ways, this premiere reminded me of the specific feelings I got from Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Wonder Egg Priority. It’s a story about girlhood and finding yourself. I just hope it doesn’t turn viewers into unwitting voyeurs watching the breakdown of its cast of young women. While those plot twists can be very emotionally effective and certainly evoke a reaction, I’m tired of seeing girls and young women tortured for the sake of creating an “interesting” plot. They get enough of that in reality: there’s so many more fascinating ways to grow into your own in fiction that don’t involve being bludgeoned by the plot.

I also like the fact that their magic manifests in the form of them singing: it feels especially playful given the upbeat nature of this premiere. Admittedly, it’s the weakest part because it doesn’t feel quite cohesive, but I imagine that’ll change as this anime-original story finds its footing and brings the team together for more songs and more emotional healing, especially if it’s a pop rock ballad about bucking the status quo.

I ultimately liked this show: it feels just grounded enough in reality that I found each character we meet in the premiere interesting for one reason or another. It’s nice to see teen girls get a chance to be themselves: hopefully, their magical skills will further examine who they are, who they want to be, and who they have the power to become.