The Spring 2023 Manga Guide

The Witch and the Knight Will Survive

What's It About? 

Agredios, the son of a local landowner, arrives home from a long hunt...only to find his village silent and devoid of its usual laughter and commotion. What he discovers is an unimaginable agony that sparks a desire to avenge his fallen people by slaying the witch of the forbidden woods. But is the witch truly as vile as rumors say? A new quest begins: to discover the truth, save lives, and survive.

The Witch and the Knight Will Survive is written by Dai Chikamoto with art by Gonbe Shinkawa, with English translation by John Thomas Neal and lettering: Muhammad Arbash Mughal. Yen Press will release its first volume both digitally and physically on April 18.

Is It Worth Reading?

Christopher Farris

Rating:

The Witch and the Knight Will Survive's style as a collection of contrasts comes through quickly, anyway. The art presents a detailed storybook vibe up-front, only a couple pages before its dark undercurrents fully come through and main man Agredios is speedrunning the ol' "whole village killed" RPG opening. A "Fairy Tale" in the extremely old-school styling, it would seem, complete with our hero's jump to violent retribution on the witch he blames for the mass tragedy. It's all detail and acceleration that plays to the manga's artistic strengths, as Gonbe Shinkawa feels just at home on those lavishly detailed setting illustrations as on large-paneled action shots staggered across pages. It makes the shifts between the gentle and the gritty feel that much more effortless, tone-wise.

However, the other gulfs might not come off as well-realized, and purposeful as they may be. The contrast between Agredios and Ganancetia, the titular witch, can be amusing. There's something to be said for the way her innocence is made clear and she almost immediately settles into her role as kind of a scroungy little weirdo, the art and presentation embracing her oddball placement seemingly to undercut any lingering darkness in the premise. You aren't going to get a better illustration of this manga's contrast than Ganancetia doing a funny-awkward scene where she sleeps smooshed between two cute moppets while Agredios slumps against the wall and despairs out in the hallway.

The thing is, as the opening is moved past and The Witch and the Knight Will Survive settles in for what seems like it's going to be a "town rebuilding and management" sort of story, it can really only hang onto those flashes of character weirdness for flavor. Agredios seeming to get over much of his initial angst leaves him as someone who…sure is existing for the plot to orbit around. I do like his sibling dynamic with his sister Griamelda introduced halfway through. And around then we start to get a handle on the order of operations of exactly what happened with the village and why they're on their own as far as resources go. But it can be kind of an awkward zig-zag of a thing getting there, and I almost wonder if The Witch and the Knight Will Survive would have done better in this opening volume to focus on the first few characters relationships and its propensity for strongly portrayed fights. Otherwise, you will come away with an understanding of where this story is meant to be going, and it looks nice all the way through. But that insistence on contrasts means it just feels indecisive and unconfident in how it gets that all out there.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

There is more going on in The Witch and the Knight Survive than is readily apparent in this volume. At least, that's my assumption based on the progression of events. When eponymous knight Agredios finds his entire village dead of mysterious causes, his first assumption is that it's the fault of the fabled witch, Cedia. But when he confronts her, he realizes that couldn't be further from the truth. Later, when his small group of survivors takes in refugees from a different town fleeing from monster attacks, he starts to wonder. But his questioning doesn't go far enough. By the end of the book, it appears that Agredios and his fellows have been laboring under a burden of very deliberate propaganda about their area. And, gee – what organization has a spotty history with women they vilify as "witches"…?

What this book does well is building up the sense that something is a lot more wrong than Agredios initially assumes. Although his sister, also a knight, is a bit more aware, she had been living in the capital before their hometown's demise. It implied that she had to sneak out to reach him and would not be allowed back in. The arrival of the family from another town also implies that what's going on isn't isolated to Agredios' village. Since he found Cedia barely half a day's walk into the forest, the thought of her involvement in their troubles did not even occur to him. Although Cedia is weird, can use magic, and has zero interpersonal skills, none of those traits add up to a blanket label of "evil".

It's very likely that this is simply the prologue to the actual plot. That's not to say that nothing happens here, because quite a bit does; it just doesn't feel like the main event. There are plenty of hints that could add up to something very interesting. They're backed up by busy art that can be tough to understand at times. Ultimately, it does provide a nice, gritty, dark fantasy feel. Cedia's oddness and attempts at humor don't quite fit well with the rest of the story. There are also a few things that are never addressed, like going through the houses of the dead to look for supplies, which sounds like a no-brainer. Nonetheless, I think this is worth a second volume.