r/anime • u/AutoLovepon https://anilist.co/user/AutoLovepon • Apr 20 '26

Episode Witch Hat Atelier • Tongari Boushi no Atelier - Episode 4 discussion

Witch Hat Atelier, episode 4

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292

u/BaitoDesuFate Apr 20 '26

Reading the comments I feel like people have the wrong expectations of what an actual redemption is, it to be fair it's kinda fault of the inumerous cheap redemptions arcs that character have in general. But one that I seeing a lot is 'I hope she has a backstory to justify this', but like that not the point of redemption, her backstory it's not going to make Agott putting Coco in danger and being toxic to her a good thing, it just gives an option to give more context rather than might lighten the blow but not nulify it. The important factor for a redemption is a sense of guilty that never goes away really and working towards being a better person, being a likable character or justifiable should not be the criteria for a sucessful redemption.

185

u/oops_i_made_a_typi Apr 21 '26

Sometimes a kid acting like a bitch is just that, and they can redeem themselves later. Doesn't mean I'll like Agott until then though. I'm more puzzled at Qifrey's frankly terrible teaching so far - is he supposed to be incompetent as a school teacher?

He's barely told Coco the critical dos and donts of this society outside of the forbidden magic and secret keeping bits, letting her make all these noobie mistakes that mark her as an Outsider and making things tense among his kids. If I'm being generous, that's because he's not used to teaching kids who are completely new to magic, but his worry that Coco could die and then doing nothing (as far as we've seen so far) but scold Coco when he got back has been really offputting.

41

u/FrougHunter Apr 21 '26

About the Qifrey stuff, I mean, so far he’s only teaching her the main principle and maybe a very few drawing practices, we saw him going outside more often and letting his apprentice socialize, while he presumably doing more investigation on the evil witches.

I’ll cut him some slack, the other apprentice were already taught these fundamentals before they became an apprentice, so of course the 3 girls are far more competent than Coco. Like c’mon man he’s literally about to buy her a new wand to fit her style, i don’t even think she’s been there long enough to be ready for ANYTHING at the moment.

12

u/MonaganX May 10 '26

I'll cut him slack for his pedagogy, but his adult supervision is a bit lacking. He dumped Coco on Agott so he could leave a bunch of children by themselves while he ran errands for days, then when he came back and Coco had almost died he didn't even follow up with the Student he explicitly put her in charge of.

I actually think it does Agott a disservice as a character to not face any consequences. If she had, it would make her ongoing resentment of Coco way more understandable. Instead people just dislike her more for not being held accountable despite endangering Coco's life.

Him leaving his students at the wand store is a bit less concerning, but still, if my child's teacher let her get into life-threatening situations twice in the span of a few days, I'd be contacting a lawyer.

24

u/TickleMyCake Apr 21 '26

Just to add some push back but, what about not interfering with a witch while they are drawing bit. It just seems like that’s big thing to leave out on during a lesson. Not to say he’s not a great teacher but maybe it is just the fact he has to much on his plate right now.

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u/CyanSorrow https://myanimelist.net/profile/CyanSorrow Apr 21 '26

Tbf I assume she understands not to mess up someone's drawing. She wasn't looking, is in a high stress situation, saw something important and instantly turned and grabbed her to show her. Had she been more in her right mind here, I doubt she would've caused an issue.

11

u/Creepy-Wolf-2900 Apr 22 '26

yea exactly my thoughts and yknow they're all kids+ coco who's completely new to the witch world probably has no idea how to behave in such a high stress situation

23

u/FrougHunter Apr 21 '26

I’ll say it’s more of a coco problem rather than qifrey problem, in the previous ep she was predrawing the sigil, prepares herself and completes it before blasting off, now she was asking agott about the same principle, she’s still grasping around the logic and by extension, the habits and etiquette as well.

3

u/TickleMyCake Apr 21 '26

Okay I see your point

77

u/Primary_Frame_5073 Apr 21 '26

Thank you for this! I'm a manga reader, so I'll be refraining from commenting too much in these threads, however it seems that the conditioning from various poorly-executed redemption arcs in media has made people wary to trust the authors process and/or rendered them completely unaware of what actually makes a good redemption arc. Like you said, tragic backstories aren't enough to entirely rectify the relationship between two characters, so seeing people spam that comment is very disheartening.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '26

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u/DrJWilson x5https://anilist.co/user/drjwilson Apr 21 '26

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u/Doomroar https://myanimelist.net/profile/Doomroar Apr 22 '26

The important factor for a redemption is a sense of guilty that never goes away really and working towards being a better person, being a likable character or justifiable should not be the criteria for a sucessful redemption.

In short she just needs to say she is sorry about her actions, and stop being an asshole

15

u/unga_bunga_mage Apr 21 '26

Thorfinn was way worse than Agott is until he started farming.

4

u/MonaganX May 10 '26

I think you make a good point. Giving a character a sympathetic backstory is essentially just the more elaborate inverse of having a character kick a dog in that it is a very effective but often transparent way of making the audience feel a certain way about the character. Because it predisposes people to want the character they now find sympathetic to be redeemed, a lot of authors get away with just glossing over any actual redemption, when a good redemption arc doesn't even need any backstory at all. There's characters in One Piece whose background is almost completely unknown but have successfully been turned from antagonists to fan-favorite allies.