COCO AND AGOTT 🔛🔝!!!!!
seriously though this volume was so fucking good. Art and paneling gorgeous and creative as always, character designs were amazing, the overall story progressing well, and I loved Coco and Agott. Discussion of creative block was a easier to deal with topic that worked well with the backdrop plot that’s getting more serious—once again applauding this series for how seriously it takes children, and adults’ responsibility towards them. Great fucking volume!

Reread thoughts:
The conversation between Olruggio and Qifrey is a highlight from this volume. Even from the less serious side, I genuinely think it’s important that Olruggio was saying we shouldn’t make fun of them/it when he thought it was a young romance thing happening with Tartah and Coco (even if he was misinterpreting it). But yeah him saying it’s important be adults that they can come to, and that that requires *mutual* respect was great, and then built upon by Qifrey acknowledging that some things are really hard to talk about and confess to, and that it can be aided by someone asking you. Anyway the scenes where he wasn’t pressuring Tartah and Coco to tell him what was going on, but just said “hey, I’m here, I’ll help if you ask,” was indescribably good for just a few pages of content. It made me think of those times when someone in your life will just say something like “you seem a little tired what’s up,” or simply ask how you are when you’ve been going through it and it like instantly makes you wanna cry? Just for someone to ask, to see you, to care—especially when you never would’ve brought anything up yourself. Anyway maybe that’s just my personal experience but I think this volume speaks to the way that all relationships, and especially adults/
&children, truly benefit from attention and care. Taking the time to really notice how someone is acting, and ensuring that even if they’re not ready/willing to come to you yet for help, just letting them know they can & that you see them is so so important. Anyway imagine a world where adults listened and took the time to perceive children like this!!

I also really appreciated Tartah’s few scenes. Like many of these kids, he’s questioning so much of the world around him and I think, yet again, it’s such an important and powerful aspect of this series: giving credence to the struggles children encounter when their inherent sense of right and wrong is challenged by the reality of the world and the worldview of the adults around them. Tartah says “I’m full of doubts—doubts about the grown-ups and their lies, doubts about witches…how am I supposed to call someone ‘master’ if I don’t respect the decisions they make?” It’s a great question, Tartah! What *do* you do when the world doesn’t seem right and the adults are part of that system, yet you’re told to follow what the adults say? Even when many of the adults around him are ‘good ones,’ so to speak, who don’t agree with this system and are trying to protect the children in their care, they’re still stuck in it too. Anyway kudos and credits and applause for Shirahama bc I think quite genuinely one of the most difficult things about growing up/adolescence is this transition from accepting the world around you to the doubt and questioning of the ways things are and the adults upholding it—especially when there isn’t enough honesty about it between adults and children. 

The final pages of the volume switch from the present to a flashback with Olruggio, including some allusions to a past situation from his own youth. I thought this was a very intriguing note to end on, as it’s also referencing this concept of growing up and part of it being loss of innocence and he says “the power we’re asked to guard and conceal comes a crushing sense of responsibility and guilt.” While presumably different then the exact struggles Tartah is experiencing this clearly parallels Tartah’s questioning of the principles, specifically the divide of nonwitches/witches, the black & white rules regarding forbidden magic, and the rule specifically barring knowledge of magic from nonwitches. I also think the paneling of this specific monologue, while subtle, is doing a LOT. From left to right stands Custas, Innia, Tartah, Coco, Agott, Richeh, and Tetia. It’s separated into three panels, with Custas & Innia & Tartah mostly being in the left one. Coco on her own in the middle, and the remaining three witches on the right panel. I think this is clearly an allusion to Tartah, already ostracized because of his color blindness, moving pretty firmly into the politics if not yet actions of the brim hats; Coco (as always) is caught in the middle, and the remaining three witches arestill more confident in the way things are. Just thought this was an incredible touch. also it completely makes sense because this story has been showing us the inequity of this world, but it’s still great storytelling for the three on the right to not yet feel as against this system since they were raised in it and for the most part spared many of its harms and experienced many of its privileges. On the left, Innia is unknown except that she is a brim hat, but we know Custas grew up homeless and in poverty & is struggling with what’s going on with Dagda as well as his own, new disability; Tartah as mentioned has felt shoved out by witch society because of his own disability and has seriously been questioning the principles for some time, compounded by the experiences with Custas and frustration that the witch world won’t care about Custas and people like him. And of course, Coco, caught between the wonder of the magic she dreamt about but new to the rules that seem cruel, hurt the people around her, do and would hurt her, and of course might prevent her from ever saving her mother.