Maebashi Witches

In the city of Maebashi, Yuina Akagi is a free-spirited high school girl with a hobby of buying trendy clothes online and taking photos of her life's highlights. One day, a talking frog suddenly speaks to her, sees in her the potential to become a witch, and transports her to the Witch-Verse. There, the frog introduces Yuina to four other girls he has recruited—the cheerful Choco Mitsumata; the composed Kyouka Kitahara; the easygoing Mai Kamiizumi; and the short-fused Azu Niisato who is apprehensive of Yuina's arrival.

Despite the initial clash of personalities, the five girls aim to become true witches. To achieve that goal, they must grant people's wishes in the real world through music—the most efficient conduit for channeling magic. As Yuina learns to control her newfound powers, her journey into a magical life helping others will be far more vibrant than any photo her camera can ever hope to capture.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Niisato, Azu Main

Sakikawa, Hinano Japanese

Akagi, Yuina Main

Kasuga, Sakura Japanese

Kitahara, Kyouka Main

Motomura, Rena Japanese

Mitsumata, Choco Main

Minami, Haruka Japanese

Kamiizumi, Mai Main

Momose, Honami Japanese

Keroppe Main

Sugita, Tomokazu Japanese

Mitsuba, Rinko Supporting

Touyama, Nao Japanese

Yuina's Mother Supporting

Takeuchi, Emiko Japanese

Witch of Enlightenment Supporting

Kuwashima, Houko Japanese

Nene Supporting

Hieda, Nene Japanese

Yamamoto, Junichi Director

Nagasaki, Yukio Sound Director

Yoshida, Erika Script, Series Composition

Terada, Mitsuo Theme Song Lyrics

Reviews

Jun 22, 2025

Marinate1016

Recommended

Well-written

Sunrise have once again given us an amazing group of girls to fall in love with. This time it’s a mix of two of my favorite things, idols and magical girls and man, what an experience this was. Maebashi witches is definitely one of those shows you need to push through to be rewarded with an amazing ending. It started kind of rough, I wasn’t really a fan of any of the girls until about episode 4-5 and actively hated one of them(Azu) until about episode 7, but I’m glad I stuck it out because I really fell in love with the cast and ... the story got very good down the stretch. Pound for pound this has to be the most underrated show of the entire season and I promise it’s much better than the scores suggest. If you like idols, magical girls or cute girls doing cute things with good character development and some mature topics being covered, you’ll have a blast here. I definitely did.

As a lover of magical girls and idols, seeing them blended together in this series was awesome. The girls using idol performances to grant wishes for people is a nice touch and I generally liked the quality of the performances as well. Most importantly though, the story and cast were top notch here. What separates this from Sunrise’s other much more famous idol series, Love Live, is how dark they were willing to go in this. We have topics covered from abusive relationships, emotionally absent parents, poverty, grooming all the way to weight insecurity. A few of the character backstories really caught me by surprise and seeing all the struggles the girls are going through or have been through, made me appreciate the smiles they put on every week. I think this show’s message can be summed up quite simply with “you never know what someone’s going through, so be kind.” All the girls are dealing with really stressful situations, but their time at the cafe training to be witches and helping others is like the one time of day when they can get their minds off of things and just be themselves. They have their issues and fights, but when they realize how much everyone’s been through they all become much more understanding and I liked seeing them work to help each other with their issues. Burdens get a lot lighter if we all share some of the load!

Another thing that I both love and hate here is how flawed the characters are. Usually in idol shows, the characters are like tropes personified. There’s no real lasting consequences of their actions and things are just rainbows all the time. In MBW, the girls often do dumb things that made me roll my eyes or get annoyed, but then I think about the individual character’s age and their backstory and I’m like “yea, that’s something a teenager would possibly do”. People do dumb things and mess up all the time, it’s how you grow from those mistakes that define you and usually this show used those failures as learning experiences for the girls. It’s much more entertaining watching characters who aren’t perfect, embrace that and try to make the most out of their situations than cartoonishly perfect situations where everything just gets resolved perfectly.

Now we can’t talk about an idol show without talking about the music. Like I said, this is a mix of magical girls and idols so music isn’t the primary focus here. However, the girls use music to grant wishes so every wish granting sequence has a musical number. I enjoyed all of them, but most were quite short other than the last few episodes(Eiko’s, Choco etc), the outfits are cute, the 3DCGI is good and the lyrics are solid. The regular art and animation in this show are great. I’m a big fan of how bright and colorful everything is. The character designs are gorgeous and the voice acting performances in here are awesome too. Several of the emotional scenes were made even better thanks to great seiyuu performances. An all around very solid production.

Even though I had my problems with a couple members of the cast, I really fell in love with these girls after a while and it hurt so much when this ended. This ended up becoming one of my favorite shows of the season and I really hope sunrise continue to expand on this franchise. It would be a really nice secondary idol franchise to run adjacent to LL. Maebashi Witches, we will miss you. If you like idols, magical girls and yuri teasing, please check this out!

Maebashi witches gets 8 wishes out of 10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jun 24, 2025

Kirumin

Recommended

disclaimer: my technical review in this part might be bad take but ill keep it genuine on real talk part based on my viewing experience on this anime

mahou shoujos x idols is rare breed and both of these genres are my favorites so i wont miss watching it, the animation is good too mixing 2D and 3D though they only switch to 3D when performing STILL they stick to shiny/glowy beautiful animations, even their character designs are beautiful themselves, their personalities were shockingly unique 1st of a kind individuals in anime history its like real personalities of a real person

real talk:

story is simple they help ... people grants their wishes so they can become witch themselves thats all ngl deep down i was expecting atleast a fight scenes since they have magic powers but they didn't in fact they are leaning towards on emotional support which is very modern and tranquillity way of dealing problems , now for the best part in this show was DRAMA and DIALOGUE, the drama was legit rollercoaster in this anime that it made me think " huh? is this gonna be a plot twist?" while dialogue is so casual, so casual that it was refreshing and entertaining to hear their conversation its like im watching sss gridman all over again but only girls version lol,

anyways in short everything on this anime was literally modern aesthetic while added a bit of fantasy to spice their plot?

btw also gonna review their songs and choreography since its idol, tbh it was ok i guess? songs sometimes hit or miss to me while their choreography was nah pass


P.S tbh i dont know how to review this anime so i was thinking of skipping it but it was a good show so i had to even if bad way of explaining it so.... my bad in advance

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Jun 22, 2025

KANLen09

Mixed Feelings

Maebashi Witches — an "idol" show with no strings attached to similar counterparts. How You Like Dat?

I'm just going to be frank with you: the feeling of sometimes having to play Devil's Advocate on some shows that the minority will think are "the greatest thing in the world," but which are sold in a genre that the masses will generally skip, is these kinds of unintentional Freudian slips that expose quite the fanbase that those shows are marketed towards, and let's be fair here: they work out for the most part. This is most certainly the case with Sunrise's newest non-"Idol-based" series, Maebashi Witches, a ... not-so-Love Life!-esque series that's all about being regional witches to help people solve their problems, no matter how major or minor the issues can be.

If you're wondering why the "minority" here would speak up and give praises to "idol" shows like this, bear in mind that Maebashi Witches, despite having Sunrise's smooth flair of animation to boot, is both down to people's biased generalization that "all-girl song-based anime are all idol shows" and how that perception led people to believe that the series is marketed towards people who love idols and the like, which has always been a myth to begin with.

In actuality, the Gunma Prefecture-based capital city blend with the Mahou Shoujo element brings about this in a coming-of-age fashion, though all is not what it seems when the series progresses on to a different radical. And if you're wondering even further, yes, it's the 5 central girls of the group of Maebashi Witches, featuring the vibrant-but-annoying Yuina Akagi, the hard-headed fashionista Azu Niisato, the caring, level-headed Kyouka Kitahara, the optimistic nickname meister Choco Mitsumata, and last but not least, the carefree Mai Kamiizumi, alongside the Sergeant Keroro-esque Keroppe. Their central control of operations in the comfort of a magical flower shop where anyone can come in and have their worries known sets the stage where the 5 girls can parade their customers with magic, music, and mayhem that's filled with the caresses of the broken human heart, all in one place.

The Maebashi Witches are rowdy, but you get to know them well through the daily grind, which allows the new Mahou Shoujo witches to grow through their experiences, which are mostly cookie-cutter. It's marketed in such a way to get you rooted to each and every one of them, and while it's not bad, it's the absence of the story plot that, while it can be interpreted as lacklustre, instead gives an opportunity to shine in an open-ended way for the writers to know what values they want to bring into the anime, which can be rather mediocre for the most part, trying to wait for "something" to act.

Alas, if "idol" shows like this are not your cup of tea, the show certainly doesn't try to alienate itself from the minority of the devoted fans, because all the annoying aspects, from how the characters act to even the songs themselves, feel like talents are wasted just to market to hardcore Love Live!-esque fans. And it's very noticeable at that.

That being said, Sunrise (or, more appropriately, Bandai Namco Filmworks) certainly has given more flair to the shows they produce, and Maebashi Witches is no different for the most part. Directed by Junichi Yamamoto alongside veteran scriptwriter Erika Yoshida, it's the latter's writing that'll speak volumes to those who love this show to pieces, and I'll acknowledge that her writing is definitely better than expected, especially during the final moments of the series. Even the OST reeks of that of an idol show with the rather catchy OP and a slower, but still upbeat song for the ED, from the VAs of the Maebashi Witches themselves.

At the end of the day, I know that I'm probably going to undersell the show as just your typical idol-inspired garbage (fact-speaking for the majority here), but the underlying truth is that Maebashi Witches is a show that wears its heart on its sleeve and depicts it as such, which, while there's not much going for it, has a poignant theme of (the power of) friendship and acceptance that you'll only come across every once in a while, and its execution can be a hit or miss.

So...feel free to flame me, I guess? Maebashi Witches isn't bad, but it was a journey of highs and lows to thoroughly accept it in its various forms of enjoyment.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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