Ichi the Witch Review

Magic in this world is not learned, it is caught. Majiks are creatures, a witch's spell list is whatever she has hunted and taken, and only women have ever been able to hold one. Ichi was abandoned on a mountain as a small child and survived by hunting anything that gave off bloodlust, which is how he blunders into a fight between the Abyssal Witch Desscaras and the King Majik Uroro and walks out carrying Uroro's magic in a body that should not hold it.

Nishi builds the hunts as puzzles. Every Majik gets a behaviour, a habitat and a weakness, all stated before they matter, so a fight is won by preparation and by working out what the animal wants, not by a new technique. The larger quarries are set pieces with terrain and weather in them. Usazaki, who drew Act-Age, gives the whole thing weight: heavy blacks, real anatomy under the coats, creature designs that look evolved rather than styled.

The cost is a lead who is mostly appetite and instinct, funny but thin, and a World-Hater prophecy hanging over the plot that the series has not yet made anyone care about. Nine volumes, a Next Manga Award and fourth place in Kono Manga ga Sugoi, and the hunting is still the reason to read it.