One of Flying Witch’s greatest strengths is having witches live in modern society around the world be loosely secretive and not quite as publicized. The first and last chapter of Flying Witch volume 7 emphasizes this, to hilarious effect, where Makoto ends up attending a night festival with people who know she’s a witch and Makoto has to get interviewed by a reporter until she’s not thanks to monkeys monkeying around.
Yes, monkeys will “coincidentally” monkey around in your van near a hot spring.
Makoto continues to discover the mysteries around Aomori, as, in addition to what she deals with above, she ends up discovering that mandrakes aren’t always a loud (or ugly) plant, and that she might not want to go to the fish market often. Meanwhile, when not drinking her day away, Akane ends up embarking on a quest to find the concoction to break Inukai’s curse, and this one may involve her having to “destroy” a mountain to do so. But will Inukai even want to break the curse despite hoping that Akane would break the curse? The reason why this could even be a thing is way more shocking than could be expected.
After getting to the end of this volume, I was sad that it ended, and volume 8 isn’t coming until next year. The wait to see what everyone’s up to is gonna be tough, and six chapters felt far too short. That’s likely because each one was funny and quite nice. Think my favorite moment out of all them (aside from the reporter one) was when Makoto explained what it’s like to do magic vs enhancements, and putting that to practice when using an enhancement to get Akane out of her drunken stupor.
Even moments where Chinatsu’s racing after an actually adorable mandrake was really good. There’s a nice amount of variety in the chapters and art that’s great to read, and an explanation on when the world is ready to learn about witches caps volume 7. Obviously the tone from the start of this series has been pretty chill regarding who knows about witches and who doesn’t, but as Akira explains to Makoto in the hot spring where the witches stand on it, they might be aiming to do so eventually. It’s just not now though, as one reporter ended up finding out by plain bad luck. Or…was it?
Flying Witch has been a great delight in every volume, and it’s no surprise it’s still fun to see what Makoto and the crew’s up to even after this long wait. Maybe next time Akane will actually listen to what people tell her to (she won’t), and also next time no one will turn diamonds into dessert. I mean you can sell them for lots of cash…