WITCH HAT ATELIER S1 E10 Review: A Night of Healing
While Coco recovers, Qifrey fights a fire, and shop assistant Tartah plays an unexpected role.
What are witches good for if you can't order them around?
Witch Hat Atelier S1 E10
The first season debuted in April 2026; the first nine episodes are now streaming on Crunchyroll, available in both Japanese (with subtitles) and English. Episode 10 debuts Monday, June 1. Subsequent episodes will debut every Monday. I've seen the first 10 episodes.
In my review of Episode 9, I covered my favorable reaction to the first eight episodes, and the season as a whole to that point. Young Coco joins an atelier, becoming an apprentice to witch Qifrey, with the goal of becoming a witch herself so she can help her dear mother, who was petrified due to an inadvertent spell cast by naive Coco.
Episode 9 began a new arc in the narrative, going deeper into Coco's memories and Qifrey's genuine desire to help his three apprentices. It concluded with Coco needing medical attention after she fell sick, and Qifrey rushing her into town.
Episode 10, which will debut on Monday, June 1, starts with Qifrey and Coco arriving at the town's hospital. Mostly, it seems, she needs rest, and is feeling better when Qifrey is called into service by townspeople after a fire breaks out. Coco assures Qifrey that she'll be fine without him and urges him to go help people; after all, she says, that's what witches are for, isn't it?
With Qifrey gone and Coco asleep, the perspective changes to Tartah, the assistant in his grandfather Nolnao's magical stationary shop. Tartah saw a flash of great light in Episode 8, and wondered whether Qifrey was somehow involved. (Tartah doesn't know that the flash of light was caused when Qifrey wiped Nolnao's memory clean.)
Searching for answers through town, Tartah decides to cross a river on a ferry to get more information, but is rebuffed because his destination is reserved for witches and their apprentices. Tartah owns an apprentice's hat, but left it at the hospital when he visited Coco.
Retracing his steps, Tartah finds that Coco has gotten sicker and is now asking for medicine. With the hospital's personnel called away to fight the fire, Tartah wants to help, but discovers that none of the medicine bottles in the room are labeled! Since he suffers from Silverwash -- a rare, congenital eye condition that causes a person to see everything with a silvery, greyscale sheen rather than in normal colors, according to the show's mythology -- he must come up with some way to distinguish one medicine from the other, and find the correct medicine for Coco's condition.
Tartah's deductive reasoning is fascinating to watch, but the whole thing turns out to be a red herring. Still, the episode serves to advance the story: Coco and Tartah become closer friends, and Coco inadvertently discovers something that she thinks will enable her to eventually heal her mother.
The episode's main storyline concludes on a positive note, but the stinger re-opens more sinister possibilities for the next episode.
All images: ©Kamome Shirahama/KODANSHA/ Witch Hat Atelier Committee.
