Qifrey Appears in Witch Hat Atelier Anime’s Visual - While the Witch Hat Atelier anime will only be premiering in 2026 following its delay, a bit of new promotional content has been released this year. Originally revealed at the ongoing New York Comic Con, it takes the form of a “welcome visual” depicting protagonist Coco and the magician Qifrey.
Witch Hat Atelier is based on the fantasy manga by Kamome Shirahama, where village girl Coco embarks on the path to being a witch after an encounter with the traveling Qifrey. The manga began in 2016 in Monthly Morning Two and will get its 15th volume on November 21, 2025 JST.
The delay of the anime, which has Ayumu Watanabe (Summer Time Rendering, Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko, Children of the Sea) as director and Bug Films as the animation production studio, was announced in September. Signs emerged earlier, when Watanabe and Bug Films producer and representative director Hiroaki Kojima spoke about balancing the production’s creative intentions with its “constraints” in a 2024 interview with Anime Trending. “Of course, the staff and I want to keep pushing the status quo and benchmark till the very end, but again, it’s going to be a battle against the schedule,” Kojima said.
Crunchyroll has licensed the Witch Hat Atelier anime. The show was announced in 2022. Witch Hat Atelier also has a spin-off manga titled Tongari Boushi no Kitchen by Hiromi Sato, which began in 2019.
Synopsis
In a world where everyone takes wonders like magic spells and dragons for granted, Coco is a girl with a simple dream: she wants to be a witch. But everybody knows magicians are born, not made, and Coco was not born with a gift for magic. Resigned to her un-magical life, Coco is about to give up on her dream to become a witch until the day she meets Qifrey, a mysterious, traveling magician. After secretly seeing Qifrey perform magic in a way she’s never seen before, Coco soon learns what everybody “knows” might not be the truth, and discovers that her magical dream may not be as far away as it may seem.
