Saturday, May 01, 2021

Manga Review: The Dawn of the Witch, Vol. 1 by Tatsuwo



Title: The Dawn of the Witch, Vol. 1
Series: The Dawn of the Witch
Author: Tatsuwo
Publisher: Kodansha Comics
Genres: Manga, Fantasy
Format: Ebook
Publication Date: March 23rd 2021
Pages: 194

Synopsis (Goodreads): Saybil is a magic student with no memories of his life before he met a mysterious silver-haired woman in an alley. Now he travels with his teacher, Loux -- another student, Holt, and the beastfallen Kudo for "special training"... but this field trip may not be as routine as it seems!

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My rating: 2.5 / 5 ★

The Dawn of the Witch follows the journey of Saybil, a rather dull magic student thanks to his memory less and expressionless face, who is on a quest for a special training. He is joined by a teacher, Loux, a seemingly non-threatening woman because of her childlike form, but is actually quite deadly, and two other students, Holt, a cheerful girl with huge...breasts, and Kudo, a human-sized lizard. After reading the somewhat negative reviews of this book, I decided to read it without any expectations.


Surprisingly, I quite liked the premise of the story. The main character, Saybil, may be a tad boring because he is unable to form any kind of expressions on his face, but I find the secret behind his past that caused his memory loss to be quite intriguing. It is also proved that he is not entirely emotionless, as there was a time where Holt noticed his hands shaking when they were in danger, although his face remained stoic. And another time when a betrayal takes place, Saybil forces himself to smile and accepts his fate, which I believe can be seen as a character growth, or perhaps his true emotions slowly emerging.


Despite having no problems with Saybil and the rest of the characters—Holt and Kudo appear to have dark pasts as well and it made me like them more—the main reason as to why I can only rate this book as 2.5 stars is because of the way the artwork was drawn. I admit that in some sense, the artwork is beautiful, BUT the way female characters were depicted is just too much. The characters were sexualised so unnecessarily that I find myself feeling disgusted almost throughout the whole story. Holt was drawn with breasts so big and her scenes were always drawn in a lewd way; her chest was always in the focus to the point I could not take her character seriously. Despite having a small body, almost resembling a child, Professor Loux was also sexualised. Her scenes were drawn from a low angle, just so that her underwear can be scene.


These extreme sexualisation to the female characters helped nothing in the plot, and it was absolutely unnecessary. Even though I find the plot to be acceptable and I am curious about what Saybil and his friends are going to face next, I do not think I will be able to continue this series. I just hate that the female characters are being made to be viewed as sexual objects.


Many thanks to Netgalley and Kodansha Comics for the e-copy of The Dawn of the Witch, Vol. 1 in exchange for my honest review.


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Till next time ♡ Love, Aishah Humaira'

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