Why bother with Harry Potter when you can watch Witch Hat Atelier?

The manga that the anime is based on is written and illustrated by Kamome Shirahama, a rare talent in the space whose detailed artwork and paneling are matched by equally meticulous storytelling. She got her start doing illustration work for Marvel, DC, and Star Wars comics before working on her first serialized work, Eniale & Dewiela. Unlike She Who Will Not Be Named, Shirahama is beloved by her fans for backing progressive causes like Palestinian freedom, supporting queer shipping fan art of her work, opposing militarization, and more.

As for the series itself, it often feels like a rebuttal to the most tired parts of Harry Potter, like the idea of “muggles” and wizards. In Witch Hat Atelier, anyone can use magic, and Shirahama’s storytelling is driven by an egalitarian dismissal of chosen ones with special powers. This isn’t an afterthought, but a clear subversion. At the beginning of her journey, Coco believes that magic works as it does in most fantasy tales, that it’s an intrinsic gift (if you’re worried about spoilers, this all plays out in the first episode). She finds out that this belief is a longstanding lie. Ages ago, a war fought with magic caused apocalyptic destruction. To prevent this from happening again, the surviving witches created a pact to hide that all you need to cast spells are paper, a special ink, and knowledge. This secret is still carefully guarded by an intelligentsia, who spread the myth that the average person can’t become a witch, and erase the memories of those who discover how spells work. While they maintain the lie to avoid another nightmarish conflict, and witches spend most of their time doing social work and helping people, there’s no denying that there’s a clear divide between those who can use magic and those who can’t.

That same difference between chosen wizards and regular smucks exists in Harry Potter, and is a topic of discussion in the story (for like, two seconds, at least), but Harry eventually decides to become a wizard cop who enforces this status quo. By contrast, Witch Hat Atelier meaningfully interrogates what it means for a certain group to wield this kind of power over everyone else. Eventually, Coco meets a disadvantaged kid whose life would be dramatically better if he could use magic, setting off an arc where she reckons with the witches’ big lie and whether it’s justified.

It’s not all heady subversions, either, because the series also commits to a cozy, welcoming vibe when things aren’t getting real. Unlike the nothing-blob Harry, Coco is a lively, likable, flawed protagonist who forms meaningful bonds with the other young girls at her school, as they meet a diverse cast that includes queer characters and people of color. Shirahama’s original art and the anime adaptation by Bug Films capture the wonder of magic, highlighting both the painstaking process of crafting these incantations and the spectacular results of these efforts. There are moments of childlike wonder alongside heavier explorations of misogyny and abuse. Like magic’s power to help or destroy, there’s a duality at play, and Shirahama dives into hefty topics without it feeling cheap. There’s also an animal sidekick who is simply a cute little guy, and not a weird, underexplored metaphor for slavery—there is not enough space here for Dobby discourse, so let’s leave it at that.

With the Harry Potter TV series dooming us to another tedious cycle of “separating the art from the artist” discourse—a framing that doesn’t hold much weight considering Rowling is very literally using her immense wealth from the series to disenfranchise trans people—there’s a much better alternative to this moral handwringing: watching Witch Hat Atelier. Instead of holding on to 1997, check out something new that has learned from the last 30 years of fantasy storytelling. After all, magic is all about the joy of discovery, something a rehash can never accomplish.