October 5 Anime Premieres: Witch Love Potion and Goblin Rebirth
Monday brings two very different fantasy premieres to Crunchyroll. Hello, I am a Witch and my Crush Wants me to Make a Love Potion! and So What’s Wrong with Getting Reborn as a Goblin? both debut today, October 5.
The heartbreak witch
Diomedea’s Hello, I am a Witch is a romance built on a cruel premise. Rose, a lone witch living quietly by a lake, is asked by the knight she secretly loves to brew a love potion for another woman. She cannot refuse, so she treasures the fleeting hours they spend gathering ingredients together, dreading the day the potion is finished. It is a small story with a sharp hook, and the kind of shojo adjacent fantasy that tends to find a devoted audience rather than a huge one.
The eighty year goblin
BAKKKA’s So What’s Wrong with Getting Reborn as a Goblin? takes the reincarnation formula and hands the hero the worst possible body. Office worker Akira Yagami dies saving a child and wakes up as a goblin, a creature that normally lives seven days. A unique skill stretches that to eighty years, and a meeting with the Archfiend grants him the power to make anyone he defeats permanently loyal. It is an army building story from the bottom of the food chain, closer to Re:Monster than to the usual overpowered hero template.
Both premieres were confirmed in the fall lineup reported by Animation World Network.
My take: The witch story has the better premise and the goblin story has the better ceiling. I would watch the first episode of both and keep whichever one hurts more.
