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Pick of the Week: Night Parades and Demon Schools

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SEAN: The thing that oddly interests me most this week is Black Night Parade. Hikaru Nakamura specializes for me in series with great ideas that tend to not hold up the longer they go on. But that means her Vol. 1s are always fantastic.

MICHELLE: I suppose I’ll vote for volume four of Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun. Maybe this’ll be the time I actually read it!

ASH: It’s a little early in the season for me for a manga that’s at least tangentially if not explicitly related to Christmas, but I do find it difficult to pass up Hikaru Nakamura, so Black Night Parade is my pick, too.

ANNA: Did you know that the sequel to Fourth Wing, Iron Flame is coming out this week too? It is not manga but that’s my pick!

A Misanthrope Teaches a Class for Demi-Humans, Vol. 1

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By Kurusu Natsume and Sai Izumi. Released in Japan as “Jingai Kyōshitsu no Ningen-girai Kyōshi: Hitoma-sensei, Watashi-tachi ni Ningen o Oshiete Kuremasu ka……?” by Media Factory. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Linda Liu.

Look, I appreciate a surprise as much as the next person. I love it when a book I thought was going to be one thing turns out to be something totally different. But sometimes there is also joy in picking something up because you know what it’s going to be, and have it be exactly that. This is one of those books. The plot description made it sound exactly like the Japanese sub-genre of “new teacher enters the lives of their students and changes them for the better”. Now, Hitoma is never going to come close to Onizuka, or even Kumiko Yamaguchi. But that’s OK, because these series live and die on the strength of their student cast, and these students are fun, and they do have one or two big surprises. It helps that we don’t have to deal with a huge cast herd. This is a school for demi-humans, and there’s only four in their “senior year”.

Hitoma is a man in his late twenties, and he’s been holed up in his family home ever since a traumatic experience when teaching led him to quit. But he spots an ad for a teacher at an all-girls school in the middle of nowhere in the mountains, with great pay and benefits. He arrives for the interview, and discovers the catch: this is a school for non-humans trying their best to become human. He’ll be in charge of the advanced class, which has upbeat mermaid girl Minazuki, teasing bird girl Haneda, sullen rabbit girl Usami, and shy wolf-girl Ohgami. Each have a wish that can only happen if they learn how to be human and graduate, and Hitoma is here to help them. That said, the graduation rate is very low…

As you might guess, there are individual chapters dedicated to each girl and her circumstances. Minazuki is descended from Poseidon, and really should be mermaid nobility, but wants to be a dancer. Ohgami has a different personality every full moon, one that is her polar opposite, and also is a reverse werewolf. Both sides have suicidal tendencies and a desire to sacrifice. As for Usami and Haneda, the spoiler is the point there, so I won’t go into detail. They’re all fun. As for Hitoma, “misanthrope” is not really all that accurate, “depressed” fits better. This does not stop him for earnestly helping all the girls – he’s a good teacher. (They tease him about teacher-student relationships, but he never rises to the bait – he IS a good teacher). Given the cover of the 2nd book has three different girls, I wondered if the entire cast would leave the series at the end of this volume. That’s not true, but it shows just how much everyone has grown that it’s totally plausible.

So yeah, Book 2 is the latest out in Japan, and as noted, there are different girls on the cover. I’ll be here for it, though. This is heartwarming and life-affirming, and I greatly enjoyed it.

Re: ZERO ~Starting Life in Another World~, Vol. 23

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By Tappei Nagatsuki and Shinichirou Otsuka. Released in Japan as “Re: Zero Kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu” by MF Bunko J. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Dale DeLucia.

Do you enjoy Re: Zero but feel that it’s gotten a bit too complacent? Are you upset that everyone now tends to get along and talk through their problems like reasonable adults? Do you miss the early volumes when flipping each page felt like crawling through broken glass? I have terrific news for you! Subaru’s lost his memories, and we’re starting all over from zero! , Now, to be fair to Subaru, he actually IS pretty good about things, at first. My worry was that he would immediately try to hide that he’ lost his memory and try to fake it, which absolutely would not work with this crowd. So he confesses right away. Sadly, he is unaware of Return by Death, but he very quickly finds out, and also very quickly leads to him realizing that someone keeps killing him. So he DOES then try to hide that he’s lost his memory. Which does not go well, because see above.

So yes, going back to the start of the book, Subaru has lost his entire memory of this world, thinking he just got here from Japan. He tells Emilia and Beatrice, who are clearly upset but are used to bullshit, so they cope as best they can. And Subaru is not the only one confessing secrets. “Anastasia” finally comes clean and decides to admit that she’s Echidna (no, not that Echidna, the other Echidna) and that she’s trying to save Anastasia before her life runs out. Unfortunately, as he wanders around trying to figure out what to do next, Subaru is pushed off a staircase to his death. At first thinking this was some sort of dream precognition, he makes another attempt to wobble through the same events… and suddenly finds half the cast also dead. As he realizes that this book just became a locked room mystery, Subaru reacts in a nostalgic way: by completely losing his shit and being 100% paranoid.

I admit, this book hurt to read and I wanted it to be over with as fast as possible. (It does help that it’s one of the shorter Re: Zero volumes to date.) I appreciate everyone’s character development, and seeing it removed it not ironic, it’s just mean. That said, this is very well done. Julius’s frustration, Rem’s furious disbelief, and Emilia’s unwavering love are all done incredibly well. The final scene with Emilia and Subaru is like a reward for the rest of the volume, and it will touch your heart. (Also, thank goodness that Re: Zero is one of those books that uses honorifics, because the moment Subaru says “Emilia-chan” when he’s trying to hide his memory loss you can see everyone go “WTF”.) And then there’s Meili, who spends half the book as a corpse but might get the most development of all, and whose backstory is both grotesque and a bit heartwarming, like most of the cast.

We end the volume with another death, but at least this time Subaru has decided, memories or no, to start fighting back. Which is good, as the culprit is clearly inside the house, and is also not any of the cast we see in this book. A great Re: Zero volume, despite the pain.

My Daughter Left the Nest and Returned an S-Rank Adventurer, Vol. 10

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By MOJIKAKIYA and toi8. Released in Japan as “Boukensha ni Naritai to Miyako ni Deteitta Musume ga S-Rank ni Natteta” by Earth Star Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Roy Nukia.

As I write this, we’re a little under halfway through the anime version of this series, which is quite enjoyable provided you don’t mid that it has the animation budget of one peanut. It’s clearly an advertisement for the books, which just wrapped up in Japan. Unfortunately, despite my saying in my review of 9 that 10 is the last, it turns out that I am wrong, and there’s another book on the way. That said, this definitely has the feeling of an epilogue, and I think that’s fine. Yes, one of the bad guys got away, but honestly I’m OK with ignoring him for now and concentrating entirely on everyone going back to Bel’s hometown and settling into in their new huge mansion to match all the daughters that Bel has accumulated throughout this series. And, of course, his new wife. As for Ange, well, she’s had a lot of dad lately, and believe it or not does love being an adventurer more, so she’s headed back to Orphen, with one extra team member.

We’re back in Turnera! There are lots of kids to play around with and train to hunt and fish. There’s Belgrieve and Satie, who are now married but honestly seem far too comfortable and passionless for others in their group, so a secret second wedding is decided on so we get a real love confession. And then there’s Mit. His mana is still an issue, and the best way to deal with it is to build a dungeon that uses the excess mana to spawn fiends that can then be killed by adventurers. Of course, the question is where to put a freshly built dungeon? Should it be Orphen, which has the guild and is used to this sort of thing? Or Bordeaux, which has been growing rapidly but could use a dungeon to become a city unto its own. Or… should it be Turnera? Can we really turn Bel’s sleepy village into a dungeon tourism industry?

There were some moments in this I really liked. I appreciated that it took Helvetica’s crush on Belgrieve seriously, and also that it was not something that she could just give up on when seeing Bel and Satie being all mild and sedate at each other. (Satie spends a lot of this book acting like a standard housewife, but given the last twenty years of her life before this, I’d say she’s due.) They needed to overtly love each other to make it easier for her to back off. I also liked Angelica telling Maria about her own demonic heritage. She’s not only come to terms with it, but is OK with being used as a guinea pig if it will mean helping to solve the problem. Though Maria doesn’t really believe her. There’s also a great short story at the end showing us how Angeline, Anessa and Miriam first teamed up, and how incredibly awkwardly things started off. It was sweet.

This series runs on good vibes, and if we get more of those in the finale, I’m find with it.

Sasaki and Peeps: Betrayals, Conspiracies, and Coups d’État! The Gripping Conclusion to the Otherworld Succession Battle ~Meanwhile, You Asked for It! It’s Time for a Slice-of-Life Episode in Modern Japan, but We Appear to Be on Hard Mode~

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By Buncololi and Kantoku. Released in Japan as “Sasaki to Pi-chan” by Media Factory. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Alice Prowse.

The joy of this series is the genre mashup, of course, but that can also make it very hard to take at times. When the author does a genre, they go all in. This means the fantasy world is filled with throne wars, elves, dragons, and last minute plot twists. The “psychic” part of the story involves people using powers to control others and create chaos all around them. It also veers into a sentai show here, and it’s very deliberate. The Neighbor Girl’s supernatural part is very much standard “death game”, even though she and her demonic partner don’t get to wipe out anyone this book. But Neighbor Girl (who we get a last name for at last – Kurosu) also brings another sub-genre to the plate, which is hideous abuse. That’s the “slice of life” in this volume’s subtitle, and it absolutely goes off the rails when she, Sasaki and Futarishizuka attend the wake from hell. This is getting an anime soon, and I imagine making this all cohere seamlessly will be a nightmare.

Sasaki has a lot on his plate. He’s attending the aforementioned wake, where we learn that apparently Neighbor Girl’s family has money, but also that literally everyone in the family despises her; he’s dealing with the aftermath of the sea monster from the last book, as he and Hoshizaki are almost lured to America with the promise of a ton of money, stopped only by their complete lack of English skills. An unknown enemy decided to mind control people into causing a riot near Hoshizaki’s apartment, presumably to do to it what they did with Sasaki’s old place; and there is, of course, the fantasy world, where it appears that the first prince has betrayed the nation and is collaborating with the enemy. Can he even find time to settle down and get some actual sleep? He can in the fantasy world, but certainly not in Japan.

I tend to go on about Neighbor Girl too much in these reviews, and her story vanishes after the first third of the book, so I will just note that that slap made me scream out loud, and also that she is a ticking time bomb that Sasaki is ignoring but Futarishizuka certainly isn’t. We do get to learn a lot more about Hoshizaki in this book, though I suspect she would not be happy with that fact. Unsurprisingly, at school she seems to have no friends and looks the stereotypical bookish nerd – her overly made up face on the job is the attempt to look “grown up”. Her younger sister straight up thinks her part-time job is sex work, and Sasaki has to reassure her while also giving nothing away about what the job actually is. She’s also clearly got a crush on Sasaki, but is sadly running a very distant third, behind Futarishizuka (easily the front runner) and Neighbor Girl.

This is a good book, and has an excellent plot twist near the end I did not expect. It’s also a book that rewards close character analysis, which I like. If you can put up with the occasional lolicon joke, it’s a definite winner. And it appears next book we’re adding aliens.

Manga the Week of 11/8/23

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SEAN: November is here, and all the manga that comes with it. This and December are always the big ones.

We start with Viz Media, who don’t have any debuts. But they do have Black Clover 33, Blue Box 7, The Elusive Samurai 9, Kubo Won’t Let Me Be Invisible 10, Like a Butterfly 3, My Hero Academia: Team-Up Missions 4, My Special One 4, One Piece 104, and Queen’s Quality 18.

ASH: I had somehow forgotten that One Piece had broken triple digits.

SEAN: Steamship debuts Revenge: Mrs. Wrong (Revenge – Kaedama Kon), which ran in Cheese!. A woman sends her sister out to substitute for her on dates when she can’t be bothered, but that’s going to change soon when the sister decides to get some of her own back.

Seven Seas has two debuts. Black Night Parade (Black Night Parade) is from the creator of Saint Young Men and Arakawa Under the Bridge. A man is kidnapped by a Santa who is in charge of all the naughty children, and now the man must work at his workshop. This runs in Ultra Jump.

ASH: Oh! I had missed that we were getting another Hikaru Nakamura manga! It sounds suitably ridiculous.

SEAN: My Pancreas Broke, But My Life Got Better (Suizou ga Kowaretara, Sukoshi Ikiyasuku Narimashita) is the latest autobiographical title from Nagata Kabi, detailing her attempts to give up alcohol entirely during COVID lockdown.

ASH: Heavy for sure, but likely worth checking out.

SEAN: Seven Seas is also releasing My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness: Special Edition, a deluxe hardcover with new cover art and a bonus chapter.

ASH: Wow!

SEAN: Also from Seven Seas: Classroom of the Elite 8, Let’s Buy the Land and Cultivate It in a Different World 5, Made in Abyss Official Anthology 5, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid: Fafnir the Recluse 3, My Girlfriend’s Child 3, No Longer Allowed In Another World 4, This Is Screwed Up, but I Was Reincarnated as a GIRL in Another World! 9, and Who Made Me a Princess 3.

One Peace Books has the 3rd manga volume of The Death Mage.

Kodansha has been listening to my whining a bit, and has fixed their calendar to be more obvious about print/digital releases. The print debut is Virgin Love (Shojo Koi. – Shojo no Shouko-san), a josei series about a 26-year-old virgin woman who moves into an experimental “singles” house to try to do something about that. This runs in the nearly unknown magazine Ar.

ANNA: Alright for josei!

ASH: Yes, indeed!

SEAN: Also in print: Am I Actually the Strongest? 5, The Darwin Incident 2, EDENS ZERO 25, I’m Standing on a Million Lives 16, L♥DK 23-24 (it got bumped), Lovely Muco! 3, The Moon on a Rainy Night 2, Noragami Omnibus 8, Peach Boy Riverside 13, The Seven Deadly Sins: Four Knights of the Apocalypse 10, Shangri-La Frontier 8, and Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun 4.

MICHELLE: I’m already so far behind on Iruma-kun!

SEAN: Digitally the debut is He’s Expecting (Hiyama Kentarou no Ninshin), a josei series from Be Love imagining a future where men can also give birth. Needless to say, the prejudices and stereotypes have not magically vanished.

ANNA: Even more josei!

ASH: Nice.

SEAN: Also digital: Blue Lock 22, Hitorijime My Hero 14, How to Grill Our Love 5, Life 9, Matcha Made in Heaven 7, My Unique Skill Makes Me OP even at Level 1 11, My Wife is a Little Intimidating 5, Piano Duo for the Left Hand 8, and Undead Girl Murder Farce 4.

Sorry, Kaiten Books, missed you last week: they have a digital release of The Bottom-Tier Baron’s Accidental Rise to the Top 3.

J-Novel Club has one digital debut, from the Heart imprint: Marriage, Divorce, and Beyond: The White Mage and Black Knight’s Romance Reignited (Saishō Hosa to Kurokishi no Keiyaku Kekkon to Rikon to Sonogo: Henkyō no Chi de Futari wa Fūfu o Yarinaosu). The Black Knight is the heroine, who has to get married to pass on her awesome Black Knight powers. There is a perfect match for her… but she does NOT want to marry a noble!

And we also see Back to the Battlefield: The Veteran Heroes Return to the Fray! 2, Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon: My Trusted Companions Tried to Kill Me, But Thanks to the Gift of an Unlimited Gacha I Got LVL 9999 Friends and Am Out For Revenge on My Former Party Members and the World 5, the 4th manga volume of Fushi no Kami: Rebuilding Civilization Starts With a Village, The Greatest Magician’s Ultimate Quest: I Woke from a 300 Year Slumber to a World of Disappointment 2, Karate Master Isekai 3, Magic Stone Gourmet: Eating Magical Power Made Me The Strongest 3, The Misfit of Demon King Academy 5, Peddler in Another World: I Can Go Back to My World Whenever I Want! 5, and A Royal Rebound: Forget My Ex-Fiancé, I’m Being Pampered by the Prince! 3 (the final volume).

ASH: Titles have so many words these days, it’s actually hard to tell how long that list actually is (or isn’t).

SEAN: Ghost Ship has an 8th volume of 2.5 Dimensional Seduction.

Dark Horse is bringing back a classic manga: Hellsing! This is a new edition with a different translation and a new design, but still 1-volume paperbacks.

ASH: Interesting.

SEAN: Airship has some print for you. Loner Life in Another World 7 and Reborn as a Space Mercenary: I Woke Up Piloting the Strongest Starship! 7.

And in early digital we get Disciple of the Lich: Or How I Was Cursed by the Gods and Dropped Into the Abyss! 6 and The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior 5.

Is that enough? There’s more coming soon.

Days with My Stepsister, Vol. 1

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By Ghost Mikawa and Hiten. Released in Japan as “Gimai Seikatsu” by MF Bunko J. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Eriko Sugita.

I’ve read two previous light novel series written by Ghost Mikawa, and I’ve enjoyed both of them. The author sort of has a type for his main character. Someone who’s a bit overly intellectual, very logical, tries to understand things and put them in boxes. The fun of My Friend’s Little Sister Has It In For Me is seeing this character try to deal with a love triangle that cannot simply be resolved by a game of addition and subtraction. With Looks Are All You Need, it was seeing the main character and his sister immersed in a ‘academy for the performing arts’ environment, and how to navigate an industry that requires emotional heft. This new series also has a very logical, matter of fact protagonist who tends to consult self-help books to understand people, and he now has to deal with his new stepsister, who is – seemingly – exactly the same. This shows a bit of promise, especially as we see the two are not as matter of fact as all that. Sadly, it’s not done well.

Yuuta lives alone with his father, as his parents got divorced after his mother was having an affair. He is thus rather startled that his father has decided to get married again. Even more surprising, he’ll be getting a stepsister in the deal, who judging by the photo the mom sent is a cute little kid. Of course, when they actually meet we find that the stepsister is in fact his age, and simply hates having her photo taken – that’s the one photo the mom had. Saki, though, turns out to want from this new relationship exactly what Yuuta wants – nothing. No requirements, no expectations. There will be no “big brother” names here. And honestly, this works out fine at first. But as the awkward, introverted Yuuta learns more about his new stepsibling, he ends up trying to help her anyway.

The big issue with this book is that the two leads tend to talk to each other like they’re reading out of an encyclopedia. There’s a scene where he walks by her room and sees her underwear drying (it’s raining that day), and gets embarrassed. The way the two resolve this feels like they’re not looking at each other, but reading out of a textbook. It’s meant to show us that both of them have been deeply wounded by the breakup of their parent’s first marriages, and how they have difficulty trusting others or getting close to people. In reality, it just makes me grind my teeth. Yuuta’s co-worker at the bookstore he part-times at, a college woman, is sadly exactly the same, so that doesn’t help. I was so happy when a happy, genki girl from their school came over to play video games with them, as it was a relief to hear someone with real human emotions out of control.

Still a fan of this author’s other series, but I have no desire to continue this one. Consider this review the essay I’m handing in to the author as to why I’m terminating our reading agreement for the foreseeable future, in a way that benefits both parties.

Combatants Will Be Dispatched!, Vol. 7

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By Natsume Akimoto and Kakao Lanthanum. Released in Japan as “Sentouin, Hakenshimasu!” by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Noboru Akimoto.

It’s been over two years since the last volume of this series came out in English, but honestly this one doesn’t take too long to get back into the swing of things. There’s rarely a lot you have to remember with Combatants Will Be Dispatched! except for the one maxim “everyone is horrible”. If you remember that, you’re good. So we have Six saying that he needs to sexually harass a woman just in case doesn’t know what sexual harassment is when bad men do it, Alice and Six gleefully sending their “colleagues” all around the world and not bothering to bring them back, and a new nation where a new princess competes to see if she can have as black a heart as Tillis seems to. Oh yes, and as the cover might tell you, we also have Belial, one of Six’s three bosses, whose idea of how to solve a problem is “punch it”, but whose backstory comes as a big surprise to both Alice and the reader.

After the events of the last book, Six and company are enjoying a bit of downtime while they work on building their new city. This downtime is occasionally interrupted by Little Bashin, who is a native tribe girl who can’t speak the language… supposedly (we may have another chuuni here) and a large dragon which is too much for everyone to handle, except maybe Belial, who is asked to to come over to help out Six. She then proceeds to make her way across all the nations, cowing them into submission with sheer firepower and blackmail, and unites most everyone under the Kisaragi banner. Which… makes you wonder about the competency of Six and Alice. Was brute force the answer all along? That said, they have one problem that can’t quite be solved by punching it: Tiger Man has kidnapped a nation’s princess. Who is a little girl. And it’s Tiger Man. Uh oh.

So yes, the usual word of warning for this series, pedophilia is used as a joke for “hilarious” laughs, though the little princess is not in any danger herself and in fact asked to be kidnapped. That said, everyone being a terrible person is the vibe here, and if you enjoy that there’s a lot to like. Six is a terrible person, but he’s smarter than Kazuma, and Alice is smarter than both of them. The Belial focus is appreciated, as is her backstory, where it reveals she was a yamato nadesico sort who Lilith’s enhancements “accidentally” brainwashed/mindwiped, though it’s fairly clear by the end of the book that she remembers who she was but is not particularly inclined to return to that. The main question is what happens now, as Belial has pretty much finished 95% of their “to do” list.

Expect another long wait before we find out, as the eighth book is not out in Japan yet. If you like KonoSuba but wish everyone was scuzzier, this is still your go-to series.

Formerly, the Fallen Daughter of the Duke, Vol. 4

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By Ichibu Saki, Nemusuke, and Ushio Shirotori. Released in Japan as “Moto, Ochikobore Koushaku Reijou desu” by Mag Garden Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Andrew Schubauer.

Last time I said that this series remained OK, and that I hoped the fourth book was the final one. And it certainly FEELS like a final book. All the plotlines are wrapped up. The bad guys are taken care of. Our heroine is ready to marry her love once they are of age. And yet in the afterword we’re told that the author hopes to write more adventures of Claire and Vik after the wedding. So, I will admit, I do appreciate the fact that a romance book does not have to end with a marriage or end just because the characters may have aged past the series’ market. That said, I admit my reaction to seeing this news was “oh hell no”. There’s nothing hideously wrong with this book aside from an odd disconnect I’ll get to. But there are too many fallen duke’s daughters out there for me to care about this one, who is pleasant but oh so dull.

Things are going well for Claire, aside from a few hiccups. Charlotte is still missing after the events of the last book, and seems to have completely vanished from the entire country. Moreover, the magical tornado that forced her to time loop is still on its way, and she wants to make sure her magic is strong enough that she won’t exhaust it and trigger the same thing happening. She’s even, with Vik’s help, able to get her old dream job back of being Isabella’s governess. Unfortunately, she gets an invitation from Prince Gilbert, who is prince of a neighboring country, to come visit. Just her. Not her fiance. Suspicious. She goes, with Lui at her side as her bodyguard/attendant, and finds that Prince Gilbert is nothing whatsoever like what everyone thought of him. She also finds something even more annoying – Charlotte.

Getting the really obvious spoiler out of the way (I feel no shame, the author doesn’t try to hide it), Gilbert ALSO is a Japanese isekai. He’s not a gamer, but his sister was, and drilled into him her favorite route. Unfortunately, her favorite route is Claire’s. Even more unfortunately, all the other routes seem to lead to everyone in his kingdom being killed. This actually DID catch my interest, and could have led to some interesting things going on. Unfortunately, Chaire’s somewhat… unique relationship with the source (her memories of Japan are muddled and mostly come in dreams) and her desire to not tell her dear friends they’re fictional mean that resolving this by just saying “stop treating me like an NPC” isn’t happening. Meaning we get a lot of tedious “comedy” as Gilbert tries to woo Claire by hitting game flags only to fail over and over.

I did like the epilogue showing us Charlotte’s final fate. Assuming it is her final fate. Certainly, I’m perfectly happy leaving the Formerly Fallen Daughter here, even if there are later adventures.

Pick of the Week: Cats, Thats, and Witch Hats

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MICHELLE: 1000% My Cat Is Such a Weirdo. I mean, how could I not?

SEAN: Still can’t resist a heroine called Princess That, so I’m going with Third Loop: The Nameless Princess and the Cruel Emperor for my pick.

ANNA: My pick is Witch Hat Atelier Kitchen it sounds so amazingly random.

ASH: I’m with Anna this week! As soon as I was reminded that Witch Hat Atelier Kitchen existed, I made sure that I had a pre-order in place.