Since the unceremonious end of his long-running manga series, Bleach, creator Tite Kubo has been quiet, but that changed in 2020 with his new title, Burn The Witch. Following on from a brief one-shot first published in 2018, Kubo extended Burn the Witch into a new series, with a four-chapter limited run in August 2020. Fans of Kubo’s work will find a lot of familiar ideas here, both for better and for worse.

Burn the Witch is set in London–or more precisely, Reverse London, the tails to Front London’s heads. Reverse London is a Harry Potter-esque world of witches, wizards, and most importantly, dragons. Dragons are revealed to have been the cause of most of humanity’s ills, although Kubo uses the term far more liberally than most fans of Western fantasy are familiar with. Dragons who spend much time in proximity with non-magical humans will begin to absorb their negative emotions, transforming them into Dark Dragons that wreak havoc across the land. And, since Reverse London maps one-to-one with Front London, any buildings destroyed there are also destroyed on the other side, without any possible explanation there. Only licensed witches and wizards are allowed to interact with dragons to minimize this risk, and those in the Wing Bind are responsible for handling any incidents involving dragons, regardless of which side they’re on.

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The main characters are two young women named Noel Niihashi and Ninny Spangcole, lower-ranked members of Wing Bind who often wind up assigned menial tasks like harvesting buds and grapes from friendlier dragons. Ninny, who was a pop idol in Front London, is eager for a promotion, while Noel simply sees it as a job to make money. They’re also tasked with looking out for the “Dragonclad” Balgo, a boy who spent enough time in proximity to dragons that they’re now just drawn to him wherever he goes. A dozen or so other characters also come up, but haven’t had much time on the page or impact on the plot.

Bleach fans may be feeling a bit of deja vu as they read through the above. Monsters that only some people can see, which a secret force with otherworldly powers must deal with, lest they disrupt the goings-on of the normal world? It’s essentially the same premise as Bleach. Many of the characters ring familiar as well, like Noel and Ninny’s boss, Billy Banx, who comes across a lot like Bleach‘s Kisuke Urahara. A council of many high-ranking witches and wizards, each of whom leads a team, is also shown, as is common for Kubo and his preference for designing characters first and figuring out what to do with them later.

There is, of course, an explanation offered for all this: it’s revealed in the last few pages of the original one-shot that “Wing Bind” is in fact the Western Branch of Bleach‘s Soul Society, and implied that these “Dragons” are really the same Hollows that the Soul Society is set to destroy. Whether the fact that Burn the Witch was secretly a spin-off changes anything is hard to say; fans of Bleach will get a new work set in that universe, and one that offers a very different point of view on that world to boot. Those who disliked Bleach are unlikely to be swayed by the new setting since so many of Kubo’s idiosyncrasies are at play once again. And for those without experience with Kubo? At just four chapters, it’s worth giving it a try. While it’s known the series will continue, there’s been no indication as of when, so there’s no better time to get caught up than now.

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Carlyle Edmundson
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Carlyle Edmundson is a news and features writer with an affinity for science fiction and fantasy. He graduated from the University of North Carolina Wilmington with a BS in Film Studies and is glad that it’s relevant to his work. A lifelong fan of anime and manga, he has attended dozens of conventions over the years and may or may not have cosplayed at them. He is also the author of the Dystopian Detective series, available from most places ebooks are sold.

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