Burn the witch vol 1 by tite kubo

Noel and Ninny are witches and part of the Piper segment of the Wing Bind, a group of witches and wizards who are tasked with keeping dragons away from ordinary humans. Dragons are harmful to humans because humans have no magical abilities. Wing Bind, and most of the witches’ tasks, are in Reverse London, the opposite of Front London, where magic is much stronger and dragons more prevalent. One of the cases the witches get called for involves Noel’s admirer, Balgo. Balgo’s best friend turns into a dark dragon, which exist only to hurt people and destroy things. Being so close to a dragon for so long means Balgo has absorbed lots of dragon magic, and now he has to be watched by Noel and Ninny constantly. The three of them continue to take on cases involving dragons getting too close to humans, including one involving a girl Ninny knows, and an extremely powerful dragon that either influenced or was named from fairy tales.

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This series is exploring the greater world of Bleach, but I don’t thing readers necessarily need to be familiar with Bleach in order to read this story. Nonetheless, there is a LOT going on in this volume. Kubo exposes readers to a whole group and bureaucratic system within a few pages without much exposition. Noel is the calm, collected foil to Ninny’s explosive, fiery personality, but we don’t get much else in terms of character development of these two ladies. What does develop is the prominence of certain parts of Noel's body. In the first few chapters, Noel’s bust is not really prevalent, but as the story progresses, Noel's curves become even more pronounced, and there is more emphasis on her large chest in panels and in poses. Balgo is fairly obsessed with seeing Noel’s knickers at the beginning of the story, and it evolves into a persistent goal of getting swished by her bosom later in the volume. Aside from the problematic emphasis on Noel's body, this title suffers from just being too packed with disparate plot points that Kube tries to cram in to the story with little time to digest it all. 

Sara's Rating: 5/10
Suitability Level: Grades 10-12

This review was made possible with an advanced reader copy from the publisher through Net Galley.

Publisher: VIZ Media
Publication Date: October 19, 2021
ISBN: 9781974723591 (Paperback)

​Tags: Rating: 5/10, Suitability: High School, Manga, Supernatural, VIZ Media