Ichi The Witch - Tumblr Posts
I haven't been able to stop thinking about Ichi the Witch all day for one specific reason:
I have no idea how the title could have been better translated
The Japanese title is Madan no Ichi (魔男のイチ), where Madan is a clear play on Majo (魔女), which effectively translates to "magic woman." This makes Madan "magic man," which as far as I can find isn't a word in Japanese at all
The intention is obviously that Ichi is a male witch, but there is no term for male witch in English that quite captures how unheard of this concept is in context. We could call him a warlock or a wizard, but if the idea is that men can't use magic at all, then having those terms doesn't make sense in the first place, they're contextually impossible
We could call him "witch boy" or "witch man," but that's inelegant at best and just kinda stupid at worst. You can't call him a "Witcher," cus that's copyrighted. You could use the original Old English term for witch, wicce, and go with the masculine wicca, but calling the series Ichi the Wicca both carries a lot of strong religious connotations and still fails to capture the feeling of uniqueness within the setting
The funniest thing about this line of thought, though, is that you just know there was a point where the translator was sitting at their desk, head in hands, surrounded by crumpled-up papers on the floor that all had the word "MANWITCH" scribbled over in red ink a thousand times
osamu nishi's career has been slowly trying to boil the frog to see how much crossdressing she can put in a manga before people start to ask questions. currently ichi the witch seems to be setting up for a crossdressing-based power set for the protagonist, breaking new ground entirely
lchi the witch
I was really surprised at how good this was. I showed some real heart. The only thing that I do not like is that only women can be witches, and the main character, Ichi, is one in a billion in this world. I do love the idea of a dude that lives in the woods and hunts beasts that kill humans or to eat (great rules for this character) I hope to see more of what it means for this world to have a male witch and that he may be the most powerful they have seen so far, will he use the magic or will it be a tool for a specific kind of hunting.