Witch Hat Atelier is one of the best shows of the spring 2026 season – a highly anticipated anime by fans who teased it as part of the Big 3 of fantasy anime alongside Delicious in Dungeon and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End. The show is set in a world where only a select few have the ability to use magic. Coco, a girl who accidentally comes across the secret to magic, ends up turning her mom to stone; she then becomes a witch apprentice with the goal of restoring her mother to life. It’s a visually dazzling anime with a complex world, and it’s also – surprisingly enough – the best English dub in years… for one particular reason.
Dubbing is the source of one of the oldest debates among anime fans. Does listening to a dub take away from the purity of the story? Are subs better than dubs? We’re not here to provide an answer to that age-old question. There are dubs that are considered not only legendary, but the best way to experience a show, like Cowboy Bebop or Fullmetal Alchemist; then there’s Witch Hat Atelier (review), a show that doesn’t just have a really great English dub, but actually uses the art of localization in order to enhance the world-building of the show. It does this by having each character speak with a European accent – that is, except for Coco.
In the world of Witch Hat Atelier, witches are a social class of their own – an elite group that excludes and looks down on outsiders. As soon as Coco learns the secret to magic, she is immediately ostracized by every witch she comes across.
When building the English dub, ADR Director Emily Fajardo decided to lean into the original manga’s European inspiration by using accents to highlight the different upbringings of the characters between witches and non-witches.
“There is a clear class divide. There are a lot of social differences between these groups of people, and I wanted that to be immediately audible, and accents are a very good quick way to do that,” Fajardo told IGN. “In English, we automatically associate different history and class structures with these sounds, and so Coco and all the outsiders that she lives with all have the standard American accent.”
Granted, this is far from the first anime to give its characters accents to showcase the variety of its characters. Shows like Black Lagoon used accents in order to highlight the international cast, while Metaphor: ReFantazio employed accents to illustrate its European-inspired fantasy setting. Given that Kamome Shirahama’s manga is already quite inspired by Lord of the Rings, as well as Renaissance art and Art Nouveau, it makes sense to further utilize the audience’s association of Europe with high fantasy to add to the show’s world.
But what makes this dub unique is that the accents not only make Witch Hat Atelier feel like a familiar fantasy world, but they enhance Coco’s journey. She is not only an audience surrogate as she enters the fresh and new world of magic; she is also a complete outsider, and she is treated as such by everyone she meets.
“When she first meets a witch, Coco feels like he’s from a different world, and when she goes to the atelier, she’s a fish out of water completely,” Fajardo added.
Indeed, throughout the first few episodes, Coco is alienated by the other witch apprentices she meets and constantly labeled an outsider. It is clear that this world does not look kindly on strangers, and having that magic world sound consistently and completely different from Coco further highlights that dynamic.
“This world is so completely new to Coco, and especially as we're starting the show,” said Anjali Kunapeneni, who voices Coco in the English dub. “She's reacting in many ways to the wonder and curiosity of being dropped into this incredible new experience. I personally have never felt so immersed in a show’s world before.”
The alienation from other witches all adds to Coco’s coming-of-age journey as she starts to become more confident in her abilities and the place she’s earned in the world of witches. Sure, there’s also the nefarious plot concerning how she got those powers… but that’s a story for another day. Ultimately, the English dub of Witch Hat Atelier is a fantastic example of how dubbing is more than just translating; it’s localizing, adapting. This is an excellent choice, as audiences are not just seeing characters act differently toward Coco, but genuinely sounding different from her and reacting to that difference.
It’s a production choice that also affects the entire story for as long as the show is on the air. It doesn’t matter how much Coco grows into her role, or how much magic she learns, or how good a witch she becomes; she will always sound different from the other witches. She will always be an outsider to them. For anyone who has had to move somewhere new or learn a new language, this makes Coco’s journey deeply relatable.
“It meshes into the otherness of the witches, like they are a part of something that Coco is not a part of,” Kunapeneni added. “There's like an invisible boundary between us. I think that kind of feeling might be more present than anything.”
Witch Hat Atelier is streaming on Crunchyroll.
