Journal with witch may be the best anime airing this season

17 Feb, 2026

This is, I confess, a bit of a bold statement, because I haven't been trying many animes from this Winter 2026 season. But Journal with witch has been making me feel a lot of things so far, so I hope you'll bear with me. I've been bursting at the seams with the craving to write this post with each episode I've been watching for weeks, and I'm glad I'm doing it now.

Based on a manga by Tomoko Yamashita, Journal with witch is, in short, a really striking case study of grief, communication, and the complicated feelings around your family. It focuses on Asa, a young girl who's about to enter high school, as both her parents die in a car accident; and her aunt Makio, who decides to take her in. While her extended family has overall been pretty shitty toward Asa's inability to process this loss, Makio gives her the time and space to mourn on her own terms.

To be honest, I believe the English title is a bit deceptive here, because there is no magic whatsoever: the series is extremely realistic, in all the right ways. The original title, Ikoku Nikki, translates to "Journal of a foreign country", and metaphorically depicts Asa venturing - notably by journaling her feelings - into the barren country that is grief, but also into the new life she builds with an aunt she barely knows.

The narrative here could feel pretty typical: a teenager is sent to live with their odd distant relative (all the more, a certified Weird Aunt) and gets some coming-of-age about grief from whatever strange things happens there.
Except this series isn't that. There aren't any big adventure here. No: Journal with witch is slow, introspective, and character-driven. It's really about two family members dealing with loss, and their everyday life.

And to be honest, they're both such well-written characters.

The main characters

(Seriously, some of Asa and Makio's outfits just make me so happy in how good they are)

Makio, the aunt, is a 35-year-old novelist that is explicitly neurodivergent (we'll get back to that), and... I don't know. She's such a relatable adult mess to me: bad with people and social formalities, stuck in a situationship limbo with her ex-boyfriend¹, a bit rough around the edges but caring in the ways that matter. Her relationship with Asa's deceased mother Minori is particularly prominent: Minori was the perfect picture of success and normality in her family, and she never stopped criticizing Makio's life choices and general non-normative way of functioning in life - so much so that Makio still has flashes of her sister berating her for all of her decisions, even with her gone.

It's fascinating to see Makio hold such contempt for her sister, such anger, as she tried time and again to carve her own way of living. It feels really important to see her state out her general disinterest in any kind of traditional, rigid family structure. And it is all the more striking to see her dealing with these feelings while also really wanting to offer Asa a place the young girl needs to grieve. After all, Makio doesn't want to imprint her biased opinion of her sister onto that sister's own daughter, even when Asa desperately needs things to remember and understand who her mother had been.

And Asa is also a wonderful character. Because, she's fine, you know? She's lost her parents, but she doesn't really feel like crying. She's tired of everyone making it feel like it's a big deal. It doesn't really feel real; and it doesn't really feel like she genuinely knew who they were anyway. So she just... sleeps a lot. She keeps on living.
But sometimes, she realizes how much she's been imitating her mother in her way of scolding Makio for "not being able to do what everyone can do". Or, she thinks back on how her mother told her she could do anything she wanted, while always offhandedly judging her life choices. And she feels anger. And sadness. And incomprehension.

So Makio, despite her general inability to tolerate other people for very long in her own space, does her best to help. She never feels like she is doing much, because she is afraid of taking a shape of "parent" in Asa's life that she feels isn't right for her to occupy.... but in her own way, she makes such a difference. She helps Asa feel what she feels, no matter what would be "expected" of her. She opens up conversations about communication, about their daily life together, in ways I've seldom seen in media.

She draws her lines, too. On her needs. On how her way of living is her own, and isn't lesser than anyone else's. She's clear about situations that make her socially uncomfortable. She's forward about her desires. She advocates for her own boundaries.
And somewhere in there I just think I'm in awe.

Recommending this series

Part of why I'd recommend Journal with witch is because almost² each episode leaves me full of admiration on how right so many of its scenes are, in their quiet conversations around grief, and feelings, and guardianhood, and living together. It's also because its artistic direction is superb - from what I've peeked at, the original manga has a lot of good things, but the anime complements extremely well its soft daily life vibe, from the colors and character designs and outfits, to the framing and the music³.
Its opening just hits the exact right notes on that front, too. It's been regularly in my head in the past few weeks, and it makes me ready to greet difficult feelings with softness each time I start another episode. The whole anime feels real, and welcoming, and kind despite its heavy themes, and there's something so soothing to that.

But maybe one of the main reasons for my recommendation is also centered on Makio as a character. We just never get such an accurate, non-stereotypical portrayal of a neurodivergent adult woman in media... and all the more when her experience as a neurodivergent person is a core part of how good of a guardian she is for Asa.

Makio has spent so much of her life accepting that she was different from most people. And so, it feels so natural to see her get angry about how Asa is treated by most people, when the girl struggles to articulate and feel her feelings in conventional ways. It's so obvious that she would take Asa under her wing, despite preferring living alone, when all of their extended family is horrible about this. And the way she creates space for conversation with her niece is great: she advises Asa to start a journal, and she's adamant that nobody should shame her for however she processes this. She does her best to be here - but Asa will often have to voice her needs for help, because Makio has always been bad at reading between the lines.

In one simple but meaningful instance of this, Makio fails to notice Asa's loneliness, because Makio doesn't get lonely. When she finally realizes that Asa is feeling down because she was left alone one evening, they have a long conversation where Makio is direct about it: she will have trouble picking up on that loneliness by herself, but if Asa needs her presence, she just needs to ask for it. And they can talk about it whenever.

And it feels so big to see this onscreen - to see something so close to how I tend to communicate with people.
And it's everything else, too: Makio's perpetually messy apartment, her forgetfulness, her bluntness and disregard for social conventions, her deep love of books and writing, the sheer importance she puts into fiction and imagination, how she's shown as generally reclusive AND having several deep friendships at the same time... and, of course, how all this contrasts with Asa's late mother's perfect-looking household full of judgement and putting up appearances.

Makio has learned to embrace how she functions, and defends it staunchly against any accusation that it's "abnormal". She lives without compromising in favor of what is socially accepted. And the fact that all this is clearly depicted as the right thing for her, and as a positive force for Asa... it just strikes me like lightning, is all.

Let's talk neurodivergence

One week ago, I would've described Makio as heavily neurodivergent-coded. I am ecstatic to say that this is not coded anymore, but explicitly stated in the latest episode released so far: Asa's friend Emiri, during one of their conversations, directly wonders whether Makio may be neurodivergent.

And this is huge. I know a reasonable share of neurodivergent-coded characters in manga and anime, but I've just never seen it spelled out directly.

So, as one does, I've been investigating that part a lot - notably to understand what term is used in Japanese. The problem is, in the anime this remark is still a bit of a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment: Makio herself is having a conversation at the same time, and Emiri and Asa's mention of the term fades out exactly at that moment. I'm obviously left wondering whether there were pressures to make this statement barely audible, yet also delighted that it's picked up by the subtitles.

The manga, however, is more direct about it... but with a bit of a frustrating twist.

The term used in the manga, 発達障害 (hattatsu shougai), literally means "developmental disorder", and from my understanding has been the widely used umbrella clinical term in Japanese since the 1970s. I find it demeaning and pathologizing⁴ - and I'm not the only one, since several activist movements since the end of the 90s have been trying to make the use shift in favor of terms like "neurodivergence" worldwide, which encompasses much more neutrally a diversity of neurological expressions and perceptions of the world inherent to humans.

This shift has been happening slowly, and just as I could say so in French, seems to have gained traction in Japanese in the past ten-or-so years... albeit often, to the general public, under the idea of a "positive branding" by making neurodivergent people more "recruitable" as workforce for companies. Ugh.
That being said, terms like 神経多様性 (shinkei tayousei, nerve diversity) and 脳の多様性 (nou no tayousei, brain diversity) seem to be more and more used, though with a predominance of the English-based ニューロダイバーシティ (nyuurodaibaashiti), from what I can understand of the Japanese wikipedia article of the latter.

Despite all this, volume 5 of the Journal with witch manga still used the prevalent pathologizing term above, being released in 2019. Yet there are two good things in this.

The first is that this never seemed to be intended as demeaning by the author. Though said in the manga in an extremely casual tone, it doesn't feel like it is thrown around as an insult by Emiri - the way some translations would, sadly, probably render it. On the contrary, Yamashita-sensei expresses her sincere intention to depict a neurodivergent character in a 2019 interview (in Japanese), notably as she tells that she falls under that term too (and she herself uses 発達障害). She says that she ended up using the explicit term for it clearly, after writing it implicitly for several volumes so that other people who could relate would pick up on it.

The other good thing about this is that the anime series doesn't seeeeeem to be using that same pathologizing term? I think? I've honestly been replaying that part on loop and couldn't make up what word was used, nor could I find a transcript of the episode in Japanese, but it still feels like it isn't 発達障害 anymore. Which would also mean a lot in terms of terminology shift.
(That being said, even if that was on me and the anime was still using that term in Japanese, I would be extremely thankful for the translation into "neurodivergent", because in this context it really feels like the intended use here.)

And so: the author is neurodivergent, and cares. Makio's neurodivergent coding and writing was purposeful, and the eventual explicit naming of it too.
And this means a whole, whole lot.

Because Makio feels like one of the most sensible and well-rounded depictions of a neurodivergent adult I've ever seen, period. And the way she exists in the world echoes a wider theme of the series: people are built different, and will often struggle to understand each other - and learning to honestly talk things out, without judgement, is often what will help.

Communication (and bits of lesbianism)

This theme of communication and trying to understand each other is everywhere in Journal with witch. It manifests obviously in Makio; but also in Asa, often struggling to understand her own reactions, and separated from her classmates by all the things they project on her when hearing about the loss of her parents.

It also shows, implicitly, in their difficult relationships with Asa's mother Minori, who never actually listened neither to Makio nor to Asa. Instead, she projected her acquired expectations of normality on both of them... but also on herself, in some pretty harsh self-judgemental ways. While the series is taking its time to unpack her character, and while she is shown as controlling, she clearly isn't written like a one-dimensional villain. She is someone who was fed all kinds of social expectations and the importance to uphold them, and created this armor of being "as normal as possible".

And this has real consequences on Asa, too. As the series goes by, Asa learns to actually want things for herself and to make her own decisions. But this learning is slow: several times Asa still judges Makio or her best friend Emiri as "weird" without realizing the judgemental implications of it.

We need to talk at least briefly about Emiri, because another excellent thing graces this series: Emiri is gay, and in the closet. This is shown in several clear but implicit instances: how she's uncomfortable when the topic of boyfriends comes up, how she half-talks about how she'd be interested in marriage but it's not really possible in her case... And once again, the series does an incredible job in showing the heteronormative pressure of everyone around her, from her mother to Asa herself.

And maybe the cherry on top of the whole series is that Makio of all people is obviously the one who picks up on the signs, who is here to lend her fictions with lesbian characters⁵ and to tell her it's ok to love or not love anyone. And reciprocally, it makes so much sense that Emiri would be the one to suggest that Makio is neurodivergent.

There is a shared marginality here, and it just makes so much sense to see these two characters attuned to it in others.

Conclusion

I've already written much more than I thought I would here.
There's just so much to love in this series, and despite all my words I feel like I'm failing to articulate how good and sometimes momentous it is, in all the ways its conversations and depictions so often strike true. It's not often you get an anime that cares this clearly; with characters that so quickly, so wholly feel like people - and dang, Makio and Asa really really do.

And, I don't know. In some ways, Asa is the teenager restricted by well-meaning but offhandedly controlling parents I've been, and Makio is the kind of adult mess standing up for herself I aspire to be (maybe without the romantic situationship tension, though). So I'll say it again: that means a lot.
This anime has shot to my top favorite animes in three or four episodes, and it's been staying there effortlessly since then. With how it's going, I don't see it stepping down from there.

I've also ordered the start of the manga in French (rather aptly titled Entre les lignes, between the lines), and I hope the translation will be ok. It seems to be a different experience, with even more dialogue, several scenes shuffled compared to the anime, and generally more of the characters. I'm quite excited about it⁶.

What else? So much, probably. But in brief: if you want something slow that explores grief, communication, and living kindly and fiercely outside of social norms, please try Journal with witch. Please.

On my end, I just know I want it to be Sunday already so that I can feel that flurry of emotions again, watching its next episode.

#anime rec #recommendation