Ichi the Witch is, at least in the first two volumes, both generically entertaining and trope-ily generic. Clueless hero with one big talent that’s pretty handy? Check. Know-it all mentor/senior student? Check. Set up for harem comedy? Also check. Basic premise: only women can wield magic and be witches. Ichi is a guy, a hunter who lives near a rural area, who accidentally (kind of, he intentionally interferes but…) absorbs the magic of the nearly impossible-to-defeat Uroro who is about to destroy rock-star witch Desscaras, who now has to take Ichi back to the witch base/magic school (all female because men can’t use magic) to figure out what to do with him. Hilarity etc. ensues.
Ichi’s talent is his hunting training, and his absolute focus on only killing things that have killing intent; if it’s not for food or defense, it’s murder. Total shonen trope main character. Desscaras is kind of snobby, kind of lazy (in respect to some things at least), kind of vain, kind of self-absorbed; in other words, certain kind of female MC trope. Plot has to do with 1) Ichi fitting into a world where he doesn’t belong (cough- trope!) and 2) magic monster hunting/ defeating/ collecting (trope!).
And yet, in spite of it being kind of silly and predictable, it’s also kind of fun, especially when some of the Majiks (the monsters) get to propose their own challenge before they can officially be defeated and absorbed. Now some of these challenges are dumb; “make me beautiful (but I won’t tell you my standards!)” ends up involving a sushi gag, but the manga also directly acknowledges this. After the sushi incident, Desscaras tells a third witch that “There are things only he (Ichi) can do. {…} Mostly really dumb things, probably.” Self-awareness for the win, at least sort of.
