This one makes you earn it. The first four or five episodes are genuinely rough, a talking frog named Keroppe asking a middling Gunma first-year if she wants to be a witch, and you can feel the show still figuring out what it is. Then it clicks, and suddenly Yuina, Azu, Kyouka, Choco and Mai stop being archetypes and start being five people with actual damage they have to work through in front of each other. The 2D character work is gorgeous and the personality designs refuse to blur together, even if the CGI in the idol numbers is exactly as average as everyone says. People reach for Madoka comparisons and that undersells it, because the pressure here is not despair, it is the cost of promising strangers you can make their dreams come true. Stay past episode five. Maebashi is worth the trip.

Yuina Akagi's unremarkable first year of high school in Maebashi City gets interrupted when a mysterious talking frog named Keroppe appears with an unexpected proposition: become a witch. He brings her to the Witch-Verse and introduces her to four other recruits: cheerful Choco, composed Kyouka, easygoing Mai, and short-tempered Azu, who is wary of the newcomer. Despite clashing personalities, the five aim to become true witches as the Maebashi Witches. To get there, they must grant people's wishes in the real world, channeling their magic through music, while Yuina learns to handle her new powers.