The Dawn of the Witch Season 2 anime will have Saybil, Hort, Kudo, and Loux Krystas journeying to the Forbidden Library and setting sail to the New World. But when will Mahoutsukai Reimeiki Season 2 come out?
The studio and main staff making The Dawn of the Witch Season 2 hasn’t been announced yet.
For the first season, the anime project was produced by Japanese animation company Tezuka Productions, which is best known in recent times for creating The Quintessential Quintuplets anime series (including the movie). They also collaborated with Studio Okuruto Noboru on How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord Season 2, co-produced with MAPPA the two-cour Dororo anime in 2019, and produced on their own the 51-episode Astro Boy reboot Go! Go! Atom and the Girlfriend, Girlfriend anime.
The first season of The Dawn of the Witch anime was helmed by director Satoshi Kuwabara. He’s been the main director for most of Tezuka Productions’ recent projects, including The Quintessential Quintuplets Season 1, Girlfriend, Girlfriend, and How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord Omega. Unusually, the director also wrote the anime scripts.
Artist Reina Iwasaki was the first-time lead character designer. In the recent past, the artist was the episode animation director for Redo of Healer EP8, How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord Omega EP5, Girlfriend, Girlfriend EP3, and TONIKAWA: Over the Moon For You EP10 (TONIKAWA Season 2 is confirmed).
Composer Tatsuhiko Saiki created the music. The musician’s credits include Girlfriend, Girlfriend and the My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! anime series.
The Dawn of the Witch Season 2 OP (opening) and ED (ending) theme song music hasn’t been announced yet.
For the first season, The Dawn of the Witch OP “Dawn of Infinity” was performed by fripSide, while the ED “Imprinting” was performed by TRiNITY.
In Spring 2022, the first season was streaming on Crunchyroll and VRV (not Netflix, Hulu, Funimation, or Amazon Prime Video). Crunchyroll’s The Dawn of the Witch English dub release date was on April 21, 2022.
The Dawn of the Witch Episode 7 release date was delayed by a week. The reason for the delay was not given by the studio.
Due to the delay, the first season’s finale, The Dawn of the Witch Episode 12, was released on July 1, 2022.
- Updated June 23, 2022: Added production delays.
This article provides everything that is known about The Dawn of the Witch Season 2 (Mahoutsukai Reimeiki Season 2) and all related news. As such, this article will be updated over time with news, rumors, and analysis. Meanwhile, let’s delve down into what is known for certain
Mahoutsukai Reimeiki Season 2 release date predictions: Renewal unlikely?
As of the last update, Studio Tezuka Productions, Kodansha, NBCUniversal Entertainment Japan, Crunchyroll, or any company related to the production of the anime has not officially confirmed The Dawn of the Witch Season 2 release date. Nor has the production of a Mahoutsukai Reimeiki Season 2 sequel been announced.
Once the news is officially confirmed this article will be updated with the relevant information.
In the meantime, it’s possible to speculate about when, or if, the Mahoutsukai Reimeiki Season 2 release date will occur in the future.
The Dawn of the Witch reviews have not been kind to the anime’s first season. Scores are unusually low in comparison to many other fantasy and isekai anime TV shows airing in 2022. It’s also scoring considerably lower than its prequel, the Grimoire of Zero anime, which was considered mediocre back in 2018.
To be fair, as a standalone story, the Mahoutsukai Reimeiki is a solid fantasy romp. The main problem is that it’s a Grimoire of Zero sequel that came out 5 years later and it does nothing to explain the context of the story other than depicting flashbacks for current plot points that are directly related to past events.
Even worse, the Grimoire of Zero anime adapted only the first light novel volume out of a book series that spanned 11 volumes consisting of 8 story arcs. Thus, the overall anime series leaps from the first story arc and skips straight to the newer The Dawn of the Witch light novel series. Anime newcomers are left floundering since flashbacks and worldbuilding are limited since the director seems to assume audiences are already familiar with the established world.
The new The Dawn of the Witch anime doesn’t even attempt to bridge the gap by summarizing the prior journeys of Zero and Mercenary. Nor does it bother to explain pertinent bits from how the last season ended, like with Albus burning Thirteen at the stake in order to unite humanity (or that Thirteen secretly escaped the flames!). Or that Zero began physically aging after suffering from magical depletion, which explains why she no longer resembles her old character design.
On the other hand, anime newcomers experienced the same confusion and mystery as the perspective of Saybil, Hort, and Kudo. Saybil and his friends literally have no memories of prior events, and anime newcomers wouldn’t know that Zero and Mercenary were the protagonists of the first series, so they’d be rightfully suspicious of the pair when they were playing the role of the villains for the field program test. So, in a way, skipping the backstory actually worked to the advantage of the storytelling in the new anime.
Regardless, skipping almost the entire story of Grimoire of Zero probably caused a negative backlash against the new anime. It was rarely featured near the top 10 of Crunchyroll’s popular anime list.
The streaming performance, or lack thereof, is a big factor influencing the chances of The Dawn of the Witch Season 2 being greenlit for production. Lately, Crunchyroll has been trying to cultivate new anime series by directly investing in projects, so Crunchyroll is also on the anime production committee as one of the producers.
Even worse, Kodansha obviously was on the anime production committee in order for the anime to act as an advertisement for the respective light novel series. But the anime failed to generate a huge boost in sales since the books didn’t make the Oricon Top 20 light novels for April 2022.
As such, it seems unlikely that the anime production committee will have The Dawn of the Witch renewed for a second season.
The Dawn of the Witch manga, light novel series compared to the anime
The story for the anime TV series is based on the Mahoutsukai Reimeiki light novel series by author Kakeru Kobashiri, character artist Yoshinori Shizuma, and illustrator Takashi Iwasaki. Published by Kodansha’s Ranobe Bunko imprint since August 2018, the book series is up to The Dawn of the Witch Volume 5 as of April 1, 2022.
The original author teamed up with artist Tatsuwo to create The Dawn of the Witch manga adaptation. Serialized in Kodansha’s Monthly Shonen Sirius magazine since July 2019, the manga is up to Volume 5 a of April 7, 2022.
So far, Kodansha USA has only announced an official English translation for the manga, but not the light novels. The English manga was up to Volume 4 as of March 15, 2022.
As previously noted, the same author and character artist also created the Grimoire of Zero light novel series. Published by ASCII Media Works’ Dengeki Bunko imprint from February 2014 through December 2017, the original book series ended with Volume 11. There was also a manga adaptation that ended after only 6 volumes.
The Grimoire of Zero anime was one of those rare anime that only adapt a single book with 12 episodes rather than rushing through the source material. The Dawn of the Witch anime was a typical anime adaptation since it adapted multiple light novels, but at least the pacing of the introductory episodes didn’t feel overly rushed.
The first five episodes adapted the first book. That meant there were only 7 episodes to adapt the remainder of the story, which meant that the pacing needed to increase.
All in all, it’s predicted that the first season’s finale, Mahoutsukai Reimeiki Episode 12, will find a stopping point corresponding to light novel Volume 3.
It’s the best stopping point since the book completes Saybil’s magic school story arc. Volume 3 also provides a good climax where the anti-witch extremists in the Church turn the village into a battlefield.
The bad news is that there currently isn’t enough source material available for making The Dawn of the Witch Season 2, although light novel Volume 6 should come out in Fall 2022.
English-only manga readers will also need to wait years until the manga chapters catch up with the anime. Manga Volume 5 was still focused on the second story arc involving the kidnapping plot.
The Dawn of the Witch Season 2 anime TV spoilers (plot summary/synopsis)
After graduating from Royal Magic Academy, Saybil and his friends receive a request from the headmaster of the university to investigate the northern part of the country. Their goal is to find Fort Niedra, a forbidden library that still exists in the ruined northern lands. It is a fortress of knowledge where books forbidden by the church have been collected and its existence has been erased by the church.
The director welcomes them and gives them special treatment, but some of the witches in the Forbidden Library do not seem to be amused by this. One of them, a provocative witch, even gets into a duel with Saybil!
To complicate matters further, the witch’s “father” appears at the duel. And then suddenly there’s talk of marriage to another character?!
Overcoming these difficulties, Saybil eventually makes a name for himself as a researcher of magic potions. The age of everyone using magic with ease has arrived.
But Saybil’s easy life is upended when a visitor from New World crossed the Sea of Death to bring an illegal magic potion. No one is supposed to be able to cross this dangerous sea, and one powerful witch has tried and failed before, but this visitor also brings information about magical depletion that strikes to the core of magic development.
Saybil, Hort, and Kudo will set sail on a new journey across the Sea of Death as a delegation to the New World.
Unfortunately, anime fans will have to wait until The Dawn of the Witch Season 2 release date to watch what happens next. Stay tuned!