Any soul out there who tries to restrict the things you learn is only doing it to keep you square under their thumb.

Thus, in one sentence, a character in volume twelve of Kamome Shirahama's superb Witch Hat Atelier sums up the major themes of the story. From the moment the Brimmed Cap gave Coco the spellbook and wand, Witch Hat Atelier has been about who is allowed to learn and what they're allowed to do with that knowledge. Some characters, like the Knights Moralis, have very firm ideas about this and will stop at nothing to enforce it – even, as we see in volume fourteen, if it goes against everything they purportedly stand for. Others, like Qifrey, are willing to bend the rules in pursuit of knowledge. And still others are ready to throw the rules away, declaring them arbitrary and counter to the good of humanity – because how can magic that gives a boy back his legs be anything other than good?

The lack of clear answers is what makes this such a strong story. These volumes cover part of (most of?) an arc taking place at the Silver Eve festival, a celebration of witches and magic where new contraptions can be shown off, among other things. Showing an unerring understanding of the literary device carnivalism (where the world is turned upside down and logic is inverted; think of the ways rules and reality are suspended at a carnival in the Venetian sense), Shirahama uses the backdrop of purported festivity to bring all parties together in what is essentially a closed world free from reality's constraints. They're not truly in another world, but the nature of carnivals allows for the meeting of groups who typically avoid each other and sights often left deliberately unseen. Both Pointed and Brimmed Caps have a vested interest in the festival, and more specifically in the young apprentices who come to participate. From a teaching standpoint, witches bring their students to learn and to demonstrate the fruits of their schooling. But for the Brimmed Caps, the festival offers almost unfettered access to young apprentices who may be swayed to their side.

This gives the series space to explore real-world themes via a fantasy lens. Volume nine, for example, is centered on the subject of “blame.” This takes on several meanings, all of which are easily transferable to our own lives – are witches to blame for Custas' injuries and their refusal to heal them? Does that make the Brimmed Caps who did offer him a solution blameless? And does this play into ideas of victim blaming – should Custas have known better than to put himself in a dangerous situation? And what about Luluci, the knight moralis who was sexually assaulted as an apprentice – why would she be blamed for her suffering? The juxtaposition of Luluci's story and Custas' work shines a light on both the series' inherently unfair world and the way that it's simply easier to blame someone for what happened to them, because if it's their own fault, there's nothing to be done. By transporting these questions to a fantasy realm, Shirahama allows readers to step back from our world and think about the issues and how they might be mirrors of what happens in our own lives.

This makes it incredibly important how Agott has grown. Volume eleven shows us that she's no longer the angry little girl of volume one, and a large part of that is down to the fact that she has learned to stop blaming herself and Coco for what happened to her. Characters like Richeh have always blamed others for their situations; in Richeh's case, she feels that adults have failed children. (She may not be wrong; many of the problems in this series arise from adults being too pigheaded to see what they're doing to the future.) Agott, however, has always turned her blame inward. She wasn't good enough to apprentice in her family; Coco was wrong to use magic, making it her own fault her mother was petrified. Agott consistently blamed the victims, including herself. But in volume eleven, she's shown to have been able to move past that. Blame is rarely black and white, and that goes double for this series. The problem is that people have lost the ability to see the nuances in any situation, like how medical magic isn't the same as transforming people into statues. Agott alone is learning this lesson as she grows up.

It's important that Agott, a child, is shown to be capable of learning. Almost none of the adults appear to be, stuck in their own heads and preconceptions. Qifrey comes the closest, but despite his amazing fight scenes across these volumes, he's still got his own chips on his shoulder, holding him down. Richeh's inclination to say that adults cause all problems may not be entirely wrong, as this arc takes pains to show: by volume fourteen, it's Coco and Agott who are stepping up to defend the city against leeches – and it's Easthies, an adult and a knight moralis, who is at risk of letting it fall because he's so blinded by his own prejudice and the tiny brim on his cap.

Witch Hat Atelier is more than just an excellent fantasy series. It's an allegory for reality, a fantasyland plagued by the same human prejudices that mar our own. There's no guarantee that Coco and Agott will succeed, that Easthies and Beldaruit won't somehow get in the way because they can't see what's right in front of them. But if the girls do manage, maybe that means there's hope for our world as well.