Very few pieces of media have captured the essence of what learning can be like in a way that witch hat atelier has. I haven't seen this many people from completely different fields relating to the joy that witch hat atelier embodies when it comes to education.
There's the obvious parallel between magic and the arts that quite obvious but its magic system also has similarities with math and programming which I personally find interesting. Many people have pointed this out (including references to other stem subjects as well but I digress) and while the hard magic system itself is not particularly revolutionary or anything (a variety of video games have executed this similarly with extensive detail), the way its themes about learning and teaching is unique.
There are so many shows about school, and yet this is one of the few that have actually managed to capture what learning as a kid can be like or frankly what learning can and should be like for anyone. Just like how the manga remembers that these girls are twelve, its also remembers that they are students and them learning is the actual driving force to the story. At no point is it a backdrop to the "adventure", the learning is the point.
You are constantly shown how much effort these girls put. How regardless of the fact its a hard magic system that requires extensive theory, studying and rote memorizations; there's ample space for creativity and self expression. All the girls have styles and preferences to the way they problem solve. (Richeh preferring small intricate spells linked together and it reflects in all her work etc)
Even when its outside the "schooling" environment and actual issues arise, Coco's problem solving ends up coming back to whatever she learnt most recently. Her main one being time reversal spells because that was her most recent lesson before silver eve arc, ("Learn, remember, apply" as Qifrey points out) Of course that what's she's going to think about. She just learned this cool as fuck spell and now that's all she's going to be thinking about for the next 2 weeks. (its so relatable, yeah ofc we're going to fixate on this, why wouldn't we)
And even then, its not all sunshine, it does a great job at covering how difficult all of this can be, learning is hard and you will burn out if you try to overdo it. magic is complicated and sometime unintuitive.
Nothing will make me forget that the girl who was able to verbally forgive herself for not being able to be a prodigy at magic in the beginning of the story slowly turn into the current Coco who broke down crying because she couldn't draw. She couldn't come up with anything, a blank paper filled only with the desperation to keep going. She becomes so focused on the utility of magic, she forgets what its like to just do magic for fun, to learn for yourself.
I also love that the magic is a metaphor for skills in a way. that Qifrey says that Coco's tailoring, that skill and effort she put as a girl is magical in its own right.
Right now where companies thinks the new gen AI is capable of doing all the work in STEM or arts (IT CANT) and no one needs to learn these "boring" subjects anymore, why is it so hard to believe these things can be interesting on its own, that people want to learn. We don't want to delegate all our thinking to your fucking junk tech.
