So is the lack of male witches some kind of fan service decision or are they just supposed to be special? What is the deal?

krownklown said:
So I would guess it was calculated and maybe male witches are rare and/or special, but nobody really makes anything of the fact that Honoka is male and a witch, nor the teacher.

I guess this probably is answered with "just because, author has no special reason", but then it wouldn't really kill him to throw in at least some background male witches. Not even the fodder no name witches shown in the background are male.

Confucius said:
No it's a called a wizard.

Takuan_Soho said:


In popular culture witches are almost exclusively women, so it would make sense for them to be women in this show. The writer is also SF fan, and as such I seriously doubt he hasn't read Fritz Leiber's classic novel "Conjure Wife" and the premise there was that women practiced witchcraft while the men were ignorant of it. That seems to be the setting here.

In reality 30-35% of the witches burnt at the stake were actually men. Most of what people "know" about the trials has been disproved by modern research (since the 70's). Here are some surprising truths:

No witches were burnt during the dark ages, they were burnt during the Renaissance and the "age of enlightenment".

The Catholic Church did not burn witches, and most certainly the Inquisition did not (indeed where the Inquisition was the strongest they did far more to stop the panics). People confuse the Inquisition with "trial by inquisition" which is method of trial, not an institution.

Witch burning was not sexist inspired. There was no rhyme or reason to the accusations, for the most part they seem to have been the result of longstanding resentment, usually BY women AGAINST women. The most likely reason why women were accused more than men was because men had other physical methods of dealing with people they resented, women were more likely to engage in slander.

Best estimates of the number of witches killed during the "burning times" (1500-1700) has decreased to around 30-40K, and this number is still probably too high (historians have generally estimated the number killed, but as more records have been discovered they have continued to realize that their estimates were far to high and are still in the process of lowering them).

Witches were burnt because of Christianity. Not true, the first recorded "witch craze" occurred in Rome while Christianity was still a weird cult, it wasn't religiously inspired but secularly inspired.

This is an important thing to remember, the clergy did not fear witches because they had God on their side, but secular rulers were susceptible to fears. A famous example was James I of England. When his wife Anne of Denmark came to England her boat was almost lost in a storm, James always believed that witches had been used and started one of the two main witch hunts in English history.

krownklown said:
Normally in a show with a predominate female cast, you don't feature males too much because its partly supposed to be fan servicy. But I don't get that vibe at all from WCW. So I would guess it was calculated and maybe male witches are rare and/or special, but nobody really makes anything of the fact that Honoka is male and a witch, nor the teacher. The teacher is even relatively powerful, but gets used as a butt monkey or just treated like another witch.

I guess this probably is answered with "just because, author has no special reason", but then it wouldn't really kill him to throw in at least some background male witches. Not even the fodder no name witches shown in the background are male.

krownklown said:

Also he called himself a mage, although technically a mage is female, a sage is male.

Decide said:


Since when?

Old_Raven said:

Got any idea where I can pick up this kind of knowledge? This topic has always had my interest but never looked into for whatever reason.

krownklown said:
Also he called himself a mage, although technically a mage is female, a sage is
male.