A Witch and a Crow: a heartwarming autumn tale

 

Just the other day, YouTube randomly offered me a short anime-style cartoon named “A Witch and a Crow”, by a certain MaepleTea. It’s under four minutes long (three and a half if you don’t count the credits), so if you want to see it yourself before reading my comments, you can watch it here. It’s atmospheric and cute, with a gentle story of friendship and mild romance: technically child-appropriate (nothing scary or explicit), but it will appeal to older audiences more.

Assuming that you’ve watched it, or that you don’t mind spoilers, let’s move on! So, why did I decide to blog about a short indie cartoon rather than just link it on social media? Here are several things that resonated really well with me and that I think recommend it.

 

Animal shapeshifting into a human

Popular culture nowadays is full of werebeasts, animaguses, polymorphers and other creatures who are essentially human or humanoid, but can shapeshift into a real or mythological animal. Here, however, it seems that the young man doesn’t shapeshift into a crow, but is an actual crow who shapeshifts into a human, bringing into mind various shapeshifting animals of legend, from the Raven in Native American myths, to Asian Kitsune and Kumiho.

In fact, it is implied that the crow becomes stuck in human form without his magic hat, which is physical and visible while he is in his human form, but intrinsically a part of him while he is a crow, as an outline of it only shines above his head. Perhaps that is a sign of the witch’s magical perception, showing us how she sees her magical friend apart from other, ordinary crows? This, again, resonates with many myths in which a supernatural creature removes a part of themselves to become human or humanoid, like a selkie taking off their skin to walk on land, or a Slavic fae (vila) leaving her wings on the shore when she decides to bathe. It may seem bizarre to a human – but somehow, that makes it appear even more credible and natural.

 

A touch of magical realism

Which brings me to the second point: the magic in the cartoon is subtle, and not overly flashy, because, of course, the point is an emotional story, and not a display of power. Beyond the crow’s own shapeshifting, the only time we see the witch actually use magic is when she takes out her wand to reach the hat blown away by the wind – and, potentially, when she attaches her bow to the hat in the end. (It might be just implicit normal fastening shown quickly – but it seems to me that the bow becomes completely attached to the hat as a part of it, not just tied to it.) Beyond that, we see the witch engaging in a variety of mundane activities, such as walking through the woods (maybe to gather herbs, maybe just for enjoyment), or cleaning her front porch with a (likely ordinary) broom. Which is just as it should be: shiny magic would just distract from the point.

 

Subtle humour

An atmospheric cartoon without spoken words is unlikely to make you laugh out loud, though if there is one scene that can make you do that, it is definitely the one where the crow thinks of giving the witch a ring he found – and then blushes in both versions of his identity, obviously thinking how it could be interpreted from a human perspective, while the music stops for a second for dramatic effect.

Still, there are also many other little details that might make you smile, such as various cute scenes with the crow finding and trying to take all sorts of little “treasures” as gifts for the witch, or costumed children coming trick-or-treating on Halloween to the house of an actual witch. I wonder, is it a setting where they know that she is a witch, or is she just implicitly the cute neighbourhood goth girl?

 

A lovely colour palette

Finally, while the animation itself is quite simple, the colouring is done masterfully. Almost everything, both the characters and the backgrounds, is in autumnal shades of orange and black – everything, that is, except the little gifts that the crow leaves for the witch. From the initial purplish gemstones, over bright red berries, to white pearls and seashells, most of the little gifts are coloured obviously differently from the rest of the scene, but not so drastically as for the effect to be jarring. Thus, our attention is clearly drawn to them and they are singled out as something important – both when we see them individually and when we observe the growing collection in the witch’s house – but they still gently fit into the overall atmosphere of the cartoon.

To sum things up – congratulations to MaepleTea for an amazing project. Should any sequel with these characters come up, I believe it will be met with open arms by the online audience – and I’ll certainly follow the channel either way!

Encanto: Why wasn’t Bruno married?

 

In Disney’s Encanto, we know that Abuela Alma’s children – Julieta, Pepa and Bruno – are triplets. During the time the main plot takes place in, they are all 50 years old. Pepa and Julieta are both happily married and have three children each. Bruno, on the other hand, has no wife or children. Sure, “one day he disappeared” – but he wasn’t exactly a boy when it happened. That “one day” was after Mirabel’s gift ceremony, ten years before the main events. So, when Bruno decided to leave the family, he was 40 – and still single, despite his sisters being married for a decade or so. How come he never married? How come Alma Madrigal, whom we see arranging Isabela’s betrothal at 21, did not take efforts to find a wife for her only son?

Warning: plot spoilers for Encanto ahead!

 

The meta reasons

First of all, there are quite obvious meta reasons why Bruno having a wife and child or children would have been detrimental to the plot as it is now. Of course, a different plot could have been made and could also have been good – but that’s not what the film’s creators had in mind.

 

1) Bruno would have come off as selfish. We find out during the movie that Bruno “left” – or rather, hid – primarily in order to prevent the misinterpretation of his last prophecy from harming Mirabel. Of course, the fact that he was already seen as spooky and problematic both in the family and the community at large obviously played a role as well – but nevertheless, he still loved the family and wanted to stay close by. His departure was primarily a benevolent act.

But had Bruno had a wife and child, that also would have robbed them of a husband and father. Such an act would have been much harder to justify. Bruno would either have been pressed to stay and actively try to make sure the prophecy wasn’t interpreted in a way detrimental to Mirabel – or, if he left anyway, the act would no longer be selfless. Instead of making a discreet sacrifice, he would have caused obvious harm to his closest ones: preventing potential harm to Mirabel could not have outweighed certain emotional harm to the abandoned wife and children. That, again, could have prevented his easy reintegration into the family in the end. A mother and sisters might be so overcome with relief at the sight of a long-lost son and brother for the question “how could you leave us??” not to be asked. That would not have been so easy to pull off with a wife and child – a child who, if young enough when Bruno left, would have had to grow up without a father.

 

2) Bruno’s wife and child would have had to be prominent characters with added drama of their own. Let’s imagine for a moment that Bruno nevertheless did marry, have at least one child, and then abandon them anyway, seeing no other way to protect Mirabel. With Bruno's reputation being as it was, it would have rubbed off at least somewhat on the woman who married him (just imagine people whispering: “What does she see in him? Did he trick her by saying they were destined to marry?”), but all the more on his child. Both in the family and the town, people would probably speculate if Bruno's child would inherit their father's unsettling gift, or another similarly disturbing one. Even if the child were to manifest a completely different power, spooky ways of using it would likely come to people's minds much more easily than with the other Madrigals.

Now add Bruno's sudden disappearance on top of that! In addition to being traumatised by losing a husband and father, his wife and child would have been swamped by a ton of speculation and condemnation related to the creepy Bruno vanishing without a trace. I can easily imagine town children whispering “that's Bruno's son!” in frightened voices behind another little boy's back, for example. All that, in return, would also have been much harder for Bruno to bear seeing in secret.

Thus, not only would have another two characters (or more, if there was more than one child) been added to the already large cast of the Madrigals – which could be confusing, particularly for younger viewers – but those characters would come with pretty serious and relevant drama of their own. Bruno, also, could not have been such a hugely mysterious figure to the younger members of the family if his wife (maybe considered a widow?) and child were still living in the house. They would also have been among the logical first people for Mirabel to ask about Bruno. All this could make for good drama in a film made for an older audience – and all the more so in a TV series, where there would be more time to develop the nuances – but it would have made things too dark and convoluted for a Disney feature film.

 

In-universe reasons

Now, you will say, that is all very fine reasoning for the screenwriters, but what was the reason for Bruno to stay unmarried for so long in the story? Even when meta-reasons are primary, they need to find a good justification inside the universe. Fear not – those are present here as well.

 

1) Bruno frightened people and can’t have been the most popular bachelor. It is fairly safe to assume that young girls weren’t exactly lining up to woo the man known for his prophecies of doom that inevitably came to pass. If the entire town’s attitude a decade after Bruno’s disappearance was “we don’t talk about Bruno”, and if even Bruno’s nephew Camilo now relished in talking about him as a creepy, mysterious, almost villainous figure, it is quite likely that many were uneasy around him while he was present as well. While he still probably was seen as a mostly positive figure due to being one of the Madrigals, and due to his prophecies holding useful information, most people would have found him unsettling.

Additionally, while Bruno’s behaviour after one hundred ten years of solitude (not counting the rats) may not be the best proof of what his personality was like in his youth, we can still see several indicators that he was probably fairly withdrawn – from his overall bearing, over the solitary nature of his room, to the fact that he chose to stay hidden inside the house rather than try his luck at passing the mountains and starting a new life somewhere far away.

 

2) Historically, women tend(ed) to marry much earlier than men. Did you know that the minimum age for marriage in ancient Rome, later to be accepted by the Christian church, used to be 12 years for girls and 14 for boys? That was considered to be the age when most young people, on the one hand, entered puberty and became capable of conceiving children and, on the other, were sufficiently mature to make decisions like adults. Through the centuries, the minimum age slowly shifted up – likely more for the second than the first reason. Still, in most countries, the gap between men and women remained: girls were traditionally considered to mature somewhat faster than boys. (The fact that, despite this, they were not given full legal capacity, political rights etc. is a different matter, and one that would lead us into an overly long digression here.) Thus, even in the 19^th and the early 20^th century, it was perfectly normal for a country to have, for example, the minimum age for marriage set at 16 for women and 18 for men. But, of course, this difference of two years is not enough to explain Bruno being single at 40.

However, we also have it as a tradition (though not a legal obligation) in many countries throughout history for women to marry much earlier than men, and thus for a considerable age gap to exist between husband and wife. The reasons for this are manyfold and complex: to keep things simple, we can break them down into two main factors. The first one would be social: as men had a more prominent social role in many traditional societies, a young man might be expected to do some climbing on the social ladder before marrying. That could mean going to the army, completing higher education (, or simply laying an economic foundation for raising a family, such as building a house, starting a trade etc. Women were either not allowed or at least not expected to do most of these things. The second one would be biological: women’s years of fertility are generally shorter than men’s, and thus traditional societies considered it important for a woman to marry early in order to have more time for child-bearing in marriage. Men could conceive children even at a relatively old age, giving them less reasons to hurry to marry and secure offspring. I could not find any data for marital ages in late 19^th – early 20^th century Colombia on the Internet, but given what I saw for other South American countries, I would say it is safe to assume that such a custom did exist, at least to some extent.

            Now, we could say that most of these reasons could not apply to Bruno personally, but that is not too relevant as long as there was a similar social custom present. There may not have been a standing army or a university in the Encanto, and Bruno, being a Madrigal, would not have needed to prove to anyone in the community that he was ready to start a family. We don’t know whether he would have preferred to marry a woman younger than himself, or someone close to his age. But if was overall customary for men to marry later than women, and Bruno already had a fairly frightening reputation, it is quite understandable why neither he not Alma would have been in a hurry to find him a wife.

 

            In addition to all that has been said, it is worth noting that we are less than a month away from the release of the first Encanto novel (so far, there have been only picture books and comics), written by Alex Segura. The book, titled “Nightmares and Sueños” and described as a “dark and mysterious young adult novel”, will be focused on teenage Bruno and his attempts to become as popular as his sisters – and the developing of his sinister reputation. I don’t know if the plot will also include a sad love story, but I do know that this is the first Disney novel I am seriously looking forward to reading! It’s time to talk about Bruno!

Nightmares and Sueños comes out on December 3^rd, and is available for preorder now. If you buy it on Amazon using this affiliate link – https://amzn.to/3Azz2ut – I will earn a small commission with no extra cost to you! (If you do, thanks in advance!)