The World's Strongest Witch ‒ Episodes 1-3
After three episodes with The World's Strongest Witch, I'm not entirely sure if it's “good” but I had a great time with it and it made me eager to sing its praises.
Taking place in a LitRPG fantasy world that's overtly inspired by Dragon Quest, The World's Strongest Witch opens with the soon-to-be strongest witch Lorna Hermit getting kicked out of her familial home in disgrace. As this is a video game world populated by non-gamers, her father assumes her SSS-rank skill “Internet” is worse than a pitiful G-rank skill, and she's left to fend for herself in the woods. Quickly discovering that she has accesses to the fan wiki, guides, and forums related to the video game world she inhabits (which she hilariously interprets as the word of God and repeatedly claims “the internet is never wrong”) this smol bean immediately becomes wildly overpowered as she's able to sequence break questlines and look up how to easily defeat terrifying bosses. She does all of this while remaining incredibly positive and adorably ignorant to the cynicism that informs her “Internet” power and the world around her, and after three episodes this juxtaposition hasn't worn out its welcome.
After more than a decade of these kinds of video game-informed anime dominating so much of the landscape, it's wild that we haven't gotten more titles that boil down to “what if the protagonist used a walkthrough,” which is how many people play video games in 2026. This anime is also very clearly informed by the, only somewhat sanitized, culture and experience of online gamers. There's an “I took an arrow to the knee” joke in the second episode that absolutely ripped a laugh out of me and transported me back to my forum lurking days in high school. Similarly, I also got a laugh out of Lorna using a crevice just outside of a boss' reach and ranged attacks to defeat the terrifying creature, which is exactly how I beat the Tower Knight in Demon's Souls.
Especially with this anime's limited budget and technical prowess being extremely well hidden through clever editing and cuts to a sixteen-bit art style reminiscent of Super Nintendo games, I've had a cute and fun time with every episode of The World's Strongest Witch that I've watched so far. If I had to elevate a criticism, it's that the (currently two episodes behind) English dub is a bit grating for me to watch. Lindsay Seidel was clearly directed to give Lorna an “uwu” voice and, while not wholly inappropriate for the character, it's hard for me to listen to someone talk like a Discord puppygirl in real life for twenty minutes at a time.
Asking for video game inspired anime to feel like they're made by people who actually play and understand what makes video games so appealing shouldn't be such a high bar to clear, but The World's Strongest Witch gives viewers just that and I hope it raises the bar for the entire LitRPG/isekai genre.
Rating:
Lucas DeRuyter has more games that he wants to play than he does free time to play them, which makes him the ultimate gamer in 2026! However, you can catch his forays into gaming by following him on Bluesky and checking out his writing portfolio. You can also see the most frequent application of his sick gamer skillz (typing quickly) by checking out ANN's This Week in Anime column.
The World's Strongest Witch is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
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