Apprentice witch Spica Virgo can't use magic at all. To earn a place in the magic school she dreams of entering, she needs a mentor, but she has neither money nor connections. One day, a mysterious black cat who speaks and wields magic appears before her. Spica wants to master sorcery, and the cat, Claude, longs to break the curse he's under and return to his previous human self. The pair's goals align. Thus begins their secret master-apprentice pact.

I almost feel sorry for the team behind The Classroom of a Black Cat and a Witch. We've got a story about a young girl who admires magic but doesn't seem to have the ability to use it, only to find herself inducted into the magical world by a gifted master in order to break a curse...in the same season as Witch Hat Atelier. Not a very flattering comparison, is it?

Lest you think this is an "Oh boy, two cakes" situation, let me assure you: It is not. Spica is the kind of heroine who's earnest, clumsy and kinda dumb, more cute than competent, designed to be fawned over, made a fool of and/or ogled rather than sympathized with... And ogle the camera does--there were more panty shots in the first five minutes than I think there were in every anime I watched last year combined. She's driven, I'll give her that, and there's promise in how she thinks to study ancient runes to improve her chances of finding the grimoire, but that's not enough to overcome her stock personality and the fact that, more often than not, she's the butt of every joke.

Oh, and speaking of butt... I know that True Love's Kiss(TM) to break a spell is a worn-out old trope, but was the best way to subvert it really to transfer that kiss from the mouth to the anus? I hate that I even had to type that and make you read it. And yes, the cat in question, Claude, is actually a human wizard, so MAYBE he's better equipped to handle hygiene, but really, not only is this gag needlessly gross, it's also stupid and humiliating for both characters.

And really, when you get down to it, the method of spellbreaking is only one of the issues with this episode. The more pressing problem is that it's all over the place. It never really gives viewers a chance to breathe. Spica's lack of typical magic and her determination to attend the school where human Claude taught before his disappearance is par for the course, as is Claude's muddled reputation--he saved Spica, but rumors have him fleeing in the face of attack rather than saving others. His curse is karmic in nature, so Spica's view of him may be the one that's incorrect. But don't spend too much time sweating about that, because apparently Spica has a giant family we just never see and a massive fantastical library that'd make Dracula jealous. Oh, and an enemy cult to fight. And a secret power to discover. Also she needs to scream and fall down a lot. It feels like there's at least two episodes' worth of material crammed into 23 minutes, and not only does that make for a tonally dissonant experience, but it also doesn't give you time to process anything.

Spica and Claude are both unsympathetic characters, possibly because of the episode's rushed pacing. It's clear that Spica's not actually stupid, she's shown to be able to read ancient runic script and think outside the box, but she still spends most of the episode acting like a dumb bimbo or being jerked around by Claude, with a few dozen panty shots thrown in for good measure. Also, why is Spica wearing a miniskirt while everyone we see in town and at the library is dressed like it's the 1880s?

It also doesn't succeed on technical grounds. The animation is flat, dull to look at, and lit like it's overcast and slightly hazy even though we can see that the sky is clear and blue. The animators especially struggle to draw Claude, often rendering him lumpy and oddly proportioned--there's more care put into the bulge of Spica's cameltoe than there is in Claude's entire body. The background music rarely matches the scene--in an early scene, strings soar as if we're at some great emotional climax when Spica has just met a particularly rude talking cat.

The Classroom of a Black Cat and a Witch isn't bad in ways that make me angry, just a mediocre concept with poor execution. Obviously, humor is subjective, and I could see elements of this working better for other people. Admittedly, I do love the imagery of the giant book that opens to become a portal, so it's got some visual panache at least. Even so, I found myself annoyed rather than entertained while watching this, so I can't say I recommend it.