BURN THE WITCH

This feature adapts Tite Kubo's BURN THE WITCH, a project that began as a single one-shot before growing into a short serialized run. Tatsuro Kawano handled direction while Studio Colorido produced the animation, with Kubo supplying the original narrative. The picture reached Japanese screens and started streaming for international audiences on October 2, 2020, later becoming available through Prime Video and Vudu.

Its world is split into two overlapping versions of London: the mundane Front and the concealed Reverse, where dragons are common and an agency called Wing Bind manages them. The story centers on Noel Niihashi and Ninny Spangcole, two junior agents ranked as Pipers, alongside Balgo Parks, an ordinary young man whose accidental knack for luring dragons keeps dragging trouble toward everyone around him.

Noel and Ninny spend their days corralling and harvesting dragons for pay and achievement points, a partnership defined by their bickering over money, seniority, and credit. Their workload doubles once Wing Bind assigns them to babysit Balgo, whose companion dragon Osushi sprouts wings at the slightest provocation. A supposedly routine call escalates when a subdued dragon peels off its own face to reveal a far deadlier Dark Dragon, forcing the pair into a chase across Reverse London before Noel unleashes serious magic to bring it down.

The situation deepens when Macy Baljure, a fashion icon and former bandmate of Ninny's from Front London, turns up alongside a dragon she raised in secret named Elly. Bruno Bangnyfe, the ruthless director of the Inks division, engineers a scheme to brand Balgo a Punitive Dragon so any witch may slay him for glory. As his plan unfolds, Elly molts under the full moon into her true shape, Cinderella, one of the seven legendary Märchen dragons, and scatters explosive Star Ash across the city.

With destruction spreading, Bruno reluctantly cooperates with Noel and Ninny against the fairy-tale beast, though their combined magic barely restrains her. Ninny confronts Macy about her fantasy of being rescued and taken somewhere special, insisting that the two of them are the ones who cast their own magic. The stalemate breaks when Billy Banx Jr. picks Cinderella off from Wing Bind headquarters with a single precise beam. In the aftermath Macy is reclassified as a Dragonclad and left in Noel and Ninny's care, Balgo's death sentence is quietly revoked, and life returns to its usual chaos.

To coincide with the movie's full theatrical opening in Japan, distributors abroad divided the story into three chapters and rolled them out digitally, letting overseas viewers follow the same October 2020 launch. The picture remains accessible through streaming services including Prime Video and Vudu.

Being an adaptation, the film reworks numerous beats from the source comic. Several sequences are trimmed, others are expanded with added spectacle, and various encounters are relocated or restaged, such as how Osushi first draws Noel and Ninny's attention and where key characters take shelter during the Cinderella crisis.