Kurushi!!

okay so basically qifrey has a magical parasitic tree growing inside of him. these type of trees attach to a living host, usually an animal rather than a human, and once the host is sufficiently calm and comfortable the tree takes that as a sign that this is a safe place to take root and it begins to rapidly grow and subsume the carrier.

unfortunately for qifrey the thing that makes him feel safe and comfortable is his boy best friend who loves and accepts him even though he's an shady amnesiac tree person.

so the solution olruggio comes up with here is that he will erase his own memory of finding out qifrey's secret so that qifrey can continue to be stressed and anxious enough to not Die. except it doesnt work in the long term because the exact same thing just keeps happening repeatedly

qifrey so very often tends to clasp his hands together, rubbing them against each other or simply clinging to his long robes. a gesture so telling of just how uncomfortable due to silverwood he constantly is, always slightly nervous, always tip-toeing around the edge of a cliff.

and he's been doing so since childhood! his emotions are so closed-off when it comes to casual body language, which is both an indicator of his character and the ways in which he deals with his curse. unable to trust even his closest friend, he chooses the only vaguely soothing thing: to curl into himself, to detach, to distance.

meanwhile olruggio, despite his scruffiness, generally comes off as a more open, "simple" man, hands flying all over the place when he's agitated. he expresses his emotions freely, without restrain.

qifrey curls into a ball for comfort, meanwhile olly splays like a star, comfortable in his skin an in qifrey's presence

and what happens when they start to interact?

olly keeps reaching for qifrey, talking some sense into him with his hands, with spontaneous and emotional physical touch.

he does so even upon first meeting

he keeps and keeps reaching out to qifrey, both literally and symbolically. no matter how hard qifrey tries to run away, to hide deeper into himself, olruggio will always be there to offer him a friendly hand or otherwise

this particular parallel is especially dear to me:

they changed so much, but they also haven't changed at all

and the culmination of this dynamic in a single image for me is this:

For context, I wrote that previous post in 2020, a few months after chapter 40 of Witch Hat Atelier came out. The post was among the early ones to comment on the parallels between Qifrey and silverwood trees, and to draw a semi-detailed story theory from it. One early commenter coined the term « Treefrey » (I don’t remember their username and can’t find them in my comments or tags, sorry for not crediting them!), and the post spread through the fandom as the Treefrey theory.

After the silverwood tree parasitism entered the plot in chapter 85, five years later, the post lit up again. On the one hand, I received a lot of uplifting and hilarious notes: thank you so much for those! I’ve never had a theory blow up and become a fandom artefact before, so that post was very fun to monitor. On the other hand, most of you have been over-generous about my deduction skills: I was wrong on a lot of counts.

So here is a status report on the Treefrey theory as of chapter 93:

Short status report: I speculated that Qifrey is a tree that was turned into a human, but it looks like he is a human who is cursed to turn into a tree. Rookie mistake.

Long status report: My initial theory went something like this:

(1) Silverwood trees are a non-human sentient species that went nearly extinct after necromancy experiments wrecked their forest in Slistas, so communication between them and witches, and knowledge of their sentience, have been lost;

(2) Qifrey was born, or more accurately sprouted, as a silverwood sapling, but was turned human by the Brimhats using a new form of forbidden magic; 

(3) The Brimhats took his eye to gain the ability to make magic out of their own blood (to bypass the scarcity of magic ink, since most of the remaining silverwood trees seem to be under the surveillance of the Pointed Hats). Having access to Qifrey’s eye would explain why Iguin can use his own blood as a super-ink that enhances the power of simple spells in chapter 12;

(4) Qifrey fears that those experiments blur the line between magic and humans, and threaten the world order created by the Pointed Hats. This world order is based on the sanctity of the human body (no spell should be performed on a human under any circumstance, except for memory erasure). To enforce it, the Great Hall keeps tight control of who knows the secret of magic, who uses magic, and how. Qifrey believes that losing this world order would lead to chaos and war, so he wants to destroy his stolen eye and the research that led to his transformation from tree to human.

(5) Qifrey keeps his mission secret from the Great Hall and Olruggio in particular because his very existence is forbidden according to the laws of the Pointed Hats: he expects his own community to treat him as a monster and a criminal if they find out, and that anyone who sides with him will be punished as well.

As of chapter 93 (2026), we can sort out where I went right and wrong on those different points:

(1) Silverwood trees are a fully sentient species: inconclusive. Their parasitism reacts to animal and human emotions, but this seems instinctive, like reacting to chemical signatures in their host (waiting until the host is at peace as a signature of a safe environment to grow). We got more bits of legends in chapter 47 about humanoid silverwood trees gifting magic to humans, but there’s no confirmation that this goes beyond mere legend yet.

(2) Qifrey was born as a tree then turned human: wrong. I got this one backwards! I am not sure how planting a seed inside of Qifrey counted as « a new form of forbidden magic », since infecting a host seems to be the normal behaviour of silverwood trees. Thoughts welcome on this.

(3) Qifrey’s eye was stolen to produce a new kind of magical ink: mostly wrong. Iguin had no need of Qifrey’s eye to use his own blood as ink, since human blood is shown to naturally react with magical ink and lead to « wild and unexpected magic » in chapter 63. I have to assume this requires a lot of blood, otherwise magic would go berserk whenever a witch gets a nosebleed or a paper cut… As for why the Brimhats needed his eye: in chapter 93 we learn that Qifrey’s right eye sprouted and turned full silverwood. Qifrey speculates that this might have helped the Brimhats overcome the silverwood trees’ lack of compatibility with anxiety-prone human hosts. Maybe seeds produced by Qifrey’s right eye are more tolerant to humans, and have been used on Custas and others?

(4) Qifrey wants to stop the Brimhats’ plans because he wants to preserve the divide between magic and humans: correct-ish? He mostly wants to stop these guys from doing insanely cruel experiments on kids. But he does also seem worried about the new compatibilities between silverwood trees and humans that these experiments may have provoked.

(5) Qifrey is keeping his secrets because his existence is a crime according to the laws of Witch society: mostly wrong. He isn’t about to boast to the Knights Moralis about his skull terrarium situation, but his main worry is the parasitic silverwood that will kill him the moment he lets himself be at peace. Him erasing Olruggio’s memory is a convoluted strategy dating back to their teenage years to keep Qifrey stressed and miserable, because sharing his burden with his friend would provide lethal levels of comfort.

As for my thoughts on the latest chapters and the silverwood parasitism (and I do have to admit that the Silver festival arc went on for so long that I grew exhausted and tuned out chunks of it, so I might have missed details). An evil curse that will kill you if you find happiness works well as a metaphor for post traumatic stress disorder: it shows the hypervigilance that can sabotage a person after they have escaped a violent situation, found safety, and are trying to rebuild their life.

My main issue with Qifrey’s silverwood parasitism, as presented in the flashback, is that it weakens the conflict between Qifrey and the Great Hall / Knights Moralis / Representatives of Witch society’s system of power (including Beldaruit and Olruggio!). I was so interested in this conflict: Qifrey is trying to be loyal to a society that saved his life and nurtured him, but this same society also denied him justice, tormented him by forcing him to live underwater, keeps threatening to take his job, kids and memories away from him, and ultimately cannot see him as human. Sometimes his rage against the Brimhats feels almost like denial, like redirecting his resentment away from the Great Hall and towards an easier outlet. Many of the non-witch characters, especially Custas, have similar conflicts of feeling indebted but also resentful towards the Pointed Hats. I would have loved for them to confront Qifrey on those feelings. Maybe this will play a role later. But the flashback seemed to take away a lot of Qifrey’s anger and agency?

Also, I did love the idea of Qifrey not being human: silly little alien tree man, his existence breaks every cardinal law in his adopted home, getting obsessed with human things like cooking. « At first I thought that having to find, prepare, masticate and digest food was a very inefficient substitute to photosynthesis, but then I found out about picnics!!! *_* »

So I was rereading the manga and I realized that even with the recent revelations there is still so much we don't know about the silverwood and I find particularly interesting how Qifrey's and Custas' silverwood seem to behave differently and it got me thinking.

Custas seems to be "fine" for the most part, until he finds comfort in Dagda's embrace and his silverwood sprouts all at once erupting into a massive tree and once his source of comfort is taken away (aka Dagda dies) he reverts back now sporting stylish silver hair, which is likely a visual clue for hosts that have sprouted and that have been detangled from their trees at least once since silver hair has always been associated with Qifrey before. (suspiciously side eyeing Restys right now)

Meanwhile, Qifrey's silverwood seems to behave more like a chronic illness. It causes him pain and he can feel it writhe inside him every time he experiences comfort. It sprouts slowly with small branches growing first before fully becoming a tree and even when we see him become a tree in the flashback arc it's smaller than Custas' tree and, unlike Custas, Qifrey mantains awareness while the silverwood grows out of him, at least enough to have a full argument with Olly.

It's almost like Qifrey is able to partially resist the tree somehow, leading only to a partial sprouting.

This seems to indicate that either Qifrey has a higher tolerance for the silverwood and so it takes more to sprout from him, maybe due to the multiple sprouting and un-sprouting he went through, or that the two have different stands of silverwood implanted in them and that's why they behave slightly differently.

I'm more partial to the first explanation though, since in ch. 93 Qifrey clearly states that he thinks that Custas' silverwood must be related to his right eye somehow and in ch. 87 both Ininia and Restys seemed surprised that Custas' silverwood sprouted so easily, which only makes sense if they based this on their previous experience with Qifrey during their experiments.

Speaking of the experiments, in ch. 92 Qifrey says this quote:

"My memories are erased and I'm restored over and over again... like a plant split, then replanted"

Which got me thinking... what if this is exactly what the brimmed caps did?

Like, they make him sprout and they take a part of his tree to create a new seed that then they can implant into a new host and then they erase his memory to make him turn back into a person ready to sprout again. This would make him the originator for all new silverwood hosts we see, like Custas and probably Ininia.

There is then this quote from ch. 93:

"My right eye was the only one to sprout during the experiment."

That implies that either there were others like him, implanted with silverwood that never sprouted, or that he was implanted with multiple seeds but only the one in his right eye took root. But the fact that he thought he was the only host until he saw Custas makes me think it's the latter case or if there were other children he either doesn't remember or doesn't know about them or they were implanted after he was found by Beldaruit.

In any case, it's clear that Qifrey is a special case even among other successful silverwood hosts since he has resisted the tree for at least 20-ish years at this point and his right eye seems particularly important.

So, let me give you an unhinged tinfoil hat theory:

Could it be that Qifrey is one of the original silverwood hosts that were created during the age of magic?

I know, I know! Crazy. But here me out!

We all know the fairytale of the star and the silverwood maiden and how it's used to explain the birth of magic but while that is clearly allegorical it must have some semblance of truth. Someone in the time of yore must have discovered that the silverwood woodcruor can be turned into conjuring ink and do you really think that in a time with no regulation over magic nobody had the though to home grow a silverwood forest out of people for convenience?

I actually think that the forest of Thristas was exactly that before whatever killed all the trees happened. It is one of the places tainted by forbidden magic, specifically a magic to resurrect the dead, it wouldn't surprise me if it was also a planted silverwood forest of formerly human hosts and whatever happened that killed the trees was actually a spell that tried to un-sprout the people there. That could count as some kind of resurrection right?

Anyway, for the sake of my crazy theory let's say that this happened and that Qifrey was one of such hosts, turned into silverwood to have a steady supply of conjuring ink before the day of the pact was made. He somehow lived on as a tree, basically in some form of stasis, until the brimmed caps found him and reversed the tree with a memory erasing spell and then proceeded to use him as their lab rat to study the silverwood for whatever reason they might have and then they discarded him when they didn't need him anymore.

My question now would be why did they bury him in a coffin and just got rid of him?

I mean, even if I'm way off the mark with my theory, Qifrey seems to have been an important research subject for the brimmed caps when it comes to silverwood so something must have happened to make them toss him away like a used napkin.

But I don't think we have enough info to piece that together yet.

Anyway, let me know what you all think about my theory or if you have any other insight!

The way Shirahama is so smart. Qifrey can never be comfortable in his entire LIFE and never really has because of his anxiety and fears, but being scared of dying constantly being enough for him to fend off the silverwood spreading. but i feel like in the nearer chapters its going to come to a point where quifrey is immobilized due to his illness and the girls will need to go to their library test to find more info on how to cure him

anyways, all my screenshots are taken from the internetarchive,

Also like. Thristas.. Are they slowly trying to revive beasts/ people who were once silverwood trees? Was Qifrey dead and from the past?

I'm going to just babble for a bit

I'm going through a few theories on what the 'experiment that started with him" could be but I do have an idea on the witch that looks like him is

which would, in my opinion, most likely be Iguin.

His mask is an eye, Qifrey is missing his eye,

If Qifrey would be Coco's teacher in the light, than Iguin would be her teacher in the dark. He is the first witch to encounter Coco and give her magic to destroy, while Qifrey is the one to get her magic to create.

(side note, i really like how Qifrey likely knows this trick because of Beldaruit's doubles.)

of course he also knows the answer to this riddle, which is "comfort" which is very cruel considering it is something he can never find either

i guess it might be semi-public knowledge of how silvervine trees originate but its also leads me to a lot more questions like silverwash and Tartah's parents. Not that they're ever mentioned but Tartah does live with his grandfather, who doesn't suffer from silverwash. Maybe it's just a result of the deep seated entanglement of the parasite and its host.

the silverwash effects his eye color and with chapter 86 we can see that the silvervine taking root has also absorbed the pigment of Kustas' hair, making it similar to Qifrey's.

Is the tree in the stationaire's shop one of Tartah's parents? could be a wildshot, but its not out of the ordinary.

Anyways, knowing that the silvervine ink also once originated from a living being, it makes sense that that is how magic ink came to be. Spells cannot be cast without the ink of the silvervine, and boiling down the "blood" of the tree gives it the special property to make it magical. Which turns out is just any blood.

Knowing that mixing blood intensifies the power of the seal

and this panel again in chapter 3,

the small glass seal allowing iguin to dilute the ink with his blood which allowed Coco to cast such an intense spell, and that glass shard

SPECIFICALLY being referred to as its twin, one being held by Qifrey and the other by Iguin. Yeah . They are clones or brothers.

Its possible that Qifrey is the original and Iguin has a body grown with forbidden magic from the lost Eyeball. Especially think its weird that Qifrey knows there's a brim hat that looks like him.

ANYWAYS i won't be surprised if im not the first person to come up with that., but back to Thristas, which we know only a bit about

i keep getting distracted re reading old chapters

the spell here has got to be one he used the first time they went to the library.

This is crazy bc how does Beldaruit not know when just a chapter earlier he was saying all this shit as he saw Qifrey off

He wants to find and destroy the right eye, which means its probably being used as a source of magic similar to the twin vials, Maybe if Qifrey turns into a tree, the eye will too. Or maybe taking Qifrey's blood and using it, since he is in a late stage of the transformation, would make the most powerful ink of all.

We open on the atelier's dark windowway, that activates to reveal Coco superimposed on a forbidden magic seal. We never really saw it in the manga, but it's definitely the one she traced over in ep 1.

I think this represents how that petrifying spell is what opened the door (windowway) into the world of magic for her.

We then transition to this shot of Coco with various objects hanging on strings which matches the volumes' table of content page. The hanging objects are different for every volume, and I've only put a picture from volume 1 for reference, but I think we can find objects that appear up to volume 9, notably the ink bottle with the nib on the left and the three star shaped tassel next to it.

Now, I don't think that this means that we are going to see volume 9 animated because that's well into the Silver Eve Arc and there is no way they are fitting 45-ish chapters into 13 episodes but maybe we'll be getting hints or set ups for future arcs? I've seen on twitter (which is questionable at best) that they are apparently shuffling around some chapters for the anime and this might be an hint at that if that turns out to be true? I'm not against it to be honest, we'll just have to see how/if they do it.

We then have a shot of Iguin and their picture book transitioning in to this Coco panel that is clearly a call back to the chapter 3 cover. This is really cool, but I'm not sure it has any meaning besides being a nice call back for manga readers.

We move on to the title card with a quadryphon passing over it, and it's probably a stretch, but I was immediately reminded of this beautiful panel from ch. 8. Not really a deeper meaning to it probably, but I thought it was a neat detail.

Then, we get this blink and you miss it shot of the Three Wise, which is likely a direct nod to this panel form ch. 30. This happens right at the end of the Second Test Arc, which we are getting animated at least in part, so for me it's a 50/50 if this means we are getting at least Beldaruit introduced as a cliffhanger for the Great Hall Arc for next season (pretty please) or if it's just a nice foreshadowing for the worldbuilding, which is more likely as this is followed by a quick shot in the same style of the Tower of Tomes.

We then move on to one of my favorite shots of the op: Coco in between her pointed hat and "her" brim hat with scales in the background. This encapsulates perfectly her struggle throughout the entire series and I love how it's portrayed in the op.

We then have a few establishing shots of the atelier family (minus Olly) and Coco's mom (is that to show her two families? T.T) before we transition to a beautiful scene of baby Coco at the fair that culminates with this shadow of Iguin looming over her in the form of a brim hat. I don't think I need to explain how neat this is to anyone who has read the manga.

Then, we move on to this sequence where everyone in the atelier is drawing something together. We can clearly recognize Coco from her straight line and the way she holds her pen. Opposite her we can find Agott with her expert and steady curve, in perfect opposition and mirror to Coco. In the bottom right corner we have Richeh with her small seals, and in the left margin we find Tetia. In the top left corner we find Olly with his searneedle wand. I love how he waits for the girls to take the lead before joining in the drawing as well. Opposite him, in the top right corner we find Qifrey, who is notably the only one not drawing. This could just be because, his job as master is to supervise the spells, so he's observing here, but knowing what we know about him this breaks my heart. Olruggio, too, waits before joining in, observing their students, but the thing is that he does join them in the end, while Qifrey doesn't. It creates this separation between him and the rest of the atelier, like he can't join them, not fully, or we all know what happens to him. This double meaning kills me! Good job Bugfilms, I'm emotional over my pookies drawing lines now.

Then they move on like nothing happened to this shot of various seals. I can clearly make out Tetia's bed of sand spell, it's basically center frame and very visible and the spell under the scattered palm quire pages could be the flying puppet spell they use to distract the dragon, which makes a lot of sense since we are getting the dragon this season but then there are a few other seals that I'm wondering why they included... The first offender is Olly's phantasmal pyreball seal, it's partly hidden under the pages at the top of the frame but it's one of the more unique spells we got in the series so it's clearly recognizable but it's introduced well into the Silver eve Arc so I'm not sure why it's here... is it to represent Olruggio? It's roughly where his hands were last frame but why not make it a simpler pyreball or the snugstone seal then? There is also the big spell in the top right corner that I couldn't really figure out what it is but to me it vaguely resembles the one Jujy uses during the silver eve parade to guide the fishes? There are also a few smaller light spells scattered all around, though I don't remember if they have any relevant use.

On the other hand, you can make out the memory erasing spell from beneath the pages on the right corner. This was already clearly shown in episode 2 (fowl move btw, have it be represented as fire burning the memories away) and it's interesting that here they put it roughly where Qifrey was in the previous shot...

Speaking of Qifrey, we transition to a shot of him with a pen and a ink bottle reflected in his glasses, which is very pretty, but I'm still unsure if it's jus a cool shot to signify his job as a master or if it's an hint toward his secret and the true nature of conjuring ink. What I'm sure of though, is that someone in that studio had a fun time with this next shot of Qifrey surrounded by silverwood trees, which, besides it being a gut punch to my feelings it's also a clear nod to the ch. 14 cover page.

Next we move to a couple of shots that pay homage to Shirahama's gorgeous paneling but in anime form. I didn't notice anything noteworthy on the first one with Coco, Tetia and Richeh, besides the girls being cute, but in the second one, besides orufrey doing their usual subtle yearning, I noticed the gadget in the second panel to the left. It looks like some sort of aid to draw circles? A weird protractor or compass maybe? Or is it automated? Is it a real tool or a magical one? It's certainly interesting and I don't remember seeing anything like this before so does anyone have any ideas?

But speaking of longing stares, we have Agott looking at Coco and then a picture of her 'outsider' self is superimposed over her. This could mean that at this time in the story she can only see the outsider girl, and not yet Coco herself (but we'll get there).

Then, we have this shot of the underwater Great Hall with two random witches? Correct me if I'm wrong but we don't know who they are right? We also get a good look at the Argentgard (but no Beldaruit) which, again could be hinting that we are going to meet him by the end of the season.

We then have a cool shot of the Knights Moralis before moving on into this shot of Coco following the lights into the windowway. At first I thought each color represented an atelier resident, but going frame by frame, the only colors clearly visible are purple, orange and light blue. Now, either these are for Agott, Olruggio and Qifrey rispectively (because those are the colors they are usually associated with) and we are missing Tetia and Riche for some reason, or these are just cool effects and I'm reading too much into it. I could also see it being a representation for Agott, Tetia and Richeh, but while light blue works for Richeh, Tetia is always associated with pink, not orange? I don't know, I'm probably overthinking this shot. The next shot, on the other hand is clearly inspired by Agott's decorative spells and it's cute that we see all the fantastical animals and three witches that might represent our girls.

We then move through a couple of shots until we get this panel of the girls (and Brushbuddy!) framed by a dragon tail that I think is a nod to the chapter 6 cover art.

Then, we get this beautiful shot of Coco and a mirror that for some reason really made me think of the cover art for chapter 28. It's not a one to one, but it certainly has the same vibe and theme of duality within Coco.

We move on to this cute shot of everyone passing through different frames as if they were windowways, which slightly reminds me of the cover art for chapter 60. Also, we got a look at Alaira and Euini, which for me, with the ed, basically confirms that we are getting at least up to ch. 23 animated. With all the hints at Beldaruit making an appearance I'd wager we're getting up to ch. 30, but that's my personal preference speaking.

We then move on to a shot of Kalhn, with an obvious reference to the famous double spread page of the stairs from ch. 5, followed by a beautiful shot of the silverwood inside the stationary shop. We end the Kalhn section with this cute shot of Tartah, Agott and Coco but, as many have already pointed out, Agott has very few interactions with Tartah, so it's interesting that they decided to put her here to cockblock share in Tartah and Coco's shenanigans.

We move on to this cute sequence of Coco's joy being reflected on the many ink bottles of Tartah's shop which is really cute, but it also made me think of the cover art for chapter 17 with Tartah inside the fractured ink vial. (I'm sorry, I put too many images in this and tumblr is yelling at me... you'll have to look this one up)

After another quick session of orufrey longing stares, we move on to my favorite sequence in the op: the picture frames as windowways. It's a stunning scene to end on and not only it references one of the anime key visuals, but it strongly reminds me of the chapter 39 cover art.