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While fantasy anime is getting a lot of attention thanks to shows like “Witch Hat Atelier,” “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End,” and “Delicious in Dungeon,” historical anime is also having a bit of a moment.
In 2025, Netflix released “Orb: On the Movements of the Earth,” which was about heliocentrism in medieval Poland. Next year will see the release of “Historie,” based on the life of Alexander the Great’s secretary Eumenes. This year, however, we have “Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia.”
Based on the manga “A Witch’s Life in Mongol” by Tomato Soup, the show is a fictional account of the life of Fatima, a favorite of Töregene, Great Khatun of the Mongol Empire. Set in early 13th-century Persia, the story follows Sitara, a young girl sold into slavery by a family of scholars. When the Mongols invade her city, Sitara’s life changes forever, and she begins to plot her vengeance.
One of the key elements of this adaptation is historical and cultural accuracy. Author Tomato Soup is known for the extensive research done for the original manga, so the anime team went to great lengths to capture the look and feel of both Persia and the Mongol Empire. Advisors for each culture were employed not only for the portrayal of the nations but also for the language, with the show having several characters speak Mongol. This, unsurprisingly, proved to be a challenge.
“We had some Mongol actors, but we mostly had Japanese actors having to do some of their lines in a different language,” Góngora, who directed the first episode of the anime, told IndieWire during the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where “Jaadugar” was in the TV competition. This included casting two Mongolian sumo wrestlers based in Japan to play characters in the show.
“We want the audience to understand the dialogue, but Sitara doesn’t understand what the Mongol characters say, so we want you to identify with Sitara, hence having to have dialogue in Mongol. It was a challenge having the Japanese actors also do lines in Mongol, but they did a great job in the end.”
Though the team at Science Saru strove for accuracy, they also had to break a few rules to, well, make a TV show. As chief director Naoko Yamada (“The Colors Within”) explained, they sometimes had to “make things more interesting or more simple or make it more familiar for how those countries have become, especially Mongolia.”
Sure, the production design creates a living, tactile picture of the Persian city of Tus, with its crowded bazaars, its decorated homes, its people, but there were very specific rules that the consultants shared which the team had to break. At one point, the consultants said the animators couldn’t include a character smoking in the show because that wouldn’t have happened at that time in Persia. But the team wanted to include one because “if you go to a bazaar in modern-day Iran you would have a lot of people smoking shisha or similar things,” Yamada explained. “We ended up not using that character, but we would constantly do this, breaking history in order to represent and homage the cultures as we know them today, even if it’s a bit anachronistic.”
It’s not just historical accuracy that could be bent for the sake of entertainment. Even if the backgrounds and the production design strive for accuracy and realism, the show is unafraid to embrace being cartoony, or adding a little western influence. For the Spanish-born director Abel Góngora (“Scott Pilgrim Takes Off!“), the original manga’s expressive, cartoony character designs were an opportunity to bring a little Disney influence to the show. The Tomato Soup manga is already heavily influenced by Osamu Tezuka (“Astro Boy”), who himself was influenced by Disney.
“I wanted to add a little of that Disney look to the character acting, pushing some of the scenes to make it a bit comical,” Góngora said. You can see this in some of the more comedic characters in the first episode, who act like characters in a ‘90s Disney Renaissance movie like “Aladdin,” with fluid, rubber limbs, and wildly expressive faces.
“We have a lot of foreigners in the studio compared to most anime studios in Japan,” Góngora added. “They were excited to add a different style to their work.”
Even in the first two episodes, it is clear that “Jaadugar” is a story about the power of learning, about the joy of studying and how it changes your world when you’re exposed to new ideas or cultures. Several times in the first two episodes, characters emphasized that seeking knowledge is a sacred duty for every Muslim.
“Learning and acquiring knowledge is a means of self-respect for Sitara,” Yamada explained. “But as she starts spending time in the Mongol Empire, she starts getting complex feelings towards them. Sure, she’s lost her homeland because of them, but also she starts to have some respect for the Mongols as she learns more about them. Having knowledge and experiencing new things changes you; it changes Sitara. How the character begins to think differently through each new experience is one of the key things I wanted to do with the show.”
“Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia” premieres July 4 in Japan on the TV Asahi network but has yet to announce a North American streaming date.
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