Side Character Spiral: Olruggio

Oh that guy? He's here too.

Witch Hat Atelier is epic. It’s incredible. I didn’t have huge expectations for it (not sure why), but when it nearly pulled off an upset in Barnes & Noble’s Manga Madness (which was my idea, I’ll have you know), I started paying attention.

Lo and behold, as many of you already know, what’s here is rich and it is sustainable. No character feels flat or predictable and some characters are so unexpected that I was surprised they were even in the story.

That would refer to Olruggio.

When Olruggio first appears in the story, I thought he was an intruder in Qifrey’s Atelier. Legit. Here we’ve just been meeting all of the apprentices, learning a bit about the way Qifrey runs things in his little abode, and oh, here’s this gruff and bearded dude who lives here too.

As we know, most of the side characters I spiral about have a degree of the unexpected to them, but none, none, to the point that I didn’t even expect them to be in the story. Or, I guess I should say, none that, when they appeared in the story, I wondered why they were here. Because how would I ever expect anyone to be in the story before I’ve met them.

Anyway, Olruggio is a rung below Qifrey on the wizard ranking, meaning he doesn’t take on apprentices, but that appears to be a choice. For as warm and welcoming as Qifrey is, Olruggio mostly keeps to himself. But he has a subtle empathy to him, a deep understanding, when we see it asked of him.

Which immediately lends itself to a compelling character. If a character presents one way, but then acts another way when the situation calls for it, there are any number of assumptions you can draw: that he’s useful, adaptable, immensely capable, but maybe just a bit removed. He’s guarded of his secrets, and I’m only assuming he has secrets because everyone has secrets. He’s also guarded about his feelings, and about expressing them.

There’s so much there to want to dig into, but since he keeps to himself and isn’t always in the story, we only get small peeks. Which makes him infinitely more compelling. We have to try to make the most of him when he’s there.

I want to go back to the whole “didn’t expect him to be there” notion. A likely set-up for Qifrey would be him and his apprentices. That would be the expected structure in the witch hierarchy, as well as the expected set-up for a master and apprentices. It’s this little blast of newness that there is an in-between, a region between master and apprentice, and that is Olruggio.

Will he one day sit in my plastic hall of fame? Probably, honestly. Although I do take personal issue with that goatee of his. Not a fan of that. It doesn’t match his hair.