Witch on the Holy Night Gets January 2027 Cinema Release in UK and Ireland

Crunchyroll announced in a press release that it and Sony Pictures Entertainment will bring Witch on the Holy Night (Mahōtsukai no Yoru) to cinemas. The ufotable-animated film opens in the UK and Ireland on January 29, 2027.

Sony also released a trailer. The film arrives in Japanese cinemas on November 20.

The returning cast includes:

• Haruka Tomatsu as Aoko Aozaki
• Kana Hanazawa as Alice Kuonji
• Yūsuke Kobayashi as Soujyuro Sizuki

The original visual novel’s smartphone version launches on November 20, alongside the film’s Japanese opening. Type-Moon’s most recent release of the game arrived on Steam in December 2023.

Aniplex released the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch editions in the West in December 2022, simultaneously with Japan. Those versions have sold more than 150,000 copies worldwide.

The visual novel takes place in the late 1980s. Protagonist Aoko Aozaki is one of two sisters who stand to inherit a long family line of modern MAGES.

Despite having little interest in magic, Aoko is unexpectedly named heir to her family’s magical art. She reluctantly becomes an apprentice to Alice Kuonji, a young witch living in an isolated manor on a hill.

Aoko juggles her magical studies with her role as school student council president. She also meets transfer student Sōjūrō Shizuki, whose name appears as Soujyuro Sizuki in the game’s English version. Much of the modern world is unfamiliar to him.

Meanwhile, Aoko faces schemes from her older sister, Tōko Aozaki, who believes she has been denied her birthright.

The story provides one of the few concrete links within the loosely connected “Nasuverse.” English-speaking fans use that term for the shared universe and cosmology of Type-Moon works, including:

• Tsukihime, whose protagonist Shiki Tohno receives early guidance from an older Aoko Aozaki.
• Fate/stay night.
• The Garden of Sinners, whose protagonist Shiki Ryōgi works for an older Tōko Aozaki.

Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon- remakes Type-Moon’s Tsukihime dōjin visual novel. It launched in Japan on PlayStation 4 and Switch in August 2021, followed by an English release on both platforms in June 2024.

Witch on the Holy Night began as a novel in the mid-1990s, among Kinoko Nasu and artist Takashi Takeuchi’s earliest collaborations before founding Type-Moon. They shared its draft only with friends and never officially published it.

Type-Moon later adapted it into a visual novel featuring graphics by Hirokazu Koyama. It shipped in April 2012, with two sequels planned.