Studio Ghibli turns its attention to an orphan with an unusually stubborn streak in Earwig and the Witch, a 2021 fantasy adventure directed by Gorō Miyazaki.
What is Earwig and the Witch about?
Earwig has spent her whole childhood in an orphanage without ever learning that her birth mother practiced witchcraft. That gap in her past becomes urgent once a strange pair of guardians take her in, upending the only life she has known. Determined rather than frightened, Earwig sets out to understand the household she now lives in, run by a self-centered witch who has little interest in raising a child. Along the way she uncovers a hidden world of spellcraft and potion-making, along with a song that may hold clues to the family she was separated from. The film follows her stubborn curiosity as she pushes past the witch's secrecy, trading fear for persistence at nearly every turn.
About the cast
Gorō Miyazaki directs, with Kokoro Hirasawa voicing Earwig alongside Shinobu Terajima and Gaku Hamada as the household she is taken into. Sherina Munaf and Etsushi Toyokawa complete a cast built around this small, tension-filled domestic setup rather than a large ensemble.
Context & significance
The film marks a notable stylistic turn for the studio behind it, applying its house sensibility for detailed, character-driven fantasy to a story built around a single household rather than a sweeping adventure. Its focus on a headstrong young heroine navigating unfamiliar magical rules places it alongside other coming-of-age fantasy stories where the central conflict is domestic and personal rather than epic in scale. At 82 minutes, the film keeps its scope deliberately small and contained, favoring a slow accumulation of household detail over the large set pieces more typical of the studio's other fantasy work, and it draws its tension from the mismatch between a child's directness and a witch's evasiveness rather than from any external threat.
Watching Earwig and the Witch on Ktime
Earwig and the Witch streams on K-Time with a free account login, and the page itself is open to browse without signing in. This title is available with Persian dubbing, making it easy to watch in Farsi, all through K-Time's Farsi-language interface designed for the Iranian diaspora.