Every once in a while, something lands in the NGE inbox that I probably wouldn’t have found on my own, and Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia is one of those.

The more I started looking into this one, the more I understood why people are talking about it.

Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia is a 2026 anime series set during the 13th century, when the Mongol Empire was expanding across huge portions of the world. At the center of the story is Sitara, a young girl whose life is completely changed by that expansion.

She loses nearly everything and eventually ends up inside the very empire she has every reason to hate.

Here’s the part that really caught my attention, though: Sitara’s greatest weapon isn’t magic.

It’s what she knows.

According to the official ⁠Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia⁠ site⁠, Sitara is taken in by Fatima, a woman from a family of scholars, and eventually learns just how important knowledge can be when everything else around you is completely out of your control.

That idea is really what pulled me into this story.

The series is based on Tomato Soup’s manga A Witch’s Life in Mongol and comes from animation studio Science SARU. The official staff and cast page⁠ also lists Naoko Yamada as executive director and Abel Gongora as director.

Despite having “witch” right there in the title, this isn’t a story about somebody running around casting spells.

Sitara studies. She watches people. She learns. She figures out how to use knowledge in a world where the people around her have armies, political power and physical strength that she could never compete with directly.

There’s something I really like about that.

And the story gets dark pretty quickly.

The official episode guide⁠ shows Sitara’s life being completely torn apart after the Mongol army invades Tus. She is taken captive, loses people she loves and eventually begins working her way into positions where her intelligence becomes useful to some very powerful people.

All while carrying a serious desire for revenge.

Yeah. That’s a pretty damn interesting setup.

And people really do seem to like this thing.

At the time of writing, Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia has an 8.4/10 rating on IMDb from around 1,400 users. You can see the current score on the IMDb page for the series⁠.

But I was actually more interested in what regular viewers were saying than just staring at a number.

Anime discussion threads have been extremely active since the series premiered. The Episode 1 discussion on Reddit⁠ drew a huge response right away, and that continued throughout the season.

What really caught my attention, though, were the conversations about the history behind the series.

There are Mongolian viewers who absolutely do not agree with every choice the story makes. Some feel certain historical figures or events are being portrayed unfairly or inaccurately.

Other viewers have had almost the exact opposite reaction.

One detailed discussion in the Mongolia subreddit⁠ praised the amount of historical research behind the series and said it was exciting to see Mongolian history getting this kind of attention.

And honestly, I find that whole conversation almost as interesting as the show itself.

Historical fiction is always going to make people argue about what it got right, what it changed and what was done because somebody was telling a story instead of filming a documentary.

But if people are watching an anime and then immediately going online to research 13th-century Persia and the Mongol Empire?

The show clearly gave them something to think about.

What keeps pulling me back to Jaadugar, though, is the women at the center of it.

Sitara doesn’t have an army.

She doesn’t have some secret magical power that’s suddenly going to fix everything.

She has her brain, what she’s learned and her ability to understand the people around her.

Eventually she crosses paths with Töregene, another woman with her own complicated history involving the Mongol Empire.

The official site⁠ describes the two women as being connected by a shared desire for revenge, and eventually that relationship becomes a major part of the story.

Two women who probably never should have crossed paths, trying to survive and maneuver inside one of the most powerful empires in history?

Okay. You have my attention.

The first season wrapped with Episode 12 in September 2026. The official ⁠Jaadugar⁠ news page⁠ confirmed the finale aired on September 12.

If historical stories, revenge, political maneuvering and women figuring out how to survive systems designed to overpower them are your thing, this might be one to put on your list.

Anime fans clearly found something here.

And considering this started as an email sitting in my inbox and ended with me going down a rabbit hole about 13th-century history, I’d say Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia managed to get my attention too.