This show and this episode especially make me want to must on sadness. It’s an elusive quality in fiction, largely for one simple reason. It’s impossible to come by it dishonestly. You can fool some by manufacturing it through manipulation, but discerning palates can spot the fakery every time. Champignon Witch has no fakery in it. It’s fantasy, but the writing is grounded in emotional reality. It has no pretense, no interest in irony. It’s not trying too hard to make you feel a certain way – it just has a story to tell, and lets the audience make of it what they will.
Generally when you come across a series like that it’s rich in pathos, and Champignon no Majo certainly is. This is a very messed-up world Higuchi Tachibana has created here. The black witches have inherited all the dirty work while the white witches suck at the bosom of power and privilege. Luna is especially ill-served by fortune. She absorbs the poisons of the world and leaves behind a safer and more pleasant place for people to live in, and all she gets in return for it is whispers and open derision. But then, there are worse things than that.
The whole Cat Witch thing seemed like a pretty big deal when it was introduced last week, which made its lack of mention in the first three episodes feel kind of odd. The decision to introduce her after the fact is an interesting one. I’m not sure if I agree with it but in a vacuum, this ep worked beautifully. Dorothy – the Cat Witch – is a tsundere sort, like most cats. She shows up at Luna’s cottage in the company of the Mouse Magician and the Bat Magician, and apparently all three are witches-in-training under the Beast Magician. This makes the fact that Luna got promoted to full witch so quickly a bone of contention with Dorothy.
The thing is, Luna is so socially isolated that she has no idea Dorothy is trying to bully her and thinks she’s just got nice visitors. Desperate for company she serves them tea and cookies (which she hasn’t touched). Slowly Luna’s kindness and lack of guile wear down Dorothy, who comes to like and then love her. Luna has taken the Black Forest and purified it to the point where she feels comfortable letting her cat charges run around in it. But Dorothy is no better-liked in the human world than Luna, and we already know tragedy is coming.
Apparently the cat magician and her charges are tasked with spying – presumably on white witches, mainly. One of Luna’c charges disappears inside a white witch’s mansion, and she’s captured trying to rescue it. There’s no justice for black witches and Luna pays the ultimate price, leaving behind heartbreaking reminders of both her life and how it ended. Luna can purify even souls, it seems – all of the negative energy attached to Dorothy’s unjust death is washed away by Luna’s magic, setting Dorothy free – but as we know, in some sense she remains very close to Luna (and her familiar Sisi becomes Luna’s housemate).
All that brings us to the present moment – one the Cat Witch made possible with her spectral intervention at the Black Witch Council. The boy finally wakes up, but he seems to have left most of his memories behind (along with about ten years of his life). His too was a painful existence it seems – he worries that as his painful memories are being drawn from him (by Luna’s magic, presumably) they’ll leave nothing behind. But the boy grabs hold of one precious memory and refuses to let go – that of his late mother, who tried to protect him. She told him his true name – Lizel – and that he should never reveal it to anyone.
It appears that Lizel does in fact reveal his name to Luna at the end – though seemingly reflexively, as he wakes from his slumber. This is the sort of story where it seems a guiding hand of fate is often at work, but if it was indeed chance that delivered Lizel into Luna’s arms, one can hardly argue that both of them were overdue for a little good fortune. Luna is a lonely soul full of love with no one to share it with, and Lizel is a cursed boy who needs all the love he can get. It very much seems as if everything up to now has been the prologue, and Champignon Witch is only now beginning its real story.
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