Champignon no Majo has totally won me over at this point, as I’m sure has been obvious in my last few reviews. I’m a sucker for emotional authenticity and this series has it in droves. But it also captures the true spirit of the fairy tale in beautiful fashion. It’s all very natural and unforced – the emotion, the storytelling. There’s no pretense at trying to be like something from an old storybook – it simply is. Champignon Witch is a story that’s absolutely comfortable in its own skin, with all the effortless confidence that goes along with that.

There are really two love stories playing out side by side here, but it’s not a triangle when only two people are involved. Luna loves Lize the way a mother loves a child in need (even if not her own). Lize craves that love, no question – part of his emotional identity does align with his physical form. But the real Lize(l) is inside there, and sometimes makes his presence felt. There’s no question that the pangs Lize feels when he looks at Luna are a different sort of love. But even that other Lize is still a child (albeit an adolescent one), and even that Lize still longs for his lost mother.

Given all that, is it any wonder Lize is confused? Add to that the fact that he’s a white witch trying to learn to be a black witch. And, as we’re learning, that’s unnatural to the point of impossibility. He makes incremental progress – for which Claude relentlessly torments him (like he needs an excuse). And he’s malnourished to boot, as Luna’s cooking only looks good – thanks to illusion magic. It tastes terrible, because black witches don’t taste food like humans do. Or need it – they absorb energy from the magic all around them. But it seems it doesn’t work that way for white witches, about whom we learn more this week than we did in the first seven episodes combined.

Luna wants to show Lize love, and Claude constantly hectors her to stop it. On some level I do get Claude – he more than anyone knows what’s going to happen if the Black Witch Council doesn’t like what it finds when it comes to check on Lize. But he has to put a sock in it, seriously (emotional abuse!). Luna badly wants to do right by her boy, and after another eavesdropping session on his talks with the Mushroom Lord she heads to town to try and find a solution. Bookseller-san sells her a cookbook but the villages want nothing to do with selling her produce and such. Even the farmers fear reprisals for doing so, and extort her with ridiculous pricing.

Let me just say, I absolutely love the Mushroom Lord and Ookawa Tooru is absolutely wonderful in the role (I wish I had him to talk to when I’m down). Their conversation about Lize’s struggles is both heartbreaking and uplifting. Lize instinctively grasps the wrongness in magicking away his pain – that pain is valuable, and indispensable to who he is. Mushroom Lord gives him the wisest possible advice. To triumph over the blight that is his curse without using magic, he has to fill his life with so much joy that it smothers the pain and crowds it out. I don’t think Luna and Claude were listening in on that part of the conversation but I wish they had been.

Well, joy in Lize’s life right now pretty much comes down to one thing – Luna. And what’s more, there’s an answer for the food problem. Lize has a green thumb, a genius for growing things. However he senses that this makes Claude and Luna very uncomfortable and he’s not sure why. Even if they don’t understand how white witch magic works, they sense that this is connected to it. And indeed, Lize’s green thumb is because he’s learning – unconsciously – to communicate with the seirei all around him. So much so that they finally reveal themselves to him.

This is the nature of white magic in this mythology. White witches “borrow” it from the spirits – of thistle, of water, of trees and flowers. The spirits ask Lize to sing to them and he does – in their own language, which Mushroom Lord recognizes. This is, pardon the expression, a truly magical moment. Lize is flowering in his own right now, becoming the person he was always intended to become. The problem, of course, is that in this world white witches are anathema to black witches and vice-versa. Does it have to be that way? Perhaps not – I suspect we’re about to find out – but it’s the reality Luna and Claude (and the council) have lived their entire lives by. And that’s not going to be an easy wall to breach.