We’re at that point of a season where I start to despair that series I love – that aren’t kaijuu – are almost over. Only one ep remains for Champignon no Majo, and at its conclusion it will have adapted well over half of the manga. It’s ongoing but a monthly – Tachibana-sensei has released slightly more than a volume a year. Even if there were appetite for more anime that won’t come for a good while. And I won’t pretend Champignon Witch is some sort of major hit, though it is more celebrated at home than abroad (where hardly anyone even knows Gakuen Alice – outside France, anyway).

This penultimate episode introduced some major new plot twists. But at heart the series remains, for me, a tragedy. Lize and Luna are incredibly tragic characters, each on their own way that’s inexorably tied to the other. We have serious peril at work here – not just from the gooners posseing up in town, but for Lize from Luna’s own people. The Wind Magician is there to test him, and while he seems to respect Luna all we know of him (apart from that he could complain for Japan) is that he’s associated with the Flame Magician. And he seemed more hostile towards Lize than anyone on the Council.

But for now, a more immediate threat is those ungrateful townsfolk. Wind offers that he can spirit the group away somewhere, but where? Henri offers a suggestion, and Wind springs into action just as Henri’s boss sidles up and beholds what for him is a baffling sight. Why is Henri with these black witches? And – more crucially for us – why is the Crown Prince with them too? We knew Lize was someone of importance but I don’t think we’d been told anything like that.

There’s another pretty seismic plotquake to consider here. When the group lands, they’re in a room filled with birds. And it appears to be in the palace. Naturally we can immediately guess whose quarters these might be – we’ve met him. But why does Henri – a white witch – know where the Bird Magician’s home is? And why would a black witch have rooms or a villa at the royal palace? As Claude and Wind bicker at each other Wind makes ready to dispense with Lize, who he’s already deemed a failure. Claude, it must be said, seems to rail at the idea. And rather violently too.

When the Bird Magician arrives, the pecking order (pun intended) immediately becomes crystal clear. Lize continues to wrestle with his existential dilemma. He knows his memories are being robbed of him (keeping a secret second diary confirms his suspicions), and with them his sense of self. He realizes that every time Luna extracts poison from him she shrinks him both metaphorically and literally. Pain is important – we have a right to our own. It does act as a catalyst to change us. Luna’s kindness is the wrong answer for Lize, and he knows it. It prevents he and Luna from ever truly being together, leaving each of them more alone than they would be even if they were literally alone. That’s serious pathos right there.

Lize manages to extract a bit of his poison on his own, forming a sprig of wolfsbane with it. Wind seems unimpressed, but it’s a significant milestone symbolically. The other great problem, however, is the fact that for black witches love is apparently taboo – and debilitating. Luna is overflowing with it generally, but being in the presence of Henri makes the problem much more acute. The implication of this is not lost on poor Lize, of course. While his Sisyphean struggles to become a person Luna can truly depend on are forever thwarted, someone she feels that way about is right beside her. And he’s married to boot.

I wouldn’t expect all of these entanglements to be unraveled next week under any circumstances. But certainly not when they obviously haven’t yet been in the manga. Finding a satisfying landing point is always a challenge for any adaptation of an ongoing series, but I feel as if Champignon no Majo has an especially daunting challenge in front of it. But this adaptation has gotten almost everything right so far, and it’s not like this won’t have been planned for. It’s going to be fascinating to see what choices it makes next week.