With Champignon Witch, I find myself not really caring how well this show is received (or not). I mean it is doing very well in Japan – it’s ranked #10 (above the likes of Seihantai) out of nearly 70 winter series on Anikore. Not much notice in the English fandom, apart from right here. It’s just a story that’s very personal to me. I feel it very deeply, so it doesn’t matter whether a lot of other people do or not. It’s important in the sense of it getting a second season eventually, but that couldn’t happen for a few years even if it were a blockbuster.

You know when a series switches the OP and ED that it’s going for emotional punch. What sets Chanpignon no Majo apart is how it combines real darkness – like, seriously tragic – with whimsy and…. gentleness? I can’t think of a better word, and actually the more I mull it the more I like that one. This is the proverbial iron fist in the velvet glove. There can perhaps be no more relatable theme than the sheer unfairness of life. Most people feel that deep down, and some not so deep. In that way maybe it’s surprising that the series doesn’t seem to be resonating with Western audiences, but maybe it hits too close to home. People might not like being reminded.

We deal with some housekeeping early in the finale. Henri is, it seems, a relative of the Bird Magician. And he’s related to white witches – living as a sort of double agent, it seems. That’s fascinating in and of itself and begs further exploration. But what’s poetic about all this is that it was because of his brief romance with Luna, which he overtly remembers none of, that Henri has decided to help his cousin. He – like me – sees the plight of black witches in this world and rails at the injustice of it. So that incident has had a positive impact in some sense. And indeed, I think a positive impact on Henri specifically.

But it’s the Wind Magician who commands the stage for much of this episode. He’s a lot to take, this guy. His personality is almost as grating as Claude’s albeit in a totally different way. But I get where he’s coming from here. Wind – well, he wants to be called “Gus” (his name is Gustave) so I’ll oblige – had a very nasty task to deal with. Maybe he didn’t do so as neatly as Bird would have liked, but he did the best he could. And took on an inordinate amount of poison in the process, I might add. Gus sheepishly asks Luna if she might “do that thing” – so Luna does what she always does, heals and soothes those who are suffering.

This is a rather beautiful moment, in the way difficult things in Champignon Witch often are. But it’s yet another reminder for Lize of how rough he has it. He flat-out asks Luna if she can do with this any illness, and she answers that if the malady is tied into a person’s destiny, she can’t simply remove it. She can leave it inside them to fester, or remove it “at a cost”. Lize knows all too well that this applies to him. And he knows all too well what that cost is, in his case. The burden black witches have to bear is certainly unfair generally. But what Luna and Lize have to bear is beyond the pale (and he’s not even a black witch).

Lize does know, at least, that he and Luna share a very powerful bond – they were both cursed younglings. She escaped her fate, but it’s still undetermined whether he will. And in fact, it’s up to Gustave to decide in the short term. He reminds the others of that once the big fires have been put out and Henri has returned to try and prevent his boss from figuring out what’s really happening with him. Gus takes Lize outside to make his assessment outside the earshot of the others, but Luna watches every moment of it through a window, looking pensive.

This scene is truly a beautiful, terrible sadness. For all his bluff and snark it’s clear Gustave is not without sympathy. He’s brutal with Lize – he tells him that the love he holds for Luna is like forcing her to grab a bouquet of roses by the thorns. Luna cannot love, because she’s a black witch. But her heart didn’t get the memo, unfortunately. I don’t know whether this proscription of love extends to the protective, maternal kind – which she clearly feels for Lize. But Wind makes it clear that Lize has to let this go to have any hope of overcoming his destiny.

As it turns out Gus has a very good reason to feel empathy for Lize here. Is the person he tells Lize about actually Luna? It’s not made explicit either way, but I suspect it was. Either way – after agonizing over whether to give up being a black witch – Gustave ripped his feelings of love from his body and cast them away on the wind. They were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, he tells Claude. And even though the pain of losing that love was almost unbearable, it gave him hope to realize that he had something that beautiful inside of him.

Well – forgive me, but I think one is either the sort to see the poetry in that, or they’re not. To me, that’s such a gorgeous and melancholic image. Wind understands Lize,  and Lize comes to understand him. It’s not for Lize to belittle the ability (or lack of) in others to feel love. We all have our burdens to bear. But Lize’s are heavier than anyone else’s. Sadly for him, if he’s going to move forward, he has to accept that reality if not embrace it. Which he does – he accepts the condition that he must allow those and all painful feelings to be pulled free of him. But thanks to his little mushroom friend and his secret book, he doesn’t have to forget the truth.

I can’t but repeat – poor Lize. All he wants, really, is to be allowed to grow up and to own his own pain. And that’s denied him, just as his love for Luna is. He’s a white witch and Luna and black one, and each are forced to deny their true nature for different reasons. But this is another bond they share – they know who they are, even if they cannot truly live and love as that person. But they’re together – that, at least, hasn’t been taken from them. They’re not alone, and they can savor the small happinesses of life. There are so many painful lessons in Champignon no Majo, but perhaps the positive one we’re left with in the end is that we should appreciate that which we have.