Champignon Witch

Episodes 6-7

Whose story is this? The title "Champignon Witch" suggests that Luna is meant to be the main character; indeed, the first four episodes seem to bear that out. But even when she was the central focus, Luna has been a near-silent presence in her own story. She rarely speaks; Lize is the narrator, and everything she does is designed to allow her to slip into the background. That's not surprising – after all, inhaling her breath is poisonous to those around her, so not speaking is the easiest way to keep others safe. Likewise, staying in the shadows protects people from accidentally touching her, thus preventing them from the pain of coming into contact with her skin. But it also sidelines her in a way that belies the title.

Episodes six and seven bring Lize into the foreground. As the newest resident of the Black Forest and Luna's mushroom house, he's a much more active character, one whose state allows him to be curious and to desperately crave Luna's affection. But his arrival on the scene also pushes Luna further into the background, even as Lize seeks her out. You could be forgiven for thinking that this might have been his story all along.

When you come down to it, it's an invitation to think about how fairy tales have taught us to view witches. Champignon Witch, like many modern fairy-tale retellings, invites us to reexamine the witches. Although everyone fears black magic users, we know they're imperative to humans' continued survival. Without them, pollution and miasma would fill the world, rendering it uninhabitable. In episode seven, Lize uses his black magic to save a small rodent, purifying the poison that wracks its body. When Minos reminds him not to interact with the black fog, Lize says he has to help, a reminder that black magic isn't inherently bad and neither are its practitioners. In fact, if you compare the way Lize's own family of white magicians treats him with how Luna does, it starts to look like it's the white witches who are the bad ones.

The excuse that Lize risks becoming The End of All Things feels like just that – an excuse. Luna was meant to spell the world's doom, but she pulled through and is now its greatest ally with her poison-filtering powers. She's trying to ensure that Lize can do the same, and her master, the talking mushroom in the forest, is ready to help her. So if the natural world believes that a Cursed Youngling isn't a threat, why do the witches? Where did the idea of Cursed Younglings come from in the first place? And why, despite Luna's success at changing her fate, was everyone so sure that Lize would succumb to his?

As a throughline, it's an interesting bit of worldbuilding. It suggests that we really can't trust anyone, with Claude standing in for the people who doubt, but are still willing to cautiously wait and see. Claude talks a good, caustic game, but he's really invested in Luna and therefore in her desire to help Lize. He's not going to be nice about it (and Lize certainly doesn't like him), but he could easily have turned his back on Luna. That he didn't says a lot and brings us back to the idea that the natural world isn't invested in Lize's death – that one's all on the people, and Claude, with his uncertain state somewhere between bird and human, represents the conflict between the two groups.

Although Luna doesn't say much, we know that she and Lize want the same thing: to find someone to love, someone who can be with them without being harmed. Luna wants Lize to be happy, which is why she tries to cook for him and pulls the mushrooms born of his bitter emotions out until Claude points out the problem with that. And although she doesn't say much when Lize comes to sleep with her, wearing a sock on his hand so that they can touch, the peaceful way they both fall asleep is beautiful. They're lonely and hurting, but also desperately kind. They deserve solace and love, and if the world, insistent on believing the worst of black magicians and witches, refuses to give it to them, maybe they can find those warm emotions with each other.

What if the End of All Things meant a new beginning?

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