Once Upon a Witch's Death

Once Upon a Witch's Death — What awaits us at the very end of the tunnel...or in this case, the unpredictability of life where we would be told to depart from the world early? In a world where the likes of Kanehito Yamada's Sousou no Frieren a.k.a Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, and other similar adventure fantasy stories exist to keep the belligerent mind thinking of existentialism and the like, it always comes down to the hard-hitting questions that are the utmost and deep, but sane, questions that linger in our minds when topics like life and death are not often raised. Such is the case ofone such show this Spring season: novelist Saka's lone work, Aru Majo ga Shinu Made a.k.a Once Upon a Witch's Death, a show so underrated that everything on the surface seems simple; however, it is anything but. What are you going to do if you're told at your Sweet Sixteen, turning seventeen once your birthday strikes, that death incarnate awaits you in a year's time? If you're thinking of partying and enjoying what life has to offer for the year-long limited time, you're right. If you're thinking of just giving a heck of a care to the world but are still being taught life stories that, as cliché as they sound, are life lessons that you can't take away, you'd be right too...if you can put yourself in the shoes of the laid-back magical girl of Meg Raspberry. The apprentice to one of the Seven Sages of the land, the Eternal Witch Faust, whom the lone granny has been taking care of this girl for quite some time, it's quite the bombshell of truth to be given a death sentence of an incurable curse this early, and yet, not feeling like there's enough time to savour life at its finest. As much as the unwilling magician sucks her thumb at the disposition of the stark truth, she's told one final "quest" before she departs from the world: "Collect in a bottle a thousand Tears of Joy. No questions or answers; how you decide to collect them is anyone's guess." That, there and then, starts the grumbling young magician trying to understand how cursed her life is...or, in a twist of blessings in disguise, spending time with people to get those Tears of Joy anyhow she could. From the get-go, you know that this show is something special when, like Frieren, it doesn't try to sell you man-made creations for the sake of drama, hype, and the like. This is an anime that gets to the heart of the truth at its very core, and it's not pandered to sugarcoat the frailty of life as something that is a throwaway thought at best. Through Meg, her POV into her death incarnate circumstance forces her to (literally) "go out and touch grass" and visit people whom otherwise she would not have met. Should she choose to just laze like a couch potato, this "life" of hers would not have hit the same as like motivation lost from an incurable disease. From the newfound friends of fellow magicians (like Sophie Hayter) to the ordinary folk who would otherwise just see Meg as a nuisance of a young adult, the unwilling young magician herself peers at her surroundings with the magic of her know-how to help even the most maligned of people, and in turn, allows the softening of her heart to learn and have a burden for the same group of people she interacts with. It's like Jesus Christ and the 12 Disciples along their journey of Christendom, spending time with people of all statuses, and not in a single moment judging them for who they are, serving them to their humble roots. And nothing quite says it all like the symbolism of raspberries: the plant's bushes used as boundaries to protect sacred spaces from unwanted spirits; its leaves and canes believed to have magical qualities that could drive away negative energy and promote harmony. In a modern context, they represent kindness and virtue in the language of flowers, often used in bouquets and garden designs to convey these attributes. The resilient and tenacious nature also makes them a symbol of perseverance and determination, qualities highly valued in modern society, and their ability to communicate subtly yet powerfully enhances the emotional impact of gestures. For a show of this nature, character is of the utmost importance, and novelist Saka gets the formula right, interpreting Meg Raspberry as the girl who didn't know that she could do things beyond her scope as someone who sees people as equals and learns of their ambitions and struggles—that's the daily bread of the ordinary folk. I love Meg for a lot of reasons, one of the utmost important traits of which is her steadfast willingness to help without judging, which is a fine character trait to have and one that helps bolster her own circumstances with the people that deeply care for her, no matter if she's going to die in a year's time or the next day. That's melancholia in quite the rosy way, as cheesy as it sounds, and as playful as Meg always puts it out to be. In fact, she's one of a handful of female protagonists who are not only strong but can also joke at their circumstances (when the situation is right) and live life on a pedestal as if death doesn't faze them. No matter the issues that she faces, both minor and major, she takes them with a happy heart, not wanting to worry the people around her, and just goes around being the good Samaritan that'll please people out of kindness and virtue. If anything, this is a show where "girl power" is not only first and foremost, but it excels to a degree that (to my knowledge) hasn't been seen much in the anime medium yet. Still, blending both the old and tried tradition of magic with modern technology? It's quite the aesthetic for standing out in a way that's not done without risk involved. Also, the Raspberry name isn't just for show, but its hidden meaning, which is linked to love, kindness, and protection; they are also associated with fertility, abundance, and even fragility due to their delicate nature. For the 3rd-rate studio of EMT Squared, the studio has constantly been bombarded with bad and mediocre works left, right, and centre for quite a while now. But in this Spring 2025 season, other than Sunday's Kanchigai no Atelier Meister a.k.a The Unaware Atelier Meister, both this show and Ballpark de Tsukamaete! a.k.a Catch Me at the Ballpark!, to dub the "EMT Squared Tuesdays," have been quite the blessing in disguise for such anime of different calibres, yet both are enjoyable in their own right. Moreover, I'd say that out of the 3 shows this season, this show has definitely been given EMT's big glow of production, and it benefits all the more from it with rich and luscious animation (even when it feels minimalistic at best), so not once do I feel like this ever came from the studio at all. And as a crowning achievement, this is in-house director Atsushi Nigorikawa's first show, and he has done a marvellous job adapting the LN, with the assistance of series composer maestro Keiichiro Ochi at the scriptwriting helm. Even better, the music is tailored for it. Going into this anime with the help of famed music composer Akiyuki Tateyama (of Yuru Camp fame) for the OST, I instantly knew that I would be experiencing a whiplash of emotions, and truthfully, this is what we got, unapologetically front and centre. Maaya Sakamoto coming with her slow burn of an OP song, "Drops" is simply put, her latest and most emotionally exuberant song ever that helps lean and grow the anime's charm when it comes to accentuating emotions, and I LOVE it. Aoi Teshima's ED, on the other hand, is fine and all, but calm, collected, and enjoyable due to Yuki Kaijura's composition, though considerably less than the perfect OP. Instead of gloating about the current AniManga industry filled with hype, shill, and the like, I'm just sad that works like these are few and very far in between. This show has been quite the acid trip of emotions that, at times, can be speechless and/or unspeakable, filled with joy and such that even when desperation wears on the sleeves of all of us, hope for the better is never too far away. And in such thoughts, we should care for existentialism just as much as shows like this have taught us how to be better people, and while we may not have the magical fantasy, it still captivates us in a manner that brings us to our very knees to shed Tears of Joy, something we can wish for where we can afford to be a little more like Meg Raspberry. A bittersweet tale of fantasy adventure that's wrapped with human humour and supernatural magic that, when combined, gives you a sense of emotion? That's why the quiet ones shine when the big guns fizzle to nothingness, and I can promise you that Aru Majo ga Shinu Made a.k.a Once Upon a Witch's Death, is a show that will pander to the soft and beautiful hearts wanting and wishing for hope for a better day, every day. It's a crowning achievement for a show that's not Frieren, but there's a story to be learned as well.

A common question that people get asked is what they'll do if they learned they only had a short amount of time left. Something that never gets considered, however, is what they'd do if they had a way to prevent this hypothetical fate. Would they try to do the thing that would save them as soon as possible, or would they put it off until the last minute and end up dying, anyway? The reason why I'm pondering this is the subject of today's review, Once Upon A Witch's Death, which I found out about when the anime was announced and thought seemed interesting. Itseemed heartwarming yet simultaneously heartbreaking, and....well, in some ways, I was right about that. Once Upon A Witch's Death, originally titled "Aru Majo ga Shinu Made", follows Meg Raspberry, a young witch who is an apprentice to Faust, also known as the Eternal Witch and one of the Seven Sages. On her seventeenth birthday, Meg is given some shocking news by Faust: she only has a year left to live due to a curse that, once she turns 18, will cause her to rapidly age and die. All hope is not lost for our young heroine, however, as there is one way to break this curse; she needs to consume a Seed of Life, which can be created by collecting one thousand (crystallized) tears of joy. Why did Faust only tell Meg about this when there's not a whole lot of time to collect them all? Because Faust knows Meg well enough that she knows that she'll procrastinate on collecting the tears of joy until it's too late. (Man, ain't that a mood....) Anyway, with this newfound goal and a limited amount of time to accomplish it, Meg starts to help the people of her town of Lapis with their problems, forming worthwhile connections with each of them and really coming into her own as a witch in the process. Look, I really want to say that I really like Once Upon A Witch's Death, as there is quite a bit of it to like. For example, I really liked the character of Meg Raspberry. She has a cheerful personality despite her circumstances and a willingness to help the people around her, no questions asked. I really liked seeing how her character developed. I also kind of liked Faust, although I wish the series explored her character more than it did. A couple of other things I liked were the opening and ending themes, which are respectively "Drops" by Maaya Sakamoto and "Hana-saku Michi de" by Aoi Teshima; I'm not sure if I would go out of my way to listen to either of these songs (okay, maybe I would do that for the opening theme), but they do fit in with the fantasy setting pretty well. The voice acting is also pretty decent, with Youko Hikasa giving a particularly good performance as Eldora, even though her character doesn't appear much in the series. With that said, however, I do have one major problem with Once Upon A Witch's Death, and it has to do with the way Meg is going about collecting the tears of joy in the first place. It's a fundamentally flawed method, since there's no guarantee that she'll get the correct kind of tears she needs for the Seed of Life, if any at all; in fact, there are a couple of times where she gets (crystallized) tears that aren't exactly tears of joy. Another issue is that going around and helping people with their problems would take a longer time than she'd be likely to have. There is one episode where she actually gets quite strategic with how she does this, but she ends up being told that she's in the wrong for it, and it turns into a lesson on actually cherishing the people she meets and helps. It's a great lesson on paper, but things like that do take some of the urgency of Meg's situation away. The anime also has a "screw you, go read the light novels" type of ending where we don't get to see the end result of Meg's quest, so there's that, too. What else is there to say....? Well, there aren't any unlikable characters (at least, no unintentionally unlikable characters), but I didn't really care too much about all of them. I thought Sophie's backstory was pretty sad, but other than that, I don't really have any strong feelings about her character. I don't have very strong feelings about the animation, done by EMT Squared, either. The colors and character designs are very good, and there are some gorgeous shots occasionally; however, there are some moments where the characters' movements feel a little stiff. At the very least, it's an improvement over anime that they've done in the past, and given the fact that the studio was working on two other projects that came out this season (including the pretty boring "Unaware Atelier Meister"), it's a good thing that Once Upon A Witch's Death didn't turn out terrible! Overall, Once Upon A Witch's Death was an okay anime, which is a shame, since I really wanted to like it more than I did. That being said, anyone who likes witches and is really into the fantasy genre in general might get more enjoyment out of it than I did. Maybe some moments in it might make you cry some tears of joy of your own!

I came in expecting fantasy drama, and instead got emotional damage and a main character who roasts everything that moves. She's chaotic, sarcastic, and somehow deeply relatable — like if anxiety had a sword and a to-do list it kept ignoring. Every episode lands emotionally, balancing humor and heartbreak with surprising grace. The side characters? Not just background noise — they shine, grow, and hit hard when it counts. The world-building is subtle but immersive, never forced, always intriguing. It’s hilarious, heartfelt, and weirdly comforting. If you like laughing through tears while questioning your life choices — this one’s for you. Idk how but the mc is one ofthe best mc i've ever seen

Great concept! Weird execution. I went into this anime really wanting to like it, then immediately souring on it halfway through the first episode, but pushed through and realized it's better than I first thought. It's not terrible by any means, but I think it has some serious flaws. First, I love the concept. The main character, Meg, is told on her seventeenth birthday that she only has one year left to live until she is killed by a curse, and the only way to prevent it is to collect one thousand tears of joy from other people. And second, Meg is very likeable as a character.She's cheerful and optimistic, but she also has a vain and greedy side that gets played up for laughs. It's fun watching her interactions with the other characters that get introduced through the show. But there's a HUGE problem with how the main conflict is treated. The anime is a comedy, which is fine, but at times they mostly treat Meg's condition as a joke, showing that she doesn't really take it all that seriously because of her upbeat personality. There's a jarring tonal mismatch between how serious her condition is, and Meg's reaction to hearing and knowing about it. At times literal weeks pass it feels like she's mostly dicking around instead of going out of her way to do something about it. I mean, no one is perfect and you can only do so much, but get your priorities straight! Overall it's fun and watchable, but don't expect to be blown away.