Overview (Spoilers Below):
Apprentice witch Meg Raspberry is told she will die in a year unless she collects one thousand tears of joy.
Our Take:
Don’t you hate it when you reach a specific age and discover you have one more year to live? It’s sudden but also quite terrifying, especially at a young age. This particular fate falls upon an apprentice witch named Meg Raspberry, who trains under Faust from the Seven Sages following her parents’ death. This sudden revelation is part of an unknown curse known as “Death Sentence”, which increases a person’s age rapidly in a matter of weeks. This only occurs when Meg turns 18, so she has only one more year to live out her days as a witch. However, the only cure necessary to break the Death Sentence spell is to collect joyful tears from one thousand people to create the Seed of Life, which grants immortality.
This episode sums up the latest fantasy anime featuring a witchy protagonist accomplishing a seemingly impossible journey and maybe learning some lessons along the way. I’m not sure how long it’s been since I watched an anime about witches, though Trigger’s Little Witch Academia suddenly came to my mind when someone mentioned this genre. However, Once Upon a Witch’s Death is obviously a different spell compared to the show involving a normal girl becoming a witch, as this anime already started out with Meg as a witch, though not for long. But, they do seem to have common traits of being ignorant and energetic, which Hannah Alyea suitably conveyed for Meg through her voice performance without becoming too much of a nuisance.
“The Witch With One Year to Live” didn’t take long to start the concept right off the bat, along with some instances of world-building and character backgrounds. Additionally, the tone identifies the show as a light-hearted comedy consisting of Meg’s far-fetched reactions and thickheadedness, at least in the first half. However, the second half of the episode takes a pretty heavy turn when Meg is tasked with helping Anna and her father, Dr. Hendy, cope with the loss of her mother, Iris. Although the tone didn’t change too rapidly, it showcased its efforts of providing heart into its mature themes amid its cheerful appearance, even though the execution faltered a bit in conveying genuine emotion.
Overall, “The Witch With One Year to Live“ is a pretty surprising start to Meg’s adventure in fighting her fate. It certainly has plenty of charm in its humorous appeal, mainly from Hannah Alyea’s charismatic performance, and the animation by EMT Squared was handled a bit better here than The Unaware Atelier Meister. However, the episode’s second half is what made me enjoy it more than I anticipated regarding its portrayal of loss. It’s far from groundbreaking execution-wise, but there’s definitely some spark in its heartfelt themes, like fate and life, that could make the series an enjoyable addition to the witchy anime catalog. That is, if the later episodes continue to provide a similar direction like this.