English Dub Review: Once Upon a Witch’s Death “Blessings With the Opening of the Gate”

Overview (Spoilers Below):
Meg helps Sophie, the Witch of Blessings and one of the Seven Sages, open the gate at the Otherworld Festival.

Our Take:
This week’s episode continues to shift away from the tear-collecting journey to focus on the show’s “Otherworld Festival” arc, which started at the end of last week’s episode.  Unfortunately, due to Faust’s injury, the role of opening the portal to the Other World now belongs to Sophie Hayter, the Witch of Blessings and Meg’s supposed “rival”.  The latter is due to Meg’s jealousy towards Sophie for becoming a Sage first, despite being the same age as her.  However, as it turns out, there’s actually more to this soft-spoken sage that makes this rivalry short-lived.
Sophie seeks to practice her magic to find a way to eliminate it from existence, which sounds pretty villainous at first.  But she had an understandable reason behind her intent.  It’s revealed that Sophie was born in the Northern regions, where magic is seen as “the work of the devil”.  With Sophie being born with red eyes, blue hair, and her miraculous abilities, everyone around her mistreats her as the devil, including her own parents.  Regardless, she’s been able to use her gift to make people happy, but it’s not enough to fill Sophie’s empty heart until Meg comes along to assist her in opening the gate.
“Blessings With the Opening of the Gate” follows the previous episode’s structure, which involves the show’s introduction to one of the Seven Sages.  While that episode involving Inori had its share of humor, this one was undoubtedly the most sentimental, especially regarding Sophie’s tragic past.  But, as usual, it’s not all doom and gloom thanks to its humor balancing with its depressing moments.  However, I question how Meg treats Fine as her “love of her life”, with one piece of dialogue going a bit too far.  Besides that, this is another endearing episode that’s surprisingly more focused on its world-building than Meg’s survival.