Once Upon A Witch’s Death / ある魔女が死ぬまで – Volume One Manga Review

A young witch learns she’s cursed to die in a year unless she can do the impossible.

Official Synopsis (Yen Press)

Meg Raspberry lives a charmed life in the English countryside as an apprentice to the powerful witch Faust. That is, until her seventeenth birthday rolls around, and Faust reveals that Meg will die in a year from the Death Sentence curse! There’s only one way to avoid her inevitable demise—collect a thousand tears of joy to create a Seed of Life, which will grant Meg immortality. But can Meg still find joy in her circumstances? She might have to learn how anyway…The clock is ticking, and this deadline has no extensions!

My thoughts on this volume (Spoilers!)

I have very mixed feelings about this volume, so I’ll start with what I enjoyed.

This series follows a young witch apprentice named Meg who learns she’s cursed to die in just one year. Although her situation seems absolutely hopeless, she decides she may as well try her best to live. This optimism in the face of hopelessness is my favourite thing about this volume! It feels kind of similar to when songs with upbeat melodies have sad lyrics.

I had thought this volume would be more episodic, following Meg on her journey of collecting 1000 tears of pure joy. Instead, it focuses more on the emotional aspect of watching Meg and her loved ones cope with her fate. While we do see Meg collect a grand total of two tears in this volume, the tear collecting seems to take a backseat in the narrative. I enjoyed this, as I found Meg to be the perfect protagonist for such a tragic story! She decides early on that she wants to live, and runs straight into action. Sometimes she acts before she thinks, but that’s exactly the type of person that could thrive in such an environment.

Moving on to what I didn’t love about this volume, there were mainly two things: the art, and the feet. I am very picky when it comes to comedy manga, regardless of the demographic. I prefer it when the comedy comes from character interactions, and the majority of the comedy in this volume stems from the art. While the art is typically very pretty, character expressions will become simplistic and exaggerated for the purpose of comedy. While there is nothing wrong with it—I find it to be a rather common form of comedy in manga—I’m personally not a fan.

My second gripe is with Inori. I was very frustrated with her character, as while she had a lot of characteristics I found to be admirable—I think she was the one who gave Meg the push she really needed to not give up—I felt like her character was degenerated to be used as fetish content. She’s clearly designed to be the most beautiful character in the volume, but there are constant mentions of her “stinky feet”. And when I say constant, I really do mean constant. Her character is introduced by her foot on Meg’s face—we literally see her foot before her face. Meg meets Inari and instantly tells her to take a bath because her feet are stinky, the two go out to collect herbs because Inari’s feet are stinky, Meg washes her feet, and in Inari’s goodbye, again, her stinky feet are mentioned. While this is a comedy manga, it really just felt like fetish content by the end of the chapter. Like, I get it. Her feet smell.

Maddies Manga