Most of the fantasy novels I’ve read have mostly ended up being these epic adventures on massive scales. But every so often there are stories that are on a smaller scale that’s more relatable and grounded with a touch of magic. Despite the terrifying fate hanging over Meg Raspberry’s head from the start of the book, it doesn’t stop her from doing her daily routine despite having a new priority in life taking over. Once Upon a Witch’s Death is a fun and thoughtful story about facing mortality and facing it with kindness.
Character Development
10/10
Putting my own bias forward, I love Meg Raspberry. She is a fun and happy character with both serious and silly moments despite an impending doom hanging over her head. She absolutely loves magic and, even though it’s the cause of her death timer, she still wants to use magic to help her gather the tears of joy to cure her curse. Throughout the first volume, she encounters different aspects of death unrelated to her own but cause her to think about what it means to die and what that does to those left behind. While she’s a fun and silly character, cracking jokes and saying some stupid lines, she treats these grave moments with the seriousness they deserve and shows real sincerity when she wants to help others. There’s even a point where she could get tears of joy quickly by “conning” people into crying tears of joy, but realizes it feels wrong to her and would change who she is. She wants to help people but she wants to do it in a way that is genuine even if it’s harder. She’s a wonderfully written character and she’s a delight to follow.
The supporting cast of characters are sweet and well written in their own way, though they are rather flat and relatively static characters but they serve their purpose for the story very well. They work as plot elements for Meg to view life, death and magic in a different perspective that helps change her own views on the matter and her own mortality. Some of them are fun and fantastic additions, Inori being one of my favorites.
Plot
7/10
While I do love Meg and her journey, there’s an element to the story that feels missing. There’s a key aspect that one would expect from a story like this and that’s urgency. Meg only has one year to collect one thousand tears of joy to remove the curse that is going to kill her in a year’s time and it never really felt like it was a serious concern. While it doesn’t take away from the emotional journey that Meg embarks on, it does create this nagging feeling in the back of the mind that something isn’t quite right. It’s hard to judge because it’s also an aspect of Meg’s character which I truly love in that she is quite selfless in her desire to help people with their problems despite the severity of her own.
Part of this might be because Volume 1, while it does end on a relatively strong not, doesn’t feel like it’s a conclusive end to a book. Part of this might be due to the story being a light novel, a manga, and recently an anime as well. I haven’t read the manga yet but I have watched the anime and the first season ends further in the story than Vol 1 does that does actually feel like a proper end to the first part of the story. It’s not to say the way this story progresses and ends is bad, but rather it ends on a point that doesn’t feel like it moves the overarching plot in a significant way.
Worldbuilding
5/10
As much as I enjoy this story and the characters within it, the world feels unrealized and almost inconsequential to the main story of Meg Raspberry. The town of Lapis is, for a lack of a better description, a rather generic fantasy town without a lot of depth and the nation kept rather mysterious despite referencing that the United States exists in this world. It’s a bit strange to not explore the implication of magic affecting the known world even in a cursory manner.
There is enough of a soft magic system that what happens has some rules that seem quite flexible, though it’s a more nebulous take on the notion. The worldbuilding feels like it’s more conceptual and about the nature of things as opposed to any solid rules when it comes to magic. There is no real power scaling here because there’s not even a scale to reference aside from the seven sages. Still it’s not so loose that it takes away from the overall feeling of the story.
Writing Style
6/10
The way the story is written does lack some important aspects from time to time. For instance, when there’s more than one character present it can be difficult to determine who is speaking as there’s no indicator as to whose said something. The normal indicators like “Meg said” are not here which makes it lose not only the indication of who is speaking, but also some added description in how they communicated that message. The writing is also a bit barebones in terms of description and focusing more on action and emotion rather than much exposition. It’s not the worst, but it does take away from the overall impact that could be had.
Score
7/10
Raph's Cozy Musings 