[00:00] A picture book fantasy world where a socially introverted girl has lived alone as a witch for many years. She produces medicine and other alchemy products for an unsuspecting populace that shuns her for her powers. Her dark hair and ability have branded her as a black witch, someone that needs to be
[00:16] feared and avoided. But wherever she walks, poisonous mushrooms sprout in her wake. Today is day 17 of me giving my impressions of new anime from Winter 2026 and ranking their first episode accordingly.
[00:28] Champignon Witch does try to at least be a little sneaky with its title. Following Japan's habit of sometimes over-adoring France and its people, champignon is the French
[00:40] word for mushroom, so technically this series is translated as Mushroom Witch, which is quite apt considering the majority of our protagonist's power set. This is a series that likes to mess around with preconceptions, even with its protagonist.
[00:54] She walks around, sprouting mushrooms everywhere, like this is some sort of grim retelling of that one A.A. Milne short story, but with poisonous mushrooms instead of flowers, only to then have some spirit entity explain to the audience that her powers aren to sprout mushrooms specifically but rather to gather all of the poison and negative energy into a central location which then manifests as mushrooms
[01:17] So her walking through town looks like she's making everything worse by just leaving poisonous mushrooms behind. But in reality, those mushrooms are gathering all of the negative energy and then sprouting due to how terrible your town is, which now should make everything easier to be removed
[01:33] and cleaned up because they're just mushrooms. Get rid of them. But because of prejudice, no one will know or care that this witch is helping to do that. Now, our witch here might eventually find love. However, as the local womanizer catches her eye and after accidentally making him a better
[01:48] person by drawing him, I think he becomes infatuated with her and she would respond in kind if she wasn't a nervous wreck and already so socially awkward. It's a cute series and one that I will probably end up using as a palate cleanser throughout
[02:02] the season, but honestly, a part of me is worried about the quality of the production, you know, when there are shots of our protagonist in the opening sequence that still has traces of white outlining her body like this is a bad Photoshop cutout.
[02:17] Not sure what's going on there. Anyway, let's hope for the best and prep for the worst. B-tier.