Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen 2nd Season

When Myne learns that the Holy Church is in need of mana for their relics, she sees it as her chance to be cured of her life-threatening mana disorder. After seeing their bountiful library, she throws herself headfirst into the Church's grasp and begs to join their order. In exchange for her service and her unusually bountiful supply of mana, Myne is given the blue robes of a noble-born apprentice priestess, despite being a commoner. To Myne, all this talk of mana and nobility is trivial, as she now has access to an unlimited supply of books!

As Myne transitions into the next phase of her life in this new world, she soon learns that achieving her dream has come at a heavy cost. Noble society is severe, unforgiving, and fueled by politics and neglect. She must now deal with the class conflict between the noble-born blue robes and the common-born grey robes, the High Priest's attempts to oust her, and constant behavioral issues from her new retainers. With the help of her family, friends, and the enigmatic Head Priest whose loyalties and motives remain unknown, Myne seeks to overcome these obstacles and continue on the path to becoming her ideal self—the ultimate librarian!

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Myne Main

Iguchi, Yuka Japanese

Ferdinand Main

Hayami, Show Japanese

Lutz Main

Tamura, Mutsumi Japanese

Benno Supporting

Koyasu, Takehito Japanese

Tuuli Supporting

Nakajima, Megumi Japanese

Gunther Supporting

Koyama, Tsuyoshi Japanese

Frida Supporting

Uchida, Aya Japanese

Otto Supporting

Hino, Satoshi Japanese

Fran Supporting

Karino, Shou Japanese

Eva Supporting

Orikasa, Fumiko Japanese

Hongou, Mitsuru Director, Episode Director

Watanabe, Jun Sound Director

Ueda, Shigeru Episode Director, Storyboard

Kase, Mitsuko Episode Director

Reviews

Jun 20, 2020

Marinate1016

Recommended

If you’re watching this, you surely know the gist of the story and enjoy it, so I will save you the details of Bookworm’s plot.

Bookworm II picks up right where the first season left off and does everything the first season did even better. We’ve got a wider range of characters who bring a diverse set of personalities and backgrounds to the stories as well as the continued development of Main as a priestess.

Whereas the first season revolves around Main’s relationship with her family and local friends, the second season mainly focuses on Main’s relationship with the church and her retainers. I enjoyed ... that quite a bit as it was an opportunity to learn more lore about the church and its role in society. The show continues to be very character driven and self contained. It’s not overly ambitious in its story and instead crafts a narrative about how the little things we do can affect others around us.

I really enjoy the laid back approach that this series takes and found every episode to be enjoyable. The world is so lush and beautiful thanks to Aijia-Do’s great art and the direction continues to be top notch. If you enjoyed Bookworm I, you will love Bookworm II. If you’re new to this series and are thinking of giving it a shot, I highly recommend it. This is certainly one of the best isekai currently being written. Bookworm II gets 9 printing presses out of 10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jul 19, 2020

Nilsou

Mixed Feelings

Ascendance of a Bookworm is now a well-known anime with a relative unanimity around its quality. I review the S1+S2 here. (english is not my primary language)

I have been quite disappointed by these two seasons...

The anime is the story of a 20-year-old librarian who is reincarnated in a 5-year-old girl body after her death, in a new fantasy/medieval world. All the anime spin around the fact that this new world has not yet invented the printing and so books are rare and expensive.

The anime have a lot of problems in its writing and I will discuss about them, but before, let's talk about the ... art and the OST.
The art of Ascendance of a Bookworm is a bit "cheap", with a bad animation on certain scenes and a drawing a bit strange, particularly on faces.
The OST of this anime is not good at all. We have not a single one recognisable theme and OP/ED are not good. This last point is a very bad point for me : in this type of anime I like to be transported by a strong OST.

The story and the universe of the anime is, from my point of view, not well written. The loop of the anime is simple : the girl knows technologies and things that don't exist in this new world, she recreates it and this is a success which permits the girl to progress in the social structure of this world in order to achieve her final goal : creating a lot of books.

The main problem with this loop is that the universe is constructed to permit this, and this is not done delicately ...

All the world of this anime is improbable and not well executed. The absence of some tech is not credible for the level of civilisation of the world, and the success of the girl invention is too quick to be credible.

The writing has also a lot of inconstancies : one scene the heroine, after having created a book with soot ink, smell the book and say « huuuummm, the good odour of the ink », referring to the nostalgia of books smell in our world. But hey, you just print a book with soot remember, it should smell soot, not modern ink ...
It's a small detail, but all the anime is written like that, and after 27 episodes it is very visible.

Another problem is the reactions of adults to the heroin experimentations and inventions : everybody give her full trust, way too easily. She is a five-year-old girl, her inventions should, sometimes, bring some suspicion. It is never the case in the anime.

The last bad point of the anime is the nature of relations between the heroin and the other characters, specifically in the season 2. In the season 2, the anime takes a strange turn : it becomes an anime on commercial relation between people and on servant/master relationship. And this is strangely executed. The heroin will always construct her relationship with her acquaintance in a mercantile like way : contracts, or material rewards/punishments .

For example, at some point in the anime it happens that the heroine picked up the management of an orphanage with a lot of starving children, and to remotivate orphans she will cancel the charity organisation (everybody had the same meal in the orphanage) to go to a commercial organisation : those who work better will have a better meal.
It's a bit choking, for me, to see that. It's like, in kindergarten or middle school you change the meal relatively to the notes of the student in class. It's a bit revulsing. And the fact that here it's starving children didn't help with my feeling about that.

Another part of the anime is about the relation master/servant. The heroine has some servant and will act in the same way : material rewards and punishment to construct her relation with them. It's very cold and the feeling of the « superior noble enlightened heroines » who manage her herd of servants with a good little candy and pat on the back to motivate them to be good servant is a bit too much for me in this anime.

All the S2 is like that : cold relationship based only on mercantile considerations.

So well, I didn't like the direction of the anime in the S2.

The combo of inconstancies, strange orientation of scenarios and relationship between characters in the S2 and poor art and inexistent OST make, for me, the anime not very good.
It's still watchable, so for me it's a 6/10 for the S2 and a little 7/10 for the S1.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Mar 10, 2023

ThatAnimeSnobRE

Not Recommended

Ascendance of a Bookworm was hailed as one of the best isekai ever made. Something which the fanboys say for every isekai there is, therefore this statement means nothing. What matters is the execution, which for this show was supposed to be how it’s not a power fantasy about a male loser getting reincarnated into a videogame where he is overpowered and forms a harem while fighting the demon lord with his broken superpowers. This show is better because the protagonist is a girl, there are no videogames, no harem, no demon lord, and no superpowers. It’s a simple coming of age, about a simple ... girl, in a simple medieval setting. Or so it was at first, because that is no longer true by the end of the second season.

But first things first. Every story needs to give the viewer reasons for keeping up with it, and this one offered a down to earth isekai. It had a heroine who was struggling to achieve small victories in an almost mundane setting with not much to struggle towards. On top of that she is not exceptionally powerful just because she got isekaied, since she has a very frail body that can kill her if she works hard or if an incurable disease kicks in. Plus she can’t even openly say she is from a different world, because the church is going to execute her as a witch. Plus, because the setting is medieval it lacks even the most basic luxuries and services we take for granted in our contemporary society. They still have slavery and public executions and women wish to be sex toys for men. Everything she does is harder in that world compared to ours and thus every little victory she achieves comes off as rewarding despite being mundane as hell for the rest of us. Or so it was at first, because that is no longer true by the end of the second season.

Anyways, since we need a plot so that the show won’t be a slice of nothing happens, the heroine sets forth to read books. Something a bookworm like her finds to be super important, although it isn’t, but we need her to have an otaku-level obsession over something, so we can also have an objective. Otherwise there will be no plot. It’s why everyone is obsessed with one particular thing in most anime. In Yugioh everyone has nothing better to do than obsess over a children’s card game, in Bookworm Isekai the heroine has nothing better to do than obsess over reading books.

Thus we spend the first few episodes in her trying to find books to read only to find out books are very expensive and very rare and there are no public libraries because the setting is medieval. Thus she sets forth to… print her own books (wut?). Because the most logical thing you can do when you can’t read books, is to print your own books, so you can read… your own books (wut?). If this sounds like a really stupid leap in logic, get used to it because it’s going to keep happening every few episodes. By the end of the second season the objective will have moved and changed so many times to a point where the initial premise will not matter in the least. In fact it won’t even make any sense. Why did the heroine spend all those episodes in trying to print books when she could simply join the church? They have mountains of books in their temples. Oh, that’s right, it’s because we wouldn’t have a show if she did that.

It’s also a plot hole that renders most of the first season completely pointless. It wouldn’t be an issue if the objective wasn’t constantly changing every few episodes, but that was not the case. Each changing wasn’t only moving the goalpost; it was also changing the world and its limitations. Basically, the internal consistency of the story was changing for the sake of plot, thus becoming more and more distant from what it was in the beginning. I mean, it is expected to have changes happening in a coming of age story, but it becomes bad writing when the changes betray the premise and gradually change the show into a more mundane fantasy adventure. The sickly typical girl that makes you so happy to see her achieve small victories becomes a super awesome teacher and a super awesome inventor and a super awesome merchant and a super awesome cleric, while everyone around her are constantly amazed with all the stuff she can do. And boy does she enjoy the attention by constantly smiling smugly. How is this not an empowerment fantasy, and just another isekai, like the ones it was supposed to be different from?

And it doesn’t stop there. Her sickly body that could kill her with simple daily activities ends up having a dark superpower hiding inside her, which makes her far stronger than most people. There goes that appeal, she’s another shonen protagonist with a demonic power inside her. Oh, and that part about not being able to reveal she is from another world because she will be executed? It got revealed eventually, a priest tried to punish her, she used her awesome superpowers for force-chocking the guy ala Darth Vader and then she got forgiven because her super important knowledge of our world will make her kingdom very powerful. What happened to the whole fear of dark magic they all had all this time and how is this not yet another empowerment fantasy isekai, just like the ones it was supposed to be different from?

You think it stops there? In the first episodes the setting was almost magic-free. There weren’t many things you could do with spells for making life easier. By the end of the second season there are huge magical trees and flying lions and knights that use magic to protect the world from evil entities. Which means there is a demon lord out there and they want to use the heroine to help them in defeating him. The show became another isekai, just like the ones it was supposed to be different from.

Therefore Ascendance of a Bookworm is another generic empowerment fantasy that took its time before revealing its true colors as another light novel isekai and betraying any good thoughts you initially had about it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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