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Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito (The Darkness, the Hat, and the Book Travellers), a.k.a. Yamibou, is a H-Game Visual Novel published in 2002 by Root with artwork done by Carnelian. In 2003 it was adapted into a 13-episode anime by Studio DEEN. This adaptation removed the male protagonist and placed it more in the Yuri Genre.

The Great Library: A place where every world is maintained within books. Azuma Hazuki was an Ordinary High-School Student in one of these worlds, until her adopted sister, Hatsumi, disappears at midnight on her sixteenth birthday. At the same moment a strange talking bird appears and explains to Hazuki how she can move between worlds. From then on we follow her quest across many worlds and stories to find Hatsumi, who is in fact an immortal world traveller whose true name is Eve. Joining her is Lilith, the current guardian of the Great Library who had the job dumped on her by Eve. And elsewhere the powerful Gargantua is also looking for Eve as his life was changed when he witnessed Eve's healing powers on his world.


This show provides examples of:

  • Airplane of Love: Hazuki watches a plane in episode 6 as she thinks of Hatsumi, and again in episode 13 as she tries to remember her.
  • All Just a Dream: Hazuki and Hatsumi share a very passionate scene, only to have it turn out to be nothing more than a dream—in the new world at least.
  • Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Hazuki has long dark blue hair and shows very little emotion to everyone but Hatsumi.
  • Alternate Continuity: The series itself, compared to the game by Carnelian.
  • Alternate Self: Tamamo no Mae reveals that Youko Meirin is her alternate self in episode 11.
  • Amazon Brigade: The Oborokamenshuu, female ninjas, from the medieval Japan world. Their boss is a big, masked man.
  • Anachronic Order: The first episode is broken into two parts, depicting the very start of Hazuki's quest and a later adventure within it.
  • Ancient Keeper
  • Asian Fox Spirit: Youko Meirin from the medieval Japan world is a fox girl with two tails who can cast fire magic.
  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Hazuki becomes the new God of the stone age world because she fights and reduces the first one to a pathetic bat-like form.
  • Bait-and-Switch Lesbians: Hazuki never gets her girl, but will give birth to her as a daughter sometime in the future.
  • Because Destiny Says So: Eve's continued disappearances—though this may not be "destiny" so much as a basic part of Eve's character, which makes it all the more infuriating.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: For how much Hazuki puts her in a pedestal, Eve turns out to be quite the capricious character. The time she spends in the book-worlds is her idea of fun, and she doesn't really care about the lives she touches or how deeply she touches them. Eve expresses some admiration for Hazuki's tenacity in chasing her, but doesn't truly love her, and spares no thought for her once they're back in their respective worlds and Hatsumi's existence is wiped out. At the end, Eve just talks about how much she wants to go on her next adventure, showing the experience with Hazuki didn't affect her.
  • Brother–Sister Incest: Hazuki/Hatsumi, since they are sisters (but not by blood). Implied with Eve/Lilith, as they are seen lying on the floor in a suggestive position in the last episode.
  • Butt-Monkey: Ken-chan is abused for laughs several times per episode (that he appears in). He spent the entirety of episode 5 tied up and upside down, for instance.
  • Cat Smile: Meirin does one when she's thinking to use Lilith to help her increase her magical power.
  • Character Exaggeration: In the game, Lilith is an intelligent and cunning woman, if somewhat of a flirt. Only the 'flirt' part seemed to make the transition to the anime, leaving her a borderline bimbo with a lust for Hazuki that wasn't present previously—though even in the anime she hints at being more intelligent and compassionate than meets the eye now and then.
  • Cipher Scything: The nameless body-hopping protagonist of the game is replaced by the minor character Hazuki.
  • Cute Mute: Eve is a kind and gentle girl who is never shown speaking in the worlds she lives in, but when she is in the Library, she is able to speak.
  • Dangerous 16th Birthday: Hatsumi/Eve disappears from any world she enters upon turning 16.
  • Did Not Get the Girl: At least in the anime, Hazuki does not get Eve. Instead, she gives birth to her.
  • Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Hazuki and Hatsumi listen to the OP song on the way to school in episode 7.
  • Dimensional Traveler: Eve and Lilith, as the keepers of the Great Library, have the power to get into the book worlds and leave whenever they want. Hazuki becomes one through having absorbed Eve's magic.
  • Driven to Suicide: Although Ritsuko saves Princess Mariel from Gargantua's possession, Mariel feels she's tainted by having the blood of his darkness inside her and takes poison to end her life.
  • Even the Girls Want Her: Hazuki has lots of fangirls at her school who try to give her gifts and letters, or just squeal when she's playing sports; however, if they're not Hatsumi, she's not interested.
  • False Camera Effects: This show is rather fond of Jitter Cam, using it three times in the OP alone.
  • Fanservice: Covering pretty much every sub-category, too.
  • Forehead of Doom: Lilith makes fun of Eve for having a big forehead and gives her a nickname based on it.
  • Fractured Fairy Tale: One story involves a princess who must choose from a selection of princes who are, due to tradition, forced to dress up like frogs and hop around...
  • Gainax Ending: Hazuki ends up being back in her world, but with all trace of Hatsumi gone including her own memory, and she is now pregnant with a child that will grow up to be Hatsumi. It makes for confusing viewing.
  • Gaiden Game: Yamibous visual novel was given one in the form of Koge to Lilith no Nachtmusik. It's basically Lilith having lots of encounters with people in various outfits, many of them being call-backs to some of the older games that Carnelian worked on, like Moonlight Lady and Machine Maiden.
  • Generation Ships: Episodes 10-11 are set in a colonization starship that's been travelling for 200 years. The only surviving members are the children, but the corpses of their parents are preserved for the computer to trick them into thinking they're not dead.
  • Giggling Villain: The Oborokamenshuu are always accompanied by a creepy, feminine giggle that's not clear whether it comes from them.
  • God Guise: In the stone age world, the inhabitants worship a God symbolized by an eyeball. They mistake Lilith for a divine messenger because of her eyeball hat and worship her. She takes full advantage of this.
  • Hair Intakes: Milka has this hairstyle.
  • Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Tamamo no Mae is a sassy woman who's always drinking sake.
  • Identical Stranger: Hazuki thinks Fujihime is Eve. Fujihime looks exactly like Eve, except the former has purple eyes and the latter has red.
  • Idiot Hair: The Butt-Monkey Ken-chan has a prominent and curly cowlick on top of his head.
  • Immortal Immaturity: Lilith and Eve are rather immature despite being thousands of years old.
  • Immortality Begins at Twenty: Gargantua and Ritsuko are bathed in the "Light of Eve" as young children, which causes them to stop aging once they finish growing up.
  • Inexplicably Awesome: There's no indication that Hazuki learned swordsmanship in her world, but she's very good with her sword and can even easily defeat trained samurai.
  • I Will Find You: The journey to find Hatsumi/Eve drives the plot. Hazuki wants to bring her back to her world, not wanting to let go of her beloved sister/love interest. Lilith wants to bring her back so she'll do her job at the Great Library. Gargantua is madly in love with her and wants to see her again.
  • Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The plot jumps back and forth in time, giving glimpses of Gargantua and Hatsumi's backstories that need to be pieced together.
  • Just Train Wrong: In 2nd episode of the anime there is a scene of an arriving steam train and steam comes out of the sand pipesnote . In Real Life this would just get the sand wet and clog the pipesnote . Besides tha it's totally pointless to sand the tracks when the train has come to a complete halt.
  • Like Parent, Like Spouse: The reason behind Lilith's crush on Hazuki is that she reminds her of her father, whom she was in love with.
  • Love Letter:
    • Hatsumi/Eve is given a love letter by a boy in episode 1. Hazuki finds out and harms her in a jealous rage.
    • Episode 7 has Hazuki receive love letters from an anonymous sender. At the end, it turns out that Hatsumi was the sender.
  • Magical Library: The Great Library consists of books that contain every single world of the multiverse down to the smallest detail.
  • Magic Librarian: Eve and Lilith are immortal dimension-travellers with the job of running the library from which all worlds originate.
  • Mayfly–December Romance: Hazuki is a normal human girl who's in love with Hatsumi/Eve, who has been around for countless ages.
  • Medieval European Fantasy: Gargantua's world of origin (episodes 3-4), a rustic place with kings, princesses, castles and ostracized witches. Weirdly, the witch has a Japanese name, Ritsuko.
  • Milking the Giant Cow: Gargantua usually expresses himself in bombastic body language, kind of as if he was dancing ballet.
  • Minor Major Character: Arya, the silver-haired boy who appears in every world in a minor role and serves as narrator. Is also Lilith's hat.
  • Multiple-Tailed Beast: The kitsunes Youko Meirin (two tails) and Tamamo no Mae (nine). The tails indicate their relative wisdom and power.
  • No Periods, Period: Averted, though it's pretty indirect. In episode 7, Hatsumi texts Hazuki before PE, "Uh oh. It came on all of a sudden! Hazuki, do you have one of those?" Hazuki rushes to give her tampons, presumably.
  • Not Blood Siblings: In Hazuki's world, Eve is her adopted sibling Hatsumi, and Hazuki is in love with her.
  • Not Growing Up Sucks: Milka is stuck as a little girl because of magic. She laments that she can't get a lover that way.
  • Nubile Savage: Quill, who wears a fur bikini and looks as pretty and manicured as the other girls.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Hatsumi is nowhere near as innocent or cute as she first appears.
  • Parental Abandonment: Hazuki and Hatsumi may well have parents, but they never appear, though Hazuki is seen contacting her mother in the final episode.
  • Portal Crossroad World:
    • The Great Library is the place from which all the worlds, contained in books, are accessed.
    • The Universal Garden is also a space between the worlds, but the worlds that its doors lead to are random.
  • Really 700 Years Old: Eve and Lilith are both immortal beings that appear as teenage girls.
  • Reincarnation: Eve is repeatedly born as a child in every world she decides to be a character in. And she will be born again into Hazuki's world, as her child.
  • Ret-Gone: In the last episode, Hatsumi's existence is eliminated from Hazuki's world, reflected by Hazuki forgetting about her and pictures being altered to remove Hatsumi.
  • Running Gag: Gargantua's three minions run to a door that opens on the sky of another world and fall into it, four times, with the same animation.
  • Ship Sinking: Nothing quite kills a ship like giving birth to the person you're in love with. Hazuki giving birth to Eve is what will happen in the show's future.
  • Production Throwback: Hazuki shares her last name with Io Azuma, a protagonist of ROOT's previous visual novel (also with Carnelian's art), Moonlight Lady.
  • Sidekick Creature Nuisance: Ken-chan with his obnoxious and perverted commentary is prone to getting chastised or ignored by the main characters, especially the ultra-serious Hazuki.
  • Spell My Name With An S: Upon broadcast, the most commonly-viewed fansubbed version of the anime had some rather different ideas on name spellings. Among them were Marieru instead of Mariel, Garuganchua instead of Gargantua, Jiru instead of Jill, and most noticeably, Ririsu instead of Lilith. (Curiously, they did not render Adam and Eve as Adamu and Ibu.) A re-release by a different group in 2007 used the romanizations listed in The Other Wiki.
  • Spit-Trail Kiss: Hazuki and Hatsumi's love scene in the last episode has a deep kiss which leaves a trail of saliva between them.
  • Super-Deformed: Koge-chibi looks like a super deformed Lilith but is a separate person.
  • Tickle Torture: In episode 10, Gargantua tickles Lilith so she'll tell him where Eve is. The tickling is in suggestive places and her laughing looks a lot like she's orgasming.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Hazuki's sailor suit doesn't draw much attention however out of place it looks. Meirin calls her out for her weird clothes in a throw-away line.
  • Tamer and Chaster: The game has explicit sex scenes. The anime merely has copious fanservice in the form of scanty clothing and huge breasts.
  • Trope Codifier: The anime popularised the yuri story setup in which a stoic and determined girl with long black hair goes on a long quest to save a gentle girl usually with blonde or pink hair.
  • 12-Episode Anime: The anime has 13 episodes.
  • Wagon Train to the Stars: Episodes 10-11 feature a spaceship that's carrying humans to a new planet for them to settle in.
  • Younger Than They Look: Hazuki at 15 is taller, stronger and more mature-looking than Hatsumi at 16.

Alternative Title(s): Yami To Boushi To Hon No Tabibito

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