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YMMV / Read or Die

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  • Adorkable: Yomiko is an incredible dork, being basically a 12 year old book-like girl in the body of a grown woman, but her behavior and gentle heart also make her incredibly endearing.
  • Awesome Music: The OVA features a lot of fantastic 1960s-style spy movie jazz from Taku Iwasaki.
  • Cargo Ship: When we say "Yomiko loves books", we mean it. Several times during the OVA, she looks as if she might be crossing a certain line. Even Joker comments that the experience gained by her from "immersing herself into the book" is "quite similar to sexual ecstasy".
  • Complete Monster: Ikkyu, clone of the real life poet Ikkyu Soujun, is the leader of the I-Jins and a terrorist mastermind. He engineers a number of deaths to get his hands on a book of Ludwig van Beethoven's that contains the secrets of the "Death Symphony". Ikkyu tests the Symphony on a group of people, observing with sick satisfaction as they all kill each other—after which he makes plans to broadcast it across the entire planet so he can exterminate the human race. He also manipulates Nancy, a clone of Mata Hari, into betraying Yomiko—then secretly clones and tries to kill Nancy when he doubts her loyalty.
  • Moe: Yomiko, big time. Hisami is often seen as this, too.
  • Signature Scene: The first episode features an aerial dogfight over the Manhattan skyline between a steam-powered glider and a giant paper airplane, punctuated by Yomiko's plaintive cries of...
    Please give me back my book!
  • Suspiciously Similar Song: One of the tracks in the OVA, "Those who insanely love books say, 'Paper is always with us'", sounds strikingly similar to "Valse Aux-Champs Elysses", a stock music track from the APM library.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The OVA seems like a delightful children's story if you ignore the title at first. It's about a happy and sweet woman who loves to read and has amazing adventures, but it's actually a pastiche of spy films in the James Bond vein with more High-Pressure Blood. Of course, some parts of the franchise also have fanservicy covers, which really should've clued one in that this is not for children.
  • Woolseyism: The dub of the OVA added a lot of clever lines, mostly relating to Nancy's dialogue.

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