Ascendance of a Bookworm (Anime)

Series just got going with a flash forward to an arc the anime very well might not even get to. Adapted from the manga, presumably, which is an adaptation of the web/light novel.

Currently wondering myself if anything different will be done with characterization or plotting. The early story can be a little slow and offputting for some, but that may actually just because things take a lot longer to say in text than to show with images.

Anyway, I think we should keep this a spoiler free thread, if you don't mind. The light novel's translation probably covers everything that will be in this season and the machine translation covers the entire story, so I don't think new viewers want to be bombarded with that stuff while the series is ongoing.

I watched the first episode (will check the second later today), and I gotta say I love the basic premise. Though that is to be expected, since I am a born bookworm :D

Watched the second episode. Not really a fan of some of the translations but whatever. Gunther's coworker is giving me creep vibes though I hope I'm proven wrong.

Otto's a nice guy. And the second episode was nice, I made fun of her over the chickens, but honestly I'd faint at the big stabbing too

They were not very creative in designing the fantasy alphabet: the spelling of Main looks very much like roman alphabet MAIN with the m and a upside down.

Well, this is a Japanese show, so not like that's their normal alphabet... Also they were spelling it "Myne" in episode 1, and if the comments on CR are correct they had it right the first time. Though I'm mainly just wondering what her parents are going to think if they catch her scribbling complicated kanji.

Episode 1 was maybe a bit slow-paced, but after episode 2 I'm definitely sticking with this one. Such a mundane-sounding concept but it's just so (weirdly?) fun to watch. Reminds me of Spice And Wolf in a lot of ways (mainly the setting/vibe and Myne's sneaky-snarky inner personality). Closest thing to an Iyashikei-Isekai I've seen so far.

So, just watched ep 2, and God I am falling in love with this series. :D They even had a pigslaughter-party like I remember from childhood :'D (though of course we kids were inside when the actual killing of the pig happened, we were allowed to help out in the stuffing of sausages.)

It's interesting how she seemed to have retained even the muscle memory of writing kana and kanji since her kana and kanji are neat unlike her attempts at learning the new writing (which are about what you may expect from a completely fresh learner), but her body is still much weaker now (just as weak as Main's always was) despite that... Her writing her original name, Motosu Urano, and then telling herself that is not her name anymore was really sad.

Which begs the question... I really hope the reason Motosu Urano could be reborn as Main was not because poor little (original) Main died...

Speaking purely in general terms, I find it interesting how few series actually acknowledge that this used to be another person's body when you get this type of isekai. In the sense of 'Okay, then where did that person go?' When it's answered, the answer usually is that they died, though.

Why does every Japanese girl know how to make shampoo?! And good, they skipped the "my family is filthy and gross" stuff.

I'm not too versed in isekai (this and Konosuba being pretty much the only ones I know) but is it common that the character in question gets to that world as a placeholder instead of just their own person?

BTW I'm planning on checking out the manga esp. since 13-14 eps are probably not going to get us far... gonna be curious how it holds up.

You've basically got three flavors of isekai. You reincarnate as a baby and grow up, you just get dropped into the world at your current age with your current appearance or you take the place of someone else who used to be there, which is what we have here. The first is for stories that want to take their time, the second is for stories where someone deliberately did something that would move one person to another world and the third is for stories that want to skip the diapers but also not have the main character feel like a foreigner to the world. It also lets you avoid anything like a character with agency who brought the current situation about deliberately, which would interfere with a story like this. So far as I know, at least, no one brought Maine here on purpose.

This is also pretty common in stuff like villainess isekai and other stories where the MC takes the place of a person in an already existing story. Stories like these typically ignore what happened to the original person, just say 'Eh, they died' and move on quickly or go with the cop out of 'They awoke to their past life memories' even when this doesn't actually make any sense since their personality takes a 180. Sometimes it gets a little more complex, but one of these three options is what happened to the original 95% of the time.

...Long story short, this is obviously the 'someone replaced an existing person' type story. As Maine mentioned in the episode, she's very small and weak even for her age and can't get outside easily, so she only really has relationships with her immediate family.

Edited by Arha on Oct 10th 2019 at 11:38:55 AM

Ah I see, thanks for explaining. At least even if it's sad, they kinda prepared the thought that the original Main died, given how frail and disease-prone she was, instead of just dropping idk what on her (like they did with Motosu).

Another thing I found hilarious is how she immediately picked up on what was going on with Ralph and Turi, then was completely embarrassed (but at least not to tsundere levels thank God) when Lutz came around. Is it wrong that I ship them in a Puppy Love kind of way (wanting them to walk in the meadows and make flower crowns for each other, or sit somewhere and talk, or Main reading aloud to him, things like that)? I mean technically Main's mental age now is at least 18 and Lutz is still 5, even if Main is hella inexperienced in these things...

Edited by akanesarumara on Oct 10th 2019 at 6:38:29 PM

I personally don't ship it but that's because I'm a filthy elitist and I don't want my MC marrying a dirty commoner.

I think I might have accidentally implied something in my last post. I didn't mean to say that Maine just got the flu or whatever and died and that's it. The actual situation is a more complicated than that and is something of a long running plot element in its own right.

Edited by Arha on Oct 10th 2019 at 11:41:07 AM

Aaaah ok ^^ As said I'll probably check out the manga after the series ends.

Lutz and Myne are cute and I shipped them while reading the manga pretty quickly but they're also 5 and the story is quite long so I expect something to get in their way along the line especially since this isn't a romance.

That said, a thing I admire in this story is its willingness to take things slow, and mean reeeeeealy slow. A lot of stories tend to skip around ages a lot. There's usually the brief heroine as a child stage then time skip to "social debut" (I'm admittedly also guilty of it in the story I'm writing thanks in part to reading it so much), so the willingness to take their time to show Myne's development is admirable.

Edited by Mami on Oct 10th 2019 at 7:27:04 PM

I can't really ship it since although Myne may be physically 5 she's still an adult on the inside so shipping her with an actual 5 year old is too much for me.

Lutz doesn't read like a child to me and Maine doesn't read like an adult.

Well she certainly can't have any relationships with people in her original age, her memories mixing with the original Myne's makes her 'age' complicated and her life experience doesn't really amount to much considering that she's in a world and situation quite different from her old one.

Also the author kind of makes most of the kids feel way older than they should to the extent that Lutz sometimes feels older than Myne.

whenever i see the city walls in Ascendance of a Bookworm, i can't help but getting reminded of Attack on Titan and seeing the Colossal Titan's hand grabbing the top of the city walls

The thing is, this show is a bit lazy at designs. Everything looks very generic.

Episode three. I feel like I should reread the early parts of the story so I can remember how long it takes to get to certain parts of the story.

Remember, folks: learn how to to smelt copper and iron, how to make steel, paper, soap, gunpowder, steam engines, synthetic purple dye, penicillin and transistors. You never know when you might get transported to a lower tech world where such skills will be very useful. Oh, and memorize tables of occurrences of solar eclipses.

Stranded with Edison Giving Radio to the Romans Convenient Eclipse

For my own peace of mind, I'm going to pretend the timber the town is mostly built of has had a treatment which greatly decreases its flammability.

To be fair, she doesn't actually know how to make paper and so on, at least not practically.

Yes it's funny (and quite opposite to Dr Stone) to see that one might vaguely know how something is made, but not be able to actually make it.

Episode.

It only just occurred to me that Maine being (apparently) really good at cooking isn't necessarily more JAPANESE FOOD IS TEH BEST but rather a nod to the fact that there probably isn't an actual restaurant business model yet. No commoner family could really afford to go to such a place. As I recall, restaurants only really became popular when the professional chefs for nobles lost their jobs and opened up their own places. So in that sense, Maine is just about the only person a commoner could find who knows more than the very basics of cooking.

This episode made me realize that they basically can't have the anime not get to the head priest. Especially since there was some foreshadowing in this episode that I don't think was in the WN, which is an addition that I enjoyed. But... I'm really not sure how they'll have time for it. At the current pace I feel like it would take a few more episodes than we've got.

Okay, I gave it a chance, but I am officially weighing in now. I do not like the chibi sections. They do not match my impression of the series at all.