Ascendance of a Bookworm (Anime)

I'm accepting of them since they offer a creative way to show Myne's internal feelings. Plus they're so gif-able

They are a little bit... maybe self-conscious isn't the right word, but they feel very deliberately designed to hit some aspect that doesn't really mesh with the rest of the series at all. Maybe because they tend to have Urano lean pretty hard on her whole "gossipy Japanese housewife" brand of... whatever that is.

Gossipy housewife? Not what I’d call it.

Ok I watched the new episode. Poor clay tablets, that part physically hurt... but I am glad they actually seem to go the route of sticking to Main's body still being that of a sick girl, new person in it notwithstanding. I'm just hoping that her getting more stamina and more reliably well with less breaks in sick spells is going to be an ongoing trend.

Yeah I think it's something she's just meant to work around rather than it being a problem to be solved.

Episode five. Mouths are very big in this series.

You know, I get the premise of the story. Maine raises up in the world from sick peasant all the way to... I don't know, I'm not that far yet. Ascendance of a Bookworm, got it. But... are her family going to live in poverty their whole lives, left behind by the plot? I honestly don't know, but the thought is a little sad.

Anyway, actual episode commentary: One thing I never got was why Maine didn't just ask her mom not to burn flat, shaved pieces of wood she brought home. Or, like, not store it with the firewood. That was probably not a brilliant idea.

For maximum suffering of course! Though in all seriousness, its probably a minor plothole the author left in

Is it just my imagination PR was the animation really good last episode? It's usually pretty good but it felt like a step up than usual

I wouldn't say it's right down poverty. They may not be rich, but they don't lack any basic necessities and seems fairly connected in community.

As for why she didn't make sure plank are safe... reincarnated or not she is 5 years old and for most part too self absorbed to think what other people would do.

They're medieval peasants. Her father has a fairly good position and her mother is a talented seamstress but, like, they're still living in what Maine considers a filthy hovel where they dispose of their waste by chucking it out the window.

Yeah and that's not same as being poor. Poverty is literally lack of means to cover one needs. Mein family might not have lot of excess but they certainly don't have to worry about survival and full stomach.

Edited by Tenzen12 on Nov 1st 2019 at 9:35:31 AM

Edited by Tenzen12 on Nov 1st 2019 at 9:23:12 AM

It's pointed out all the time how low their standard of living is, though. They may consider it normal but Maine and the audience certainly do not. Thus I hope that they get some kind of good fortune when Maine makes it to galactic empress or whatever, though I can't say I see them being happy to live in a mansion or anything.

They may be satisfied with what they have, but that doesn't mean nothing at all should be done for them.

Yeah by modern standards it's subpar and if Mein strike rich then she would suck if she wasn't willing pay back family that rised her, but that's pretty automatic as long as one is decent enough person and that goes for any social caste.

I certainly don't think anything should be done for them under premise they doesn't have enough and need more, because they don't need to be middle class by modern standards, that is being straight down rich.

Edited by Tenzen12 on Nov 1st 2019 at 10:01:48 AM

Y'know what? I think I'd be satisfied if she just invented a modern sanitation system starting with her parents' home area.

I'm loving this show, what follows is not intended as bashing.

I've been trying to get a handle on the tech level of this world. Because it is plot relevant, a starting point is that they don't have movable type printing, invented in our world between 1040 and 1450, depending where you are and what you count.

They are all over the place with glass. In the opening scene (Ep 1) we see a cupboard with a high quality glass pane about 1m x 0.5m. I'd guess it was 1700s in our world before we could make such a pane, and 1800s or later before being cheap enough to put on a cupboard door. Later in ep 1, we see a merchant with a box full of glass bottles. Despite this, the city apartments have only wooden shutters. Even too-distorted-to-see-through glass would be hugely useful for those apartments, letting in light when it is too cold to open the shutters. Why don't they have some variety of glass window? (E.g. a shutter which is only 5% glass.)

So far we've seen parchment (used at the guard house) but no paper or papyrus. I question whether parchment would ever be used for such routine administrative tasks - it is just too expensive.

We can tell very little from the architecture. Wooden shutters aside, the apartment buildings could be anywhere between Roman and Victorian. Perhaps when we get to see the cathedral it will help.

The city walls are very impressively high. They suggest gunpowder artillery is not very advanced. (Were they built in the past and now obsolete, you'd expect to see suburbs outside the walls.)

They appear to have excellent dyes - even Mein's family have brightly coloured clothes. However, this can reasonably be taken to be an artistic choice by the animators, rather than a reflection of tech level.

There are no sewers. This doesn't narrow things much, as there have been places with sewers and without sewers from antiquity to the current day.

No shampoo also doesn't mean much.

Mein's family do not have an iron stove. They do have metal hinges on doors and window shutters. They burn wood, not coal or charcoal in their stove. We see candles, but no sort of lamp. Again, this varied so much over time it doesn't tell us much.

Other than the glass panes (which maybe have a different source in this world) I'd pick high medieval as the best match for period, but it is far from clear.

Iirc dyes are fairly expensive here. I'm not sure the novels ever mentioned the glass so that could be an animation thing. Paper doesn't exist and parchment is noted to be extremely expensive, though not as bad as ink. Which is only natural from one perspective since Maine needs to invent things she wants but can't get.

Ascendance Of A Bookworm is up. There are some unmarked spoilers for the anime that I didn't consider particularly important to the long term story but that people might want to watch out for.

A few more observations:

I don't recall seeing any clocks. In our world, I'd expect to see public clocks in a city of this size from about 1700 onwards.

Is there a standardized Anglicization of Mein/Main/Maine/Myne's name?

Some plot holes: Mein could have just asked Turi to bring her back some clay from the forest to make tablets.

When the firing of the tablets failed, Mein should have persisted in trying to find a good way to fire them, after so much effort and so many obstacles at which she did not give up at the first failure.

Mein shouldn't have put her wood tablets among the firewood and not told her mother about them. (Someone else has already raised this.)

Once the tablets were burned, she should have got more to keep trying.

I understand plot-wise why it was done this way, and I don't disagree with the choice to leave these plot holes, but they are still plot holes.

The idea that traders are outcasts who dream of becoming settled is very weird. Such a society would have almost no trade which is contrary to many things related to progress and wealth.

I doubt we are going into dystopia, so this is just weird.

Same thing in Spice and Wolf. Traders want to buy a store and stop having to move around.

Thoughts on episode 6: As others have said, it doesn't make much sense for traders to be so poor and keen to stop trading. If few people are trading, there will be enormous wealth in doing so. Also, the first city that thinks to declare "traders can become citizens, so long as your house and family live here" will become a super-rich trading hub.

Lutz and Mein are now business partners, at age 6. Official Couple is all but inevitable at this point.

Evidently nails are fairly expensive. I don't know when nails became cheap, but probably in the industrial revolution, so this makes sense. If anything, they are too cheap for medieval times, when they were manufactured one at a time by blacksmiths. Compare Guedelon Castle (web search it - you'll not be sorry you did so) where they building a castle by traditional methods and are basically using nails only for attaching doors to hinges, because they are so expensive. Roof frames etc. use wooden pegs.

Finally, glass windows! You just need to be in the rich part of town. I still think that given the evident glass technology, the poor parts of town should have have glass windows too - just ones with highly distorted small panes.

It looks like Mein's shampoo alone could make a fortune, although probably only for a short while before someone reverse engineers it. (As an aside - I don't believe that the recipe given would remotely work.)

Lutz makes planks with a saw. At Guedelon, they make planks by splitting along the grain with wedges. If they have saws, they're too expensive to use for this task. Also, he hammers a nail with a wooden mallet. That would result in a not-driven-in nail and a ruined mallet.

Right at the end: Mein is given a written message on what looks like a wooden tablet. Given that she's spent about 3 episodes trying to do something like this, shouldn't she be getting more excited about this?

I suspect the 'traders aren't well liked and find it hard to settle down' thing might be historical realism, but I don't know for sure. People don't always make smart decisions.

Before you get too sold on Lutz x Maine remember that you're only halfway through the first season and if the entire story was adapted you'd probably need six or seven seasons. I don't know if a story that's about a girl going from peasant to, say, god is necessarily going to have her marry down at the end of the story. I'm not saying it won't, either, but in my experience with isekai they usually don't like the protagonist ending up with a commoner when they could marry up instead.

I assumed it was specifically the travelling trader life that was majorly looked down upon (though Lutz family doesn't think highly of traders, but that really seems to be a them thing as well as wanting Lutz to continue the family business). Its not like traders don't exist in this world, the suggestion to Lutz was basically "set shop here and you can still take trips to stock on supply and the likes" rather than essentially living the life of a nomad where how you'll spend the day is shakey if you don't have a inherited trade route.

your last comment feels a bit too *wink*wink*nudge*nudge* I think

It is. Traders are looked down on. Lutz's family also doesn't like merchants, though, because merchants are trying to make a profit off you and if you aren't careful they can screw you over.

I have no idea how the romance plot in this story goes. I am merely commenting that this is actually very early in the series still and that the protagonist marrying down is pretty uncommon.