My first exposure to the Read or Die series was through Read or Die TV. Read or Die TV was decidedly average in every way (except in the quantity of lesbianism), so I had low expectations for the OVA. But I ended up being pleasantly surprised.

First of all, the action sequences are fantastic. There’s a creative variety of powers, and just the way Yomiko uses paper is interesting in and of itself (see the paper airplane above). You wouldn’t expect this from a series about books where the main character, Yomiko, is a clumsy airhead and bookworm. It’s partially her clumsiness which makes the fight scenes so gripping— she has no trouble fighting off giant robots with scraps of paper, but it looks like she’s going to trip and fall over at any moment. For example, in the above scene with the paper airplane, Yomiko made short work of constructing the enormous airplane, but just forgot to attach the tail fin, with nearly fatal results. The creators managed to make a very convincing portrayal of Yomiko as someone who’s both extremely capable and extremely clumsy.

Another strong point of the OVA is its setting, where agents of the British library with special powers fight for books. The agents travel from city to city in search of these books, so parts of the show take place in England, Hong Kong, India, America, and the middle of the ocean. There’s quite the variety here.

If I had to point out a flaw, the villains are much less fleshed out than the protagonists. They’re clones of famous people from history, and most of their motivations aren’t entirely clear. As another nitpick, a running gag is that the president of the US pisses his pants whenever he shows up. I personally just found this kind of dumb and not particularly funny. It’s certainly not on the level of a Legend of Koizumi presidential portrayal.

Still, the good points greatly outweigh the bad, and I highly recommend the Read or Die OVA, especially if you’re looking for some good action.

• Plot / Script – 9 / 10 – The British library goes to war, we have giant underwater steampunk rockets, and the final boss is Ludwig van Beethoven. What more needs to be said?
• Characters – 9 / 10 – Examines Yomiko and Nancy in depth. Other characters, particularly the villains, are less well developed since time is limited.
• Production – 9  / 10 – Fluid animation, especially in fight scenes.
• Overall – A-

Recommendations – Darker than Black, Book of Bantorra, Read or Die TV (although it isn’t as good as the OVA)

Norageki shows a tale of five people and a cat who escape from prison. I don’t want to say much more in fear of spoiling all of what is a rather short story.

The first thing you’ll probably notice about Norageki is the experimental animation style. There’s a heavy use of CG. In my opinion the still frames looked pretty nice, but the motion of the characters leaved a lot to be desired. It didn’t look natural at all.

The plot is decent for something that fit in 25 minutes. Same with the characters – they have potential, but again, we don’t see much in 25 minutes. I think the show could have made good use of some extra time.The male characters in particular didn’t get enough time to develop. Everything was decent, but there was just nothing that wowed me.

This OVA has a similar setting to the movie Moon, if anyone’s seen that, although the way it uses the setting is quite different.

• Plot / Script – 8 / 10 – Interesting story, if not the most unique (the setting, if nothing else, is similar to Dead Leaves)
• Characters – 7 / 10 – Have potential but don’t develop fully (particularly males).
• Production – 7 / 10 – Unique style, but blocky motion
• Overall – 7.25 / 10

Recommendations – Moon (non-anime), Freedom, Dead Leaves

Hitsuji no Uta (Lament of the Lambs) is a short OVA from eight years ago. It tells the story of a high schooler named Kazuna, who is reunited with his sister whom he hasn’t seen since he was three years old. The two have a hereditary vampiric disease where they desire blood, and begin to live together as a family, pushing away their friends and Kazuna’s adopted family.

The creators did a good job at building a tense, dark atmosphere. The colors in the animation are used to especially good effect. There are no people with random blue, green and pink hair colors here: everything is dark shades of black and brown. The character designs actually look like real people and not animified. They even have freckles and hair that could conceivably grow on a human head.

On the negative side, the use of flashbacks was a bit much in the first two episodes. The final episode was much stronger than the first three, if only because a lot more happened then. The doctor is just kind of hanging around for the first three episodes, but he really becomes an interesting character in the final episode. Revelations from the final episode also make you see the sister and the family in a quite different light. This is probably more a reflection of how good the final episode and its build up were than any issue with the earlier episodes.

• Plot / Script – 8  / 10 – A strong storyline, but plot and dialogue repeat themselves a bit much especially with flashbacks
• Characters – 9 / 10 – The main character’s choices particularly regarding his family could have been better explained. The sister and doctor are very interesting characters, although their stories aren’t revealed until the end.
• Production – 9  / 10 – Good use of color, although looking aged now.
• Overall – 8.5 / 10

Recommendations – Ghost Hound, Tsukihime

In the world of Toshokan Sensou (Library Wars), the national government has established a censorship law which the armed Media Cleansing Committee enforces by burning books. In response, the provincial governments have created the Library Force to protect books from censorship in libraries. Toshokan Sensou follows Kasahara as she joins the elite Library Task force.

The show is a mashup of Fahrenheit 451 (more on this later), a war show, and a corny romance. The romance wasn’t actually that bad, I’m just not really into that kind of thing (from the Tatami Galaxy: “There’s nothing more boring than a successful romance”). The military parts of the show were well done, with good action scenes.

The setup is certainly creative, but isn’t entirely believable. Japan has laws which allow open warfare between their own countrymen in open daylight. How could anyone possibly tolerate this? I mean, I think most people would prefer either censorship or no censorship to open warfare in the streets. There were a few other things that didn’t make much sense: for one, we had a pacifist who refused to resist the censors. Then when she is going to get fired from her job she picks up a pistol, shoots someone, and lights herself on fire with her own library. So much for pacifism. So the show requires some suspension of disbelief, but this isn’t too much of a problem.

Now for the Fahrenheit 451 comparison. This show includes references to Fahrenheit 451 as the “Book of Prophecy” which predicts book burning. But unfortunately, this show isn’t really much of a critique of censorship like Bradbury’s book. The reason the main character joins the Library Force is because her “Prince” was in the Library Force and protected her book. The commander founded the Library Force because his wife was killed by the censorship force. And most of the censorship forces are mercenaries (except for the one character with the cleansing committee who has a face, who has “personal connections” and also dislikes censorship). So the censorship forces are rather unambiguously evil. Also, in Fahrenheit 451, the government was more or less just expressing the will of an empty society in burning books: in Toshokan Sensou, most people either support the libraries or are indifferent. (Ok, they claim a majority of people support censorship at some point, but we never even meet any of these people, if they actually exist)  So there is a clear boogeyman in Toshokan Sensou, while for Bradbury the entire society was to blame.

One of the things that made Fahrenheit 451 great is how it showed the effects of censorship on a society and how devastating and hard escape from they are. But here censorship is more of an abstract thing which makes people get shot, or gets some little kids’ books taken away. For a show which is about the suppression of ideas, there are far too few ideas to go around.  Another problem is that the world is static: Montag and his world become more and more interesting as he uncovers more about it and learns to despise what he used to be. In Toshokan Sensou there is no growth. The world more or less is and remains the way it initially appeared.

Still, overall I greatly enjoyed this show— it’s completely unfair to compare it to one of Bradbury’s masterpieces. One of the more interesting aspects for me was seeing the cultural political differences. Americans tend to be less ambivalent about censorship than most of the world, for one thing, although we certainly have our fair share of censorship advocates. A lot of Western works focus on censorship as well, but the same can’t be said of anime. The ending of the show also felt extremely Japanese: after something that wasn’t really his fault, the commander of the Library Forces tragically steps down to “take responsibility”, as the rest of the forces honored him. This took most of an episode with much crying. I was kind of just rolling my eyes.

• Plot / Script – 9  / 10 – Creative setting, interesting short stories
• Characters – 8  / 10 – Distinctive and enjoyable, although small in number
• Production – 8 / 10 – Consistent, nothing spectacular
• Overall – B-

Recommendations – Planetes, Nodame Cantabile (for the romance), Book of Bantorra, Read or Die (for the books)