2nd Looks – Toshokan Sensou

Like I’ve said before, this show has a rather ridiculous premise. In order to clean up declining morals in society, the Japan passed a draconian law in 2019 empowering censors to crackdown on all undesirable material, with force if necessary. Armed raids on bookstores and libraries were commonplace. To fight this perceived violation of human rights and free speech, libraries all over the nation were organized into paramilitary “taskforces”. As you can see, this is a totally unbelievable story that is really hard to take seriously. Fortunately, I don’t think the scriptwriters of this show expect us to take it seriously either, unlike some others. *cough*CelestialBeing*cough*

Our heroine is Kasahara Iku. While still a student, she was caught up in a bookstore raid. Being the idealistic idiot that she is (the show expressly refers to her as such), she defied the media watchdogs and was in danger of being arrested when she and her book were rescued by a librarian. Inspired by the nameless librarian, whom she has come to worship as her “Prince Charming”, she becomes a librarian after graduation.

Iku is tall and athletic, but rather dense and loudmouthed. She appears to be quite boobless, but combat fatigues do nothing for anyone’s figure, so we can’t be too sure. I think Iku’s seiyuu, Inoue Marina, is really good at doing lovable loudmouthed idiots (Kana, Minami Ke).

Rookie trooper Iku clashes initially with her instructor Dojo (or chibi as she calls him behind his back. He is 5cm shorter than her at 165.). Their confrontations were a riot. Anyone who’s been in the army knows it takes a brave idiot to kick your sergeant in the ass. Turns out he’s just extra harsh on her because he’s got high expectations of her. And there’s even some cute pseudo romantic development with him berating her one minute then showing concern the next. He’s a male tsundere. Throw in Tezuka the perfectionist acrophobic rookie who declares at the end of ep2 that he wants to date Iku after having blasted her stupidity for the whole episode and we’ve got a nice setup for comedy.

The military setting made me think of FMP, but FMP was more extreme in that it had way more slapstick comedy, yet the action was more violent. So far, Library War has been kind of in between. Actually, I think I’m enjoying this so much because I’m reminded of my army days, especially when Iku went on outfield training. Instructors sneaking into your tent? Check. Digging shitholes? Check. This is probably the first anime I’ve seen that shows a girl shitting in the bushes.

The action wasn’t bad, the one battle that they had so far was pretty tactical. But probably due to the show’s campy mood it felt more like a game of paintball than a real gunfight. Not that I’m complaining though, remember SR’s survival game episode? And I hated TSR for being so dark compared to Fumoffu.

All in all a really promising show. It’s so good, I watch this raw because I can’t wait half a day for the subs.