Honzuki Season 4: Ep 2 isn't any better
Apr. 11th, 2026 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foxinthestarsAfter my gripes last week, I attempted to watch episode 2 of the new Ascendance of a Bookworm anime. I'm five-and-a-half minutes in (including the OP!) and my fears are entirely confirmed.
Y'all killed this beautiful butterfly and pinned it to a board. Congratulations.
When I managed to boil my problems with ep 1 down into a few words, those words were "humorless and superficial." That still holds, at least if I can stretch "superficial" to mean "rushed to the point that I pity any anime-first chump trying to follow this." They cut it to the bone, and the knife has got marrow on it.
Last week, we left our heroine unconscious and bloody on the floor, having been dragged along to the point of collapse by her well-meaning-but-lunkheaded new adoptive brother. This episode begins with... no follow-up on that whatsoever. None. We see her real sister being sad, then she meets her new guard knights, and then she gets inaugurated to her new church office. So, no harm done, I guess? I don't think this is how cliffhangers work.
In the manga, by contrast, that moment isn't even a chapter break, the next thing we see is our heroine waking up in bed, and then her guardians proceed to explain in detail why they let her end up bloody and unconscious on the floor in the first place, because there were in fact reasons that speak to the quirks of the characters and social milieu involved.
And I checked the anime's progress bar thumbnail previews. They didn't just move that later in the episode; it's gone.
But what actually broke me was that in the wrap-up of the inauguration scene, they skipped something so striking that I immediately noticed the cut. In the novel and manga, our bookworm heroine notices a jerkass minor character among the priests, a man who once went to the temple's book room and threw all the books on the floor in order to harass her. Recalling the incident but not wanting fuss over it too much since she has somewhere else to be, she stares him down like a horror movie villain and announces to him that "Your life is mine."
It's not like my favorite scene or anything, but it's kind of funny, and it speaks to what a flawed and eccentric character our heroine is. And in that, it seems to reflect this anime season's philosophy of editing the story. Get rid of the humor, gloss over the characters' flaws, linger on the pretty pictures and sad faces.
I think they have misunderstood the appeal of this story.
So yeah, since Crunchyroll has the nice progress bar thumbnail preview thing, I think that going forward I will just treat this anime season as a buffet and watch specific scenes if I want to, but trying to watch along with the whole thing doesn't seem to be worth it.
Y'all killed this beautiful butterfly and pinned it to a board. Congratulations.
When I managed to boil my problems with ep 1 down into a few words, those words were "humorless and superficial." That still holds, at least if I can stretch "superficial" to mean "rushed to the point that I pity any anime-first chump trying to follow this." They cut it to the bone, and the knife has got marrow on it.
Last week, we left our heroine unconscious and bloody on the floor, having been dragged along to the point of collapse by her well-meaning-but-lunkheaded new adoptive brother. This episode begins with... no follow-up on that whatsoever. None. We see her real sister being sad, then she meets her new guard knights, and then she gets inaugurated to her new church office. So, no harm done, I guess? I don't think this is how cliffhangers work.
In the manga, by contrast, that moment isn't even a chapter break, the next thing we see is our heroine waking up in bed, and then her guardians proceed to explain in detail why they let her end up bloody and unconscious on the floor in the first place, because there were in fact reasons that speak to the quirks of the characters and social milieu involved.
And I checked the anime's progress bar thumbnail previews. They didn't just move that later in the episode; it's gone.
But what actually broke me was that in the wrap-up of the inauguration scene, they skipped something so striking that I immediately noticed the cut. In the novel and manga, our bookworm heroine notices a jerkass minor character among the priests, a man who once went to the temple's book room and threw all the books on the floor in order to harass her. Recalling the incident but not wanting fuss over it too much since she has somewhere else to be, she stares him down like a horror movie villain and announces to him that "Your life is mine."
It's not like my favorite scene or anything, but it's kind of funny, and it speaks to what a flawed and eccentric character our heroine is. And in that, it seems to reflect this anime season's philosophy of editing the story. Get rid of the humor, gloss over the characters' flaws, linger on the pretty pictures and sad faces.
I think they have misunderstood the appeal of this story.
So yeah, since Crunchyroll has the nice progress bar thumbnail preview thing, I think that going forward I will just treat this anime season as a buffet and watch specific scenes if I want to, but trying to watch along with the whole thing doesn't seem to be worth it.
