Library Wars Review | It’s More a Quarrel Honestly

Hi guys and welcome to my place!

First of all, Happy new year everyone!!!!

Now, let’s go to my first post of the year and the first post of the random Anime Challenge! Let us just say that I’m going to change the rules a little bit! 😛 I’m not going to do this series weekly as I first thought. Why? Well, I just can’t manage to have the time to binge watch a series and then write a review about it! Sorry guys 🙁 So, what I am going to do is to try to post the fastest as I can, but I won’t give any schedule! For this one I really struggled to watch it on time and I don’t want to take out the fun of watching Anime xD

Now, for the review!!! This one is going to be hard to do though since I have mixed feelings about it lolol For the ones who don’t remember (although it is on the title), I’ll be reviewing:

Library Wars

Now, the Anime is not baaaad… But I feel it had a lot of wasted potential and when you start to watch the Anime you don’t get what you thought you would receive… Let me explain this on other words by explaining the premise of the story:

This Anime is passed in a political environment where freedom of expression ended and there is again a censorship rule as also an army to ensure that the censorship is done. However, librarians all over the country didn’t accept this rule and decided to join up and face against the censorship group. The story develops around a girl who in her high school days was saved by her “prince” which defended her when she was trying to protect a censored book from the army (it’s a children book lol) and after that she set the goal she wanted to make part of the library war and protect every book she can.

Now, with this premise you really get a sense of an Anime that will be really political based and that will make you think a lot about society in general and if we should have 100% freedom of expression or not… Well it doesn’t. The story focus Iku Kasahara, her “evolution” inside the Librarians’ group and her relationship with her superior Atsushi Dojo. Moreover there are many things that doesn’t really make sense in this Anime which are:

• The Political part:

We had dictatorship here in Portugal until 1974 (not long ago) where censorship was common and of course we study this in school and something that does not add up in this Anime is having a group who goes against the rule of dictatorship but it isn’t considered as rebels, nope… They are legal! Does it make any sense? Nope! I mean they are protecting all sort of entertainment that is censored by the government and they are ok with it? I mean it doesn’t make any sense! You are going against the government they will not just be “Oh! Ok, no problem! We are a undestandable kind of group, although we censor all sort of media!”

• Kasahara “Commitment” vs entering the prestigious Task Force:

In reality this are 2 different points. First it doesn’t make sense that Kasahara which is studying and training for the only thing she wants to do with her life sleeping through classes and not knowing the basic things of this group she loves so much… I mean I understand the creators needed a way to explain all sort of things, but making the main character not knowing the basic things is just… hmmm Wrong (?).

And this gets me to the second point… She enters the most prestigious (and difficult) group of the Librarians… The task force. She is the first girl ever to enter in there! Even if she is good in the practical side doesn’t you need to be extremely outstanding in the theorical part to enter these kind of groups? Normally you need to have the strenght AND the brains… So it doesn’t really make sense to me!

• All the rules behind this so-called war:

Probably you will not understand anything in this part because I don’t really understand that well (And I didn’t go rewatch the Anime because I want to give a viewer stand point of view, not someone who wants to write a review about the Anime xD), but ok let me try it!

This War between the Media Betterment Committee and the Librarians has all of sort of rules. Some of them makes sense, like both of them being forbidden to actually shoot in residence areas, but there are others that I don’t understand and they don’t really explain.

One of the first operations you watch is the librarians reallocating some censored books from a museum before the MBC was able to get them. Here you have 2 rules that don’t make sense:

• The museum was private in the beginning (only got public when the owner died) so the MBC couldn’t touch the censored books… What? If you own the books the censorship doesn’t apply? It really doesn’t make any kind of sense
• At the end of this operation the librarians are able to move the books. The moment they are able to do that the commander talks with the MCB commander telling the moving was done and they immediately cease-fire. WHAAAAT? Isn’t this supposed to be a war? I just… don’t… understand…

Other thing that didn’t make any kind of sense was one scene where they were protecting a book store during the night and the NBC only could attack until the book store opened… Again no explanation whatsoever… It seems they can’t censor books when book stores are opened (although in the beginning of the story they are censoring a book store in opening hours, so even if there is a rule it doesn’t necessarily applies all the time)…

Well, I think this sums up the MESS they did with the political part. Nothing makes sense and even if it did, they don’t really explain it LOL

Now, this is not a rule (at least I don’t think so) but for different groups at war they really take into consideration the others’ well-being. Basically you will se scenes where they could get excellent hostages, but they just let them go and they seem to always shoot without trying to kill anyone… Why the F they use weapons at the first place? They just should get paint ball weapons if the idea is not to majorly hurt anyone. That’s why I say it is more a quarrel than a war!

Now that this is out-of-the-way. The part of “slice of life” is decent (just decent don’t get hyper over there). The episodes are pleasant to watch and I gladly watched them all. The story is more a romance than anything and that part is watchable, although it was not THAAAT impressive. The characters are also easy to like and even though they don’t get much evolution (the only one that seems to change a bit is the main character), since it is only 12 episodes you really don’t have the time to get tired of it. The animation is also decent, but well… For a 2018 Anime I was expecting more, but not all can be like Kimi No Na Wa am I right? 😀

Aaaaand… That’s it! I hope you understand at least 10% of what I wrote. The truth is, I don’t really understand the political plot around the Anime so it is really hard for me to be able to explain it xD Although I think that it passes what I want to transmit… It is confusing and full of holes 😀

So, my final verdict is: If you want to watch it because of the political part… Well don’t, the Anime doesn’t really explain anything and what it does explain doesn’t really make sense, so probably you won’t take much out of it. If you want to watch it because you want to watch a light Anime with romance in a different set that you are used to, so yeah I could say that you will appreciate this Anime.

My rating to this (Yeah I will have ratings for these series – it’s not like the top which everyone received 5 starts xD) – 3 starts and a half in 5 (I know, I need to get a design for this, I’ll get is ASAP)

Last, but not the least, here it is the next Anime that came up in the randomanime.org and therefore the next one I am going to watch and review:

Natsuyuki Rendezvous

I hope you enjoyed this review and again: Happy new year! Comment down below what you think of this Anime if you already watch it! If not tell me if you are thinking of watching it!

SEE YA SOON! 😀