Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan o Erande Iraremasen is, of course, another show with a ridiculously long title about another damn world where a failed japanese citizen is reborn. Yup. One more. Well, of course its ridiculous name should be shortened, so it is Honzuki for some, but I’ll call it by its english name: Ascendance of a Bookworm.

In a way, this is exactly what you would expect from an isekai show. Nothing new. Nothing risked. It is about a japanese citizen dying in our world and reincarnating in a fantasy setting where they become overpowerful at some term and pave her way as hero and legend of such world. There are minor twists to the formula though.

First, it is about a girl and not a boring typical boy. That means no annoying stereotypes, no harem-building, and no nonsensical consequences for a protagonist that simply is a dick and yet is loved by all. Second, instead of simply being reborn in this new world, Mototsu Urano’s soul instead jumps into the body of a frail 5-year-old girl living in the suburbs of a medieval fantasy’s big city. So, you can guess that none of these two twists to the premise come close of reinventing the wheel, yet….

It’s more charming than perhaps every other isekai of the last decade

Well, yeah. Surprisingly, simply not being a dick of a male lead makes up for most of the issues plaguing the isekai genre of modern age. Main, the girl whose body is possessed by the soul of our japanese citizen, is a frail child who cannot do much. She is no magical powerhouse, she is no absurdly smart genius, or anything else exaggerated in her male counterparts of the industry. Instead, she is simply a 5-year-old with some basic knowledge of a modern day teenage girl who lives with her mother and grandma. She knows cooking recipes, she knows how to make shampoo, she knows a bit about plants, and so on.

And she has a challenge

Urano, however, fails to be different from other protagonists in the fact she is an absurd sort of nerd. She dies, revives in a strange world, her soul is transferred into the body of a frail kid, yet… she only wants books. Books, nothing else. She is obsessed with books to the point you lose any interest in her other qualities. In fact, the show is damn slow to develop her into something more than just a bookworm maniac who is ready to exhaust herself to death (again) just so she can read and apparently solve all of her problems.

Her insane love for books, however, also work to fuel the challenge she has upon her path: this is a medieval world where books are rare, expensive, and probably something a poor family like hers will never have access too.

She gives up quite easily

Her challenge proves difficult for her frail body and limited resources, yet she somehow gives up fairly easily for all the hype she made about it. She quickly stops asking around about books, she doesn’t even try to seek ought the church or nobility where books certainly are more common. She simply quits and decides to produce her own books with various methods, facing the problems of her frail body along the way.

Her discoveries about this new world are charming though, and her mindset of a teenager in the body of a very young kid is portrayed with lots of interesting situations. In a way, it reminds at some degree of the marvelous Beast Player Erin, although Main is far too much of a stereotype to really catch our love as a character.

Everything is very… colorful

Main is overly hyped about what she does, and it seems the entire show is affected by this same aura. The color palette of the show is perhaps too bright and clear considering the setting, making the gritty feeling of a medieval suburb lose to that of a lousy representation of a place that is far from being bright. And understand this: the world here is no fairy-tale, as it is shown more in later episodes. Nobles can be trigger-happy bastards and some sort of revolution is going not far from where Main lives, yet all we see are her ventures into producing home-made goods and paper, and dealing with merchants to sell her stuff and make huge profits. All of that in bright blues robes, lush green forests, and with people with shining colored hair.

The kids

Well, although too colorful for its own sake, Ascendance of a Bookworm is, in general a good-looking show delivered by a studio that never really did anything outstanding. As you watch, however, it seems some parts of it are just damn weird.

The kids. I mean, look at them. At some shots they are nice big-eyed children. However, at many others, they look more like deformed teenagers with massive heads and bodies of dwarves. In fact, the typical proportions for a kids’ head are completely forgotten at many scenes, as if simply picking any random head design of a teenager and putting on a deformed body would make a decent representation of children from 5 to 7 years.

These kids, in fact, prove to have a much bigger problem than their creepy visuals. They flirt with each other, they all act with way more maturity than normal, and it seems they have basically zero sense of wonder and discovery. Main, which has the mind of a teenager, ends up being more of a decent representation of a child’s will than any of her friends. I understand the children in this world need to “grow up” quicker because they start working at the age of 7, however, it seems they behave like horny teens when they are basically carefree children who need to play and learn. It gets damn weird at many points, especially when they have heads of your typical teenagers from high-school modern shows.

Well, Ascendance of a Bookworm is a charming show. Perhaps the very best isekai to have been released within the horde this genre accumulated in the last decade (not counting Tanya). This, however, doesn’t mean it is without its faults, as the genre itself seems cursed by some incurable problems and, by the end, the author fails to portrait children as… err… children.

Watching Main discovery stuff and fight her frail body is great though, and it is worth your time even through the creepy passages where the kids act like teens and when Main’s nerdy obsession apparently blinds her of anything else happening.

Well, also, being a bit of a spoiler here, of course Main does have superpowers by the end. Yeah. Sad, right? At least it doesn’t affect the show in this season. Oh, this is simply a start I may add, with no conclusion whatsoever to Main’s endeavor, just a decent milestone achieved by the end of the fourteen chapters. I hope we get to see more though.