Ascendance of a Bookworm: I’ll do anything to become a librarian! Official Fanbook 2 by Miya Kazuki, You Shiina, Suzuka
Series Name: Ascendance of a Bookworm: I’ll do anything to become a librarian!
Genres: Fantasy, Isekai, Magic
Intended Age Group: Teen
Publisher: J-Novel Club
Edition: Paperback
ISBN: 9781718350557
Rating: 3.75/5
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Description from the Book
A collection of art, short stories, and more that no bookworm should miss! This fanbook covers material up to and including Part 4 Volume 1. Inside, find an abundance of supplementary content like design sheets for new characters, an extensive family tree, and seven short stories not found in the light novels.
This fanbook also includes exclusive behind-the-scenes reports from a Bookworm drama CD recording session and another Q&A with author Miya Kazuki featuring reader questions.
Personal & Info
This fanbook should be read after completing Part 4 Volume 1 in order to avoid any spoilers. Unlike the first fanbook, there are no cover arts or inner flap arts in this one. Those appear to be in the third fanbook, which is intended to be read after Part 4 Volume 4.
Characters
Rozemyne, as we all know by now, is the main character. Some of the stories go back as far as her early Myne days.
Lower City Family
Gunther, Myne’s father, works as a soldier who currently guards the city’s East gate. Earlier in the series, he guards the South gate.
Effa, Myne’s mother, dyes clothes for a living. She is the daughter of a soldier, and met Gunther through assisting at one of the city gates.
Tuuli, Myne’s older sister, is currently an apprentice seamstress, who also specializes in hairpins. She works as a leherl for the Gilberta Company and strives to move up in the industry. In the early days, she would often go to the forest with the other children in the neighborhood to gather food and firewood.
Lutz’s Family
Lutz, currently a leherl apprentice at the Gilberta Company, is Myne’s first friend. In the early days, he would help take care of her. Now, he helps make sure the Rozemyne workshop is in order and acts as a go-between for scheduling merchant relevant visitors. Lutz also helps the workers at the orphanage understand how to use and make the things Rozemyne thinks up, as well as participate in spreading the paper industry.
Ralph is one of Lutz’s older brothers. He is the same age as Tuuli and we slowly see less and less of him as the series progresses. While Tuuli and Lutz move on to better paying, more glamorous, careers, Ralph takes an apprenticeship as a carpenter, like the rest of his family.
Zasha is, I think, Lutz’s eldest brother. We don’t see him much in the series, so it’s easy to forget how old he is and how many brothers there are.
Rozemyne’s Retainers
Leonore, a fourth-year apprentice archknight, serves as Rozemyne’s guard, and helps teach Traugott and Judithe.
Brunhilde, a third-year apprentice archattendant, loves fashion, and is in charge of assisting Rozemyne with social situations.
Judithe, a second-year apprentice medknight, serves Rozemyne as a guard, and admires Angelica like an idol.
Rihyarda, Rozemyne’s head attendant, is an archnoble, who previously took care of Ferdinand, Karstedt, and Sylvester when they were children.
Angelica, a sixth-year apprentice medknight serving as Rozemyne’s guard, hates studying and wants other people to think for her.
Philine, a first-year apprentice layscholar, is determined to gather stories for Rozemyne.
Lieseleta, Angelica’s younger sister and a fourth-year apprentice medattendant, tends to like cute things.
Other
Freida, the granddaughter of the Merchant Guild’s Guild Master, has a passion for money. Like Rozemyne, she has the devouring. Her solution to treat it was to make a contract with a laynoble to become his concubine once she comes of age.
Leise, Freida’s personal chef, is enthusiastic about learning new recipes, and often assists with food related projects.
Otto, Gunther’s friend who handles paperwork at the gate, teaches Myne how to read and write in the early days. Now, he helps run the Gilberta Company with his wife, Corinna, so Benno can handle other important matters not pertaining to fabric.
Story & Thoughts
Overall, the content is a little different than the first fanbook. There isn’t any special color art, but there are several more stories. This one is more text heavy than picture heavy. Some of the stories aren’t as lengthy or engaging as I would prefer, but I still love it. My favorite things are probably Brunhilde’s story, The Start of Life as a Retainer, and the noble family tree. It definitely makes me want to just dive into more volumes. There’s just so much to love about the series and the heart put into making it.
One Winter Day
This is the shortest story in the entire book. It’s in Myne’s perspective, and takes place on a winter day when everyone goes out to gather parues. As per usual in the early days, Myne waits for everyone to finish while assisting Otto with paperwork.
The story was inspired by a drawing Suzuka did for New Years Day in 2016. It’s a cute, small event that happens on the way home from the gate. Like the picture, Lutz and Myne end up sharing a scarf. It’s very short, but very cute.
I’m Not Givin’ Up My Daughter
As should be obvious from the title, this one is in Gunther’s perspective. It takes place during Myne’s first summer at the temple. Otto is horribly disappointed that Myne is not around to assist him anymore, and he struggles to find anyone even remotely as capable as her to take her place.
Gunther gets advice from Myne about how they can find someone qualified enough, and reflects on how distant their relationship is starting to feel. It brings to mind the phrase of something being referred to as a gift and a curse, because Myne’s gifts make it feel like she’s drifting father away from her family. Gunther is determined not to let her drift too far, but we all already know what happens. It’s kind of sad to read this already knowing that.
My Handful of a Little Sister
This story is in Tuuli’s perspective. It takes place after Myne finishes her prototype book and brings home the official one that she will be allowed to keep at home. During this time, Myne is still commuting to the temple.
Tuuli pokes at how ridiculous Myne’s behavior is, because she cares more about the safety of a book than herself. A conversation with Lutz shines some light on how generous and amazing Myne actually is. It’s become apparent with several short stories that Myne’s family doesn’t truly understand those things about her. Lutz seems to learn it quicker than them, since he spends more time with her. Compared to Charlotte and Wilfried, her lower city family is slow to realize the value in what she does.
Studying Literature and Picture Books
In this story, Myne is teaching Tuuli how to read and write a short time after the events of the previous story. It’s in Tuuli’s perspective, and it’s another story where she discovers how hard Myne and Lutz work. She is daunted by how difficult and time consuming it will be to catch up to their level of literacy. A few motivational words from Effa, and her determination is renewed.
I think it’s nice that Tuuli can appreciate how hard Lutz and Myne work for what they want. She comes a long way from thinking Myne is just being silly and weird. She’s lucky to have a sister so willing to help her learn to improve her skills for her future.
Effa and Tuuli make a joke about Myne not being able to properly boil water on her own, but at the point in the story that this occurs, Myne has already been cooking. This includes boiling things for stews. I suppose they could be talking about boiling water on its own, since the joke is relevant to making tea. That’s the only way I can see it making sense. I don’t think Myne has actually just boiled water before, at least not “on screen.”
A Tea Party With My Older Sister
This is one of the longer stories. I can’t say I have any particular interest in it, because it stars characters we’ve only seen as background. A noble, Christel, discusses the events of the harspiel concert with her sister, who could not attend.
The sister has no name as far as this story is concerned. She could not attend the concert, because she is part of the Veronica faction by marriage. Because of this, the story is a good way to get an idea of what things are like for the nobles who could not attend. The concert is all anyone can talk about, but they also can’t discuss it, because they can’t easily put it into words, and some details were sworn into secrecy.
Christel explains everything and swears her sister to secrecy. However, the conversation also covers some other interesting, more political details. We get some insight into how nobles feel about Sylvester’s actions and how they upturned the balance of politics and that some of them would have liked to be warned, so they could choose sides to appropriately save face or stay neutral. I feel like this part is the most significant information. The recap of the events of the concert are a little dull, but well written.
Feelings of Panic
This is another Tuuli story. It takes place after the noble Star Festival when Brigitte wears a new dress. At this point, Tuuli’s career consists mostly of making hair pins.
Tuuli feels bogged down by all the hairpin orders and responsibilities associated with them. She’s the best at making them, and is always first to learn new ways to make them, so she has to teach everyone else. What she really wants is to work with fabric and learn etiquette to be able to meet with nobles. Like with her reading and writing, she feels like she’s being left behind by Myne and Lutz.
Tuuli seems to struggle a lot with the unnatural speed Myne and Lutz seem to improve with things. Unlike them, she doesn’t have anyone around to teach her, so learning skills she doesn’t already have is a challenge. That on top of missing her sister, it makes sense for her to be frustrated.
The Start of Life as a Retainer
This one is by far my favorite story in the book. It’s Brunhilde’s perspective on her first day as Rozemyne’s retainer. The story is one of the longest, and it covers everything from Rihyarda asking her if she accepts the position, to Brunhilde discussing the difficulty of the job with Lieseleta after serving for a while.
It’s interesting, but not surprising, that Brunhilde has politics on the mind when accepting the position. She is overly concerned about whether or not Rozemyne has any Leisegang faction retainers. There are also politics going on behind Rozemyne’s back involving many of the leisegang nobles. They have hopes for her that she has no interest in carrying out.
I like this story, because it shows us some behind the curtain things politically, and regarding attendant work, but the thing I’m most excited about is the diagram. There is a map of Rozemyne’s room. It represents both her room at the castle and at the Royal Academy, because they share the same layout and design. I didn’t know I wanted this, and I’m glad it’s included.
Drama CD Recording Report – Suzuka
Suzuka summarizes her experience involving the recording process for the drama CD in manga form. All the voice actors involved appear in the form of the character they are voicing, which I think is cute. I’m not familiar with Suzuka, like, at all, so it’s a little strange to me that she draws herself as a strange looking, possibly elderly, blob. I’m not judging. It’s just not what I would expect someone to use as their self-representation.
Drama CD Recording Report – Miya Kazuki
Miya Kazuki summarizes her experience involving the recording process for the drama CD in text format. I like this lengthy report better than the manga version. I feel like I get more out of it. There’s more detail, even though they basically cover the same content. It sounds like everyone had fun, but the context for the sword joke seems better in this format.
The beginning of the report makes me think Miya Kazuki is a bit like Myne. As things progress and she gets more focused on the script and giving feedback to the voice actors, she seems to become more like Ferdinand.
Character Design Sheets
The designs start specifically from Part 3 Volume 2 and go up to Part 4 Volume 1. The text is in a different perspective than the first fanbook, like someone else wrote it. I miss the text being from Miya Kazuki’s perspective, stating what she wanted for each character and how accurate the designs turned out to what she envisioned. It just feels impersonal, this time.
I like the art itself. All of it is fine and fun to look at, however, I wanted more. There is a two year time gap in the story, and it’s heavily emphasized some people grew a lot over that time. Philine has two pictures to show her before and after the time jump. I would have liked to see that for everybody, or at least the people who grew a lot.
Noble Family Tree
The description describes the family tree as extensive, and that is definitely apt. The tree starts three generations before Sylvester, and shows various lines of nobility, like the Leisegangs. Many people lack names and just have titles or ranks, because they have not come up in the story. I would love to see more pictures attached to this. I like family trees to be more visual heavy than text heavy.
This is just an observation, but there’s a little bit of incest in the Ahrensbach tree. One of Georgine’s children married their half sibling and produced a child. That’s icky.
Q & A with Miya Kazuki
Some of the questions here don’t seem like they need an answer. I’m sure there are some more interesting ones that could replace some of the seemingly obvious ones. I still like this section, because I enjoy learning literally anything new about the series, but some of the questions this time around are lackluster.
Let’s Make a Pound Cake
This is just a manga version of the scene where Myne teaches Freida and Leise how to make pound cake. It’s cute, but seeing it here makes me wonder how the manga itself differs. Was that scene cut?
A Comfy Life with My Family
Like the first fanbook, these end of book comics are on the subject of fanbooks. They are essentially a direct continuation of the comics from the first fanbook. That part is obvious because Otto is wearing a Corinna headband.
My favorite one is “Is This Love?” in which Rozemyne asks Ferdinand about his hobbies. His answer is as I expect and it makes me giggle.