Library Wars

I just happened to hear about this anime by chance from another website. The premise was interesting so I decided to give it a try and was totally amazed. The storyline, characters, artwork, and sound are engrossing and completely draw you in. While the characters themselves may not be completely unique, their interactions with one another and the realistic emotional outbursts are i think rare among most anime. Most people don't really mention this but I also consider this a full romance. The relationship between the main characters develops more naturally over time. They are not sappy or fake but there was a lovely tendernessand protectiveness towards one another that was great and heartfelt. And in this anime you definitely get a somewhat satisfying ending vs. most animes that leave things very open ended. I am hoping hoping for a second season because my only complaint would be that this anime was way to short. The storyline is smart with strong sociological undertones. The advantage is you can choose to really ignore the important issues if you want to you. You can enjoy the action, comedy and romance alone or you can also appreciate the underlying message and concept. Either way, I don't believe it will diminish your enjoyment of the show. So overall witty and lovable characters, great story, nice artwork.. this is now one of my top fav. animes of all time.

I tried really hard to hate this anime. I watched the first episode and I was absolutely geared up to hate the whole thing and bring all my negative emotional baggage down on it. I failed. I fell in love with this anime. It deals with a war very unlike Western wars, and with laws very unlike Western laws. In the real world war is incredibly lawless and ugly, and law enforcement is terrible. But this anime deals with an extremely civilized war with very strict rules of engagement, very limited weapons, and scrupulous regard for human life, so it's not like watchingdocumentary footage of real wars. The war is also in effect a limited civil war, so it's not like any war story I can recall ever having seen before. This anime is short but extremely complete. The visuals are gorgeous. The character development, plot, and pacing are very well-balanced. It packs a huge amount of energy into a very concentrated package. Obscure trivia note:The main character of Mahou Shoujo Tai Arusu was played by Kojima Sachiko, but for whatever reason, I keep thinking that she sounds exactly like Inoue Marina playing the main character of Toshokan Sensou.

Summary: Toshokan Sensou is an unfortunate case of a solid premise (what if libraries had their own militaries to fight off censorship?) wasted on uninspired material and a scattershot approach to genre that causes the tone of the series to careen wildly from one scene to the next. The pieces of a good show can sometimes be found here, but it's ultimately a disappointment that never capitalizes on the ideas that it has. Positives: + Intriguing premise. Though it never really makes the most of it, the sight of people in military fatigues doing book readings for children at the local library before fighting offjackbooted government thugs trying to do Fahrenheit 451 to their Clifford the Big Red Dog books is admirably goofy and unique. + Some good side characters. In particular, Shibasaki and Tezuka are interesting and I would have liked to see more of them, even though it wasn't as though they were sidelined or anything. + Looks pretty good for being over 10 years old. It's not perfect (see negatives section below) but generally looks solid. The art style is very reminiscent of Archer as well, it's got a different look to it that you don't see very often. + Ending was kind of nice. I wasn't really feeling the love story between Kasahara and Dojo for most of the series, but they managed to hook me a little with some nice scenes in the last episode. Negatives: - Unlikeable main character. It's very hard to root for Kasahara at points in this show. She's incompetent and emotionally fragile, unable to handle simple criticism from a superior office or put up with a single day of mild hazing without crying. She regularly displays poor judgment and puts others in danger because she doesn't think through the consequences of her actions. She is constantly criticized for these things by her superiors and yet they still put her on an elite special forces team, despite the fact that she can't even reliably hit a large, stationary target during weapons training. She messes things up constantly and is still shown favoritism and given duties and promotions far beyond her actual demonstrated capabilities, and then still whines about how her superiors are too mean to her when she fails. She sucks and I didn't like her at all. - Tries to be too many different things at once. This show tries to be a military action story, a shoujo rom com, and Fahrenheit 451-style social commentary all at once, and ends up not doing any of them particularly well. The action scenes lack drama and the fact that dozens of people are shooting actual guns at each other for hours at a time and not a single person ever dies lends an air of absurdity to the whole thing. The rom com aspect is not especially well done. For some reason they decided to transport all the high school rom com tropes like blushing girls literally running away from their feelings into this series, which follows a military unit full of adults. I fear for how well they will be able to defend freedom of expression from fascism if they can't even make eye contact with someone they have a crush on. - Uninspired and the social commentary lacks bite or purpose. The Fahrenheit 451 type setting of this series is quite literally just a setting. This series has nothing interesting or new to say on the subject. The message is "censorship bad, join your local library" and that's it. If you're watching this series expecting profound satire or political commentary, you will be sorely disappointed. - Strange animation problems. Though the series mostly looks fine, there are some times when the character models get all wonky or look like they're moonwalking. Kasahara in particular sometimes takes on a weirdly frumpy appearance when you see her walking around. - Lack of compelling villains. The Media Cleansing Committee are just faceless thugs. They seem sinister when they're first introduced in the opening episode, but only become less frightening with time. They take L's constantly, never winning even one time during a confrontation over the course of the series. They're Big Brother meets the Washington Generals. They aren't threatening and you never feel as though they're a significant obstacle to the main characters. Tezuka's brother occasionally shows flashes of being an interesting villain, but they never follow through on this and all of the tension dissipates when he exits the story for extended periods of time.

This was probably one of the best decision to watch back in 2008. The story is about a special trained military force for the "Library", to protect good, fun and important books. It sounds intresting, but not good enough. The characters and the art help you through the series, in which the story develops nicely. The characters are done great, their backgrounds, relations and personalities, they really look like humans which just got animated, through their personalities that is. The art is okay, sometimes they could've drawn more realistic, some female characters look too much on their male co-characters. But that's probably meant to be that way,since, when you get to know a softer side, you get to see how beautiful she actually is. But all-in-all, Toshokan Sensou (Library War) is an highly enjoyable anime if you like intresting story's, good/realistic art and romance or humor. Every aspect is worked in it, and of course, don't forget the action that happens once in a while