Library War: Love and War

I stumbled upon something interesting, again. The genre-well, the story progression-hit me at the first sight. I always fall for some comedy-romance that don’t put focus on the romance itself, but the main story-how they develop really good and have something that used as the main story rather than romance as the base one. Yep, I’m into things that have romance put don’t put it at the top of the story-instead, they are focusing on other things that more serious (like a war condition) or funny (like a special matter at school or babysitting *ups, I feel like mentioning other title). In this case, this “Library War: Love and War” story is mainly focused about the Seika 31 era thingy in Japan (2019 in our dicitionary) when the government has declared the “Media Security” or stuff, mainly about government that think the generation should be secured from the improper media that might turn them into “good-for-nothing” generation, harsh, uneducated, and, you know what I’m trying to say.

Then they have this “Media Improvement Committee” that totally with the rules, they demand for a better quality of media for generations in that age. And sadly, they would not hesitate to do rough stuff to persuade and “take” what it takes to “save” the generations-by any means, strictly prohibit people’s right to read any kind of books and being selective, they would take books forcibly from the bookstores when they think that those books are ‘problematic’ and ‘the material is improper to be read’-and make a better future. They think. And maybe this sounds quite good, if those committees don’t start to touch other matters that actually don’t need to be banned or stuff, but just because there are one line that sounds provoking people to be ‘bad’ or teasing the government (well, it’s our rights too, right?) when it doesn’t even sound like one, they started to get into things that make people feel bothersome. They would take all books just because the author has something to do with government, or too fictional that can make people think insane. Well, that might happens, but still, this committee is way too far from their jurisdiction, sometimes.

And time is not that tough. There are people who care about the freedom to read anything they want and to gain informations from anywhere they like and these people are fighting to defend themselves from the forceful Media Improvement Committee and freely lend books, media, and passing informations for those who are seeking informations. These people defend under the name of “Library Force”, the Library is where the forceful committee doesn’t have any right to touch their materials, and the Library has their right to defend themselves from the committee when they get rough, and then they have “Library Defense Force”. This force doesn’t work to fight the committee, but they only defend themselves in order to keep the Library safe and sound, and thus, they have rights to hold weapons. And there’s this “Task Force”, an elite force in the Library Defense Force that work more specifically and more hard than the regular “Defense Force”. They also have to work as the Librarians, which make this force a bit ‘special’ than the usual defense force. They have to know how to fight and how to be librarians.

Okay, so the story begins with this girl, Iku Kasahara. She’s tall, mid-twenties, huge, perhaps. And she’s kinna strong. She has this dream to join the Defense Force because in High School, someone from the Defense Force has done something that made her see him as a prince-though she totally forgot about his face, his voice-and rescue her from the Media Improvement Committee from taking her favorite book that she’s been waiting for 10 years long. Then, with her passion, she joined the Defense Force secretly because her parents don’t like her doing things that is not ‘girlish’, since Iku herself is quite tomboy but girlie in other part, but from how she survives, she is indeed strong and quite like a man.

Her story revolves around how she do her job as a Task Force member. Yep, her supervisor, Atsushi Dojo (he play a very big role here), and Komaki-I don’t know his surname, with their supervisor, Genda, suggested to the Chief Commander (I forgot his name!) that she and Tezuka, the super perfect guy that will team up with her and Dojo and Komaki, he’s *quite* handsome but cold, praise Dojo so much, genius, but at the beginning, very rough to Iku because he couldn’t get the point why someone -a woman!- that is not as capable as him can be tasked as a Task Force member. But he gets it why along the story, and being cuter each chapter, will be put in the Task Force.

How things turn out in this story is very nice, to me. The development is great, not fast but not too slow. Iku has this bad relationship with Dojo and they fight a lot, but Dojo and herself show affection to each other, realize it or not, and indeed, Dojo is caring to her. And yes, like other typical romance story, things turn out to be good.

But my main point is, the story is not about Iku and Dojo’s relationship. It’s mainly about the story of the era where you have to fight to read something, and I always love books more than anything. I don’t mind buying books I have read and don’t open the cover for ages to make it safe. I close my bookshelves and I despise people who can’t see the preciousness of books. I do believe that life also comes from books, and books have souls. Yes, sound fictional, but I treat my books as my body, so I do love anything that discuss about protecting and praising books. Glad someone is kind enough to take this theme and turn it into a manga and anime.

Yes, the story about Iku and her Task Force, her supervisor, her friends, and her life to safe books for people who also care about it came from light-novels from Japan by Hiro Arikawa. 

He has written 4 series, and actually, only the first one that use the name “Toshokan Sensou”. The others are Toshokan Nairan, Toshokan Kiki, and Toshokan Kakumei (still finding the meaning and the English version of the novels). In Japan itself, they have published the story under two mangaka, so apparently, there are two mangas that came with the same story, but the different is, one is more ‘shoujo’ -for girls- and the other one is more ‘shounen’ -for boys-although the romance story is still in there. I like the shoujo one more, since they have came out in my country, and I have a better image of the story, and better excitement, from the shoujo version, Toshokan Senso: Love and War while the shounen one is Toshokan Senso: Spitfire!

They also have this anime came out in 2008, and I just knew it nowadays-since I just met the title very new-and guess what? The anime is a BOOM. I love the artwork but sadly, I can’t download all of them (my internet connection suddenly turned low). But I do aim to download them all. I love the anime just by seeing the first eps and OVA.

So please don’t mind to keep in touch with my blog, since I’m going to write things about my interests, and these kind of things are also my deepest interest.

Tell me if you’re a fan of this series!