Narou-Kei Uzumaki Episode 2: Ascendance of a Bookworm

After stacking the poll in favor of shows we might enjoy more, we pivot from Sword Art Online to Ascendance of a Bookworm. Gone are all the gamer trappings, and in their place we find a much more subdued story of a girl aiming to reclaim her ideal life in a new world where she's obstructed by both structures of class and a potentially life threatening, debilitating illness. While watching just one season (adapting 3 of the 29 currently published light novel volumes) means we don't necessarily reach a resolution of that conflict, we have a productive time unraveling the variably compelling fantasies presented by the show and celebrating the fact that we've got actual characters, that we like, this time. What more could you want?

After stacking the poll in favor of shows we might enjoy more, we pivot from Sword Art Online to Ascendance of a Bookworm. Gone are all the gamer trappings, and in their place we find a much more subdued story of a girl aiming to reclaim her ideal life in a new world where she's obstructed by both structures of class and a potentially life threatening, debilitating illness. While watching just one season (adapting 3 of the 29 currently published light novel volumes) means we don't necessarily reach a resolution of that conflict, we have a productive time unraveling the variably compelling fantasies presented by the show and celebrating the fact that we've got actual characters, that we like, this time. What more could you want?