The extremely far fetched premise of the story.

Let’s start with the background. When the calender changed to the Seika era, the government of Japan introduced the Media Improvement Act (MIA). The MIA is an act that allows the government to stop any publication that it deems unsuitable for the public. Freedom of speech, sayonara.

Up to this point, logic is still within plausible territory. The same government that enacted the MIA then introduces another act, the Library Freedom Act (LFA). It allows libraries to become self governing bodies with private armies. Cool right? Librarians with guns. Logic is destroyed.

Here’s why. It’s stupid for the government to authorize libraries to have private armies to defend itself against the government. It’s like Bush allowing Osama to legally bomb the US. Even Bush is not that stupid. If this was a story about a civil war/rebellion against an iron fisted an iron fisted government that doesn’t allow freedom of speech, it would make a lot more sense and nothing important would have changed. Doujou could still be Doujou, Tezuka would still be Tezuka and Kasahara would still be Kasahara but instead of being saved by a Librarian, she could be saved by rebels instead. And logic would not be destroyed.

Under the LFA, The Library Armed Force is created. I find that stretching believability a little too much. Would you be willing to sacrifice yourself to defend a library? I wouldn’t. And I don’t think anyone in their right mind would, unless the library has hot librarians. But even then you would be fighting to save the hot librarians and not the books. And forming a private army isn’t exactly easy. You’d need experienced personnel, weapons and a lot of supplies. To get all that, money will be required and lots of it. If my local library had that much money, I would’ve been a librarian. The only other explanation I can think of is government funding. Now Bush isn’t only allowing Osama to bomb US, he’s supplying Osama with planes and AK47’s to attack the US.

The MIA dudes aren’t exactly a bright bunch either. Instead of ensuring that newspapers don’t print scathing articles about the government or going after unemployed housewife bloggers who spread lies (Malaysians should get this), they assault bookstores for carrying titles that are “damaging influences to youths”, AKA fairy tales. Yes, kids armed with fairy tales is a scary prospect indeed. They should be stopping fairy tales at the customs and publishing companies, not bookstores. Stupid MIA is stupid.

The MIA’s military hardware is exactly top of the line either. I’m not talking about their guns or protective gear, I’m talking about their vehicles. An armed branch of the government and all they have are lame bright red vans that are instantly recognizable? The must have skipped the stealth section in their military manual. I was amused when the also drove the red vans into combat. Despite being unarmored, it took a hail of bullets and it’s physical structure wasn’t changed in any way. Even the windows didn’t break. Even with bulletproof vans, the MIA lost to the Librarians helicopter. Sorry MIA, a chopper beats a van any day.

Perhaps the Japanese politicians were bored so they engineered a war for their own amusement. My bet’s with the librarians. Choppers against lame red vans. No brainer. I see no other reason why a sovereign nation would allow a war to happen, within it’s borders, and do absolutely nothing about it.

Despite the absolutely nonsensical background, the anime is actually quite good. If only they removed the war for books aspect and replaced it with a more believable cause, it would be an awesome anime. Toshokan Sensou is a very good slice of war anime with good character development, awesome animation (expected for a Production I.G. anime) and solid pacing.

Damn you Toshokan Sensou! You’re an awesome anime but could you please make more sense? The local logic field that is my brain