Ascendance of a Bookworm was hailed as one of the best isekai ever made. Something which the fanboys say for every isekai there is, therefore this statement means nothing. What matters is the execution, which for this show was supposed to be how it’s not a power fantasy about a male loser getting reincarnated into a videogame where he is overpowered and forms a harem while fighting the demon lord with his broken superpowers. This show is better because the protagonist is a girl, there are no videogames, no harem, no demon lord, and no superpowers. It’s a simple coming of age, about a simple girl, in a simple medieval setting. Or so it was at first, because that is no longer true by the end of the second season.But first things first. Every story needs to give the viewer reasons for keeping up with it, and this one offered a down to earth isekai. It had a heroine who was struggling to achieve small victories in an almost mundane setting with not much to struggle towards. On top of that she is not exceptionally powerful just because she got isekaied, since she has a very frail body that can kill her if she works hard or if an incurable disease kicks in. Plus she can’t even openly say she is from a different world, because the church is going to execute her as a witch. Plus, because the setting is medieval it lacks even the most basic luxuries and services we take for granted in our contemporary society. They still have slavery and public executions and women wish to be sex toys for men. Everything she does is harder in that world compared to ours and thus every little victory she achieves comes off as rewarding despite being mundane as hell for the rest of us. Or so it was at first, because that is no longer true by the end of the second season.Anyways, since we need a plot so that the show won’t be a slice of nothing happens, the heroine sets forth to read books. Something a bookworm like her finds to be super important, although it isn’t, but we need her to have an otaku-level obsession over something, so we can also have an objective. Otherwise there will be no plot. It’s why everyone is obsessed with one particular thing in most anime. In Yugioh everyone has nothing better to do than obsess over a children’s card game, in Bookworm Isekai the heroine has nothing better to do than obsess over reading books.Thus we spend the first few episodes in her trying to find books to read only to find out books are very expensive and very rare and there are no public libraries because the setting is medieval. Thus she sets forth to… print her own books (wut?). Because the most logical thing you can do when you can’t read books, is to print your own books, so you can read… your own books (wut?). If this sounds like a really stupid leap in logic, get used to it because it’s going to keep happening every few episodes. By the end of the second season the objective will have moved and changed so many times to a point where the initial premise will not matter in the least. In fact it won’t even make any sense. Why did the heroine spend all those episodes in trying to print books when she could simply join the church? They have mountains of books in their temples. Oh, that’s right, it’s because we wouldn’t have a show if she did that.It’s also a plot hole that renders most of the first season completely pointless. It wouldn’t be an issue if the objective wasn’t constantly changing every few episodes, but that was not the case. Each changing wasn’t only moving the goalpost; it was also changing the world and its limitations. Basically, the internal consistency of the story was changing for the sake of plot, thus becoming more and more distant from what it was in the beginning. I mean, it is expected to have changes happening in a coming of age story, but it becomes bad writing when the changes betray the premise and gradually change the show into a more mundane fantasy adventure. The sickly typical girl that makes you so happy to see her achieve small victories becomes a super awesome teacher and a super awesome inventor and a super awesome merchant and a super awesome cleric, while everyone around her are constantly amazed with all the stuff she can do. And boy does she enjoy the attention by constantly smiling smugly. How is this not an empowerment fantasy, and just another isekai, like the ones it was supposed to be different from?And it doesn’t stop there. Her sickly body that could kill her with simple daily activities ends up having a dark superpower hiding inside her, which makes her far stronger than most people. There goes that appeal, she’s another shonen protagonist with a demonic power inside her. Oh, and that part about not being able to reveal she is from another world because she will be executed? It got revealed eventually, a priest tried to punish her, she used her awesome superpowers for force-chocking the guy ala Darth Vader and then she got forgiven because her super important knowledge of our world will make her kingdom very powerful. What happened to the whole fear of dark magic they all had all this time and how is this not yet another empowerment fantasy isekai, just like the ones it was supposed to be different from?You think it stops there? In the first episodes the setting was almost magic-free. There weren’t many things you could do with spells for making life easier. By the end of the second season there are huge magical trees and flying lions and knights that use magic to protect the world from evil entities. Which means there is a demon lord out there and they want to use the heroine to help them in defeating him. The show became another isekai, just like the ones it was supposed to be different from.Therefore Ascendance of a Bookworm is another generic empowerment fantasy that took its time before revealing its true colors as another light novel isekai and betraying any good thoughts you initially had about it.
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