issa-sa knew this was coming all along.
Respect people’s opinions! Therefore, I won’t tolerate any insults like “you shit-head” or anything else disrespectful along those lines, unless you’re calling someone else a shit-head (kidding~). Nevertheless, feel free to point anything out and “give some sort of rebuttal” responses to this post since I’m always open to different opinions. I managed to finally complete Toshokan Sensou even though there was this reluctance that held me back each week. Even after a week of the final episode being subbed, I still couldn’t be bothered opening the file and watching it (mostly because I had already spoiled myself with those fan posts).
I think psgels was being very fair with his review in saying that Toshokan Sensou is a “half-baked” series. For me, this anime is definitely lacking the ability to excite the viewer, or at least, keep me interested enough so that I wouldn’t have to watch an episode of this show and at the same time spend those “boring moments” enjoying the blank television screen instead. Okay, I exaggerated the exaggeration, but the point is: Toshokan Sensou is probably not even worth your twenty minutes.
First of all, although the animation quality is decent, the artwork is superb, and the voice-overs are bearable, there are so many bits and pieces in this series that just makes you want to regret having wasted your download on a 170MB-200MB file. If it’s not-so-obvious already, all the military-related events are illogical and, perhaps, Toshokan Sensou would’ve been better off without all the gun-action and war drama. In addition to that, I also feel that some parts in this anime are pointless – sometimes an episode’s purpose is to build up tension for the next one (e.g. the twelfth episode of SOUL EATER), or for a couple of episodes there are hints that something “big” will later occur.
Contradicting myself in saying that, Toshokan Sensou has a slice-of-life vibe to it also, which means that maybe those scenes I find meaningless are about character-development and deepening friendships. Even so, for a series running for only thirteen episodes, I’d been hoping after hearing of this new series’ announcement that there wouldn’t be any “fillerrific nonsense”, and that the main focus would be on Doujou and Iku. However, there were times when I felt that the books were prioritized before their relationship, and that wasn’t necessarily a good thing because it was so boring. I wouldn’t have minded if Iku and Doujou’s relationship, along with Shibaski and Tezuka’s relationship, had a “more pleasant” build-up to it, and also if it went a little deeper. But like all anime, there are episodes that are better than others, and the last episode of Toshokan Sensou definitely didn’t disappoint. Although things were sort of rushed towards the end, I kind of enjoyed it, and the “corny” things were far from corny.
At the start of this series, the artwork was brilliant, but for some reason, the characters started looking demented later on during some scenes, which really disappointed me. Speaking of characters, Iku is one of the most realistic characters I’ve ever came across in anime. She cries when it’s “appropriate” and you can actually relate to her personality really easily. Toshokan Sensou has a great sense of humour to it and its presented so realistically that it’s so familiar, it becomes hilarious. Even though they’re not the best couple in my opinion, Iku and Doujou’s relationship is cute, but I sometimes get the feeling that just because those two make a great couple, it gets in the way when you think of how horrible the actual plot is. A good actor doesn’t make a movie good.
Anyway, in the last episode I really liked the piano music playing in the background, and Iku’s speech that awoke Doujou was sweet, but it failed to touch my heart even so. I found the speech “typical”, or, to be more exact, I could tell what Iku was going to say and suddenly, it didn’t sound so heart-breaking any more. I suppose that Toshokan Sensou didn’t fail to deliver, but there were times when I really couldn’t be bothered spending twenty or so minutes watching an episode. It wasn’t surprising that Doujou and Genda are still alive in the end, but it was definitely sad to see that Genda had “miraculously survived 32 bullets after a 13 hour surgery”.
In Doujou’s case, it was sort of strange that he became a doll after whatever it was that happened to him. It wasn’t really that shocking and his condition would’ve been more understandable if he had witnessed someone important to him die. Nevertheless, Toshokan Sensou is not extremely good, but the last episode was probably the best and maybe only the last few minutes of it were really worth watching if you’ve followed the previous eleven episodes. I am not entirely satisfied with the way things were left, and how easily Tezuka’s brother jumped into the good side after one “inspirational” speech from Iku. My overall mark for Toshokan Sensou is a 7/10.
The rest is here:
Toshokan Sensou: The Beginning of the End Fails
