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[00:00] So not too long ago, I released a video at the very end of 2025, depending on when this one goes up, basically going over all of the sequels that were going to be coming out in 2026, things that you should be catching up on, things that you should be paying attention to,

[00:13] because further seasons are upcoming, and if you have the time, you should catch up on them, so that you can be current when those seasons launch. Now, if you know me, and you know particular shows that I, or particular anime franchises that I am a big fan of,

[00:28] you might have noticed a glaring omission from that video that didn't even get a token mention, and I'm not going to lie, it's not necessarily because I forgot about it,

[00:40] but because I just didn't think it was worth mentioning in that video, and that is Ascendance of a Bookworm. And I'm the guy that has this whole pile of freaking white novels of the series on my desk.

[00:52] Why would I not mention Ascendance of a Bookworm? And mostly that comes down to it didn't fit the vibe of what that video was going for. The purpose of that video was for me to tell you, hey, you should go and catch up on these anime because their new seasons are coming out,

[01:07] and I highly recommend for you to watch all of those anime so that you can be caught up and current for the new season. And I don't feel like that applies to Bookworm. And that's me saying this, despite the fact that Ascendance of a Bookworm is one of my favorite anime-related franchises of all time.

[01:22] It is one of the few that has ever gotten me to not only go and read its original material, but I read it and I did poor translations of it in Japanese. I followed all of the live translations of the English as the light novels completed.

[01:34] I'm still reading all of the manga as it gets adapted and translated and brought over. I am way too deep into this franchise. And you'd think that that would mean that I would be screaming from the rooftops

[01:46] about this new season of Ascendance of a Bookworm that's coming out, adapted by studio wit, of all places, you'd think I would be screaming about that, but I'm not. And the main reason is that, um, the anime's not great. And historically, I've

[02:00] always been against the type of people that are just like, go read the manga, or in this case, go read the light novel, because the original is just that good. I've been against those, largely, because yes, of course, those versions, the original version that the story

[02:13] comes out in, was written, or was created for that format, and it doesn't always translate into an adaption. But this does not necessarily mean that an adaptation is bad. In this case, however, as such a big fan of Bookworm, I don't think I could ever recommend the anime.

[02:29] So, A Friendress of a Bookworm, as we are sitting here, already has three seasons. And they adapt in the first couple of parts of the story. Bookworm is so large, it is technically five parts long,

[02:42] but each part gets exponentially larger than the part that came before it. Part one, in light novel only took about three books Part five when it finished had 12 So they get longer and they get bigger and more expansive as they go The first three seasons of the anime technically cover parts one and two Season one was all of part one pretty much

[03:05] and then seasons two and three covered part two, sort of. The problem with the bookworm adaptation is that I don't know if this was something that was necessarily approved by Kazuki Sensei herself,

[03:17] or just something that the studios or somewhere along the line, people thought that there were certain things that were not relevant within the story of Bookworm, so they just flat-out cut it. There are a lot of side things that exist within Bookworm,

[03:31] because there's, like, a main plot that exists, but then also the main character, mine, later Rosemind, ends up, like, dealing with, and she ends up meeting people, she starts whole industries in this fantasy world, and the anime adaptation cuts some of this out.

[03:46] and that is so disheartening especially when they're things that I legitimately enjoyed reading about. So the fact that we didn't get adaptations of them is very depressing. Not only that, but some of the things that ended up getting cut

[03:59] from those seasons are kind of important or at the very least is going to make things very awkward for this upcoming season which has me worried about it. Case in point, in season two, or rather in part two of the light novel,

[04:12] our main character, she opens a restaurant, ostensibly. I mean, technically her main business partner ends up teaming up with the guild master and they go in it together and then they make it and you know mine's kind

[04:24] of off doing her own thing but she's like helping fund it with her revenue from other sources and a bunch of other things and she gives it recipes because she has modern real life Japan knowledge that gets brought

[04:36] into this fantasy world like it's this whole thing but like in the book that restaurant is fairly important especially within part three because a lot of things happen at that restaurant and then immediately following that restaurant.

[04:48] And then for me to watch this adaptation and don't see this subplot exist at all, and I sort of get it because it's like, okay, well, you took part two, and all of part two you already needed two seasons in order

[05:00] to cover all of it, and that is with everything that you cut. Maybe this just might end up being me complaining that Tom Bombadil doesn't exist in the Lord of the Rings film, and it's fine, and they could cut it. It could depend

[05:12] on how part three is adapted, and how it's removal from the plot effects things going forward, but there is just a lot of things about the adaptation that feel like it was cut for time, and I really wish that it wasn't.

[05:27] I feel like there are so many things that weren't paced or weren't massaged out in the ways that I would have liked them to be, and I know that part of that does come down to how much Bookworm was slash is a hyperfixation of mine and has been since I ever started

[05:42] reading it a number of years ago. I mean, this is a franchise that I go back and make, like, rereads every, like, four to six months. I reread the whole thing. There are fan fictions that I have bookmarked that I go back and I reread those. I written fan fiction for this series You never find it Don ask But I have never gotten into a franchise to this level and so I realized that because I am so obsessed with it

[06:05] I put it to a higher standard that I might other things, and maybe it's from that level that I would not recommend this anime. But that was still a thing. I don't recommend the anime. If someone's like, well, what's your favorite Isakai the whole time?

[06:17] I would say Bookworm, but then I would have to caveat not the anime, though, because it has problems that I'm not happy with. The first season's really good, though. That's kind of the other thing, though. It's because season one of the anime adapts part one very faithfully.

[06:30] The problem is that part one of Bookworm, kind of its weakest part, is very similar to, well, you know how Jojo has multiple parts. It's very much in the line of, some doesn't come along and say that part one of Bookworm is their favorite part.

[06:43] Well, I'm sure that there are some people that exist that will say that, but they're kind of in the minority to the same extent that I don't know many people that would say that Phantom Blood is their favorite Jojo part. I mean, it's also statistically proven because in Japan,

[06:55] the popularity of Ascendance of a Bookworm really didn't explode until Part 4 came out, and we're not even adapting that yet. I don't even know if we ever will. That's another thing that makes me a little hesitant to recommend to catch up to everything

[07:11] so that you can be one of the people like me who are going to watch the new season of Bookworm when it comes out in 2026 and be like, Oh my God, we're in it. We're up to date and we're watching it. And I worry about that because the bookworm is so expansive.

[07:26] We have zero guarantee that we're getting much beyond this. It took them two seasons to adapt all of Part 2. It's at least going to take that much to adapt all of Part 3, if not more.

[07:38] And it could be that they've committed to this because they themselves know that the popularity of bookworm kind of exploded in the light novel scene with Part 4, and so getting to the adaptation of Part 4 could be very important to them. But that could also mean that they're going to cut a shit ton out of Part 3 in order to quickly get to it.

[07:54] And that I worry about. There's not an insignificant amount of subplots within Part 3 that I really enjoyed reading, and I think are very important to the story of Bookworm.

[08:06] But then also, if your goal is to just get to Part 4, there is so much about Part 3 that I could see them cutting. Because it is just not relevant past Part 3. Once you get into part four, our main character starts to get so much more into full nobility and full country politics that the earlier parts just did not handle.

[08:26] Part one, well, especially part one and two are very small scale. Part three starts to get more into the duchy that our main character lives in and, like, the whole area there. I, like, essentially want to say that she lives within a state or a province that is run essentially by a governor, even if he's called the Archduke.

[08:42] and then they have a king of the whole country that like rules over them and so on and so forth part four gets a lot more into the country politics and because of that though a lot of the more localized stuff gets kind of put to the sidelines but even in the light novel there is not an insignificant amount of side parts that still exist in those smaller scales It just that if they think the popularity of Part 4 and beyond

[09:05] is more on the country-level politics and the higher, more, like, overarching narrative of the story, then there's a lot of things that are going to get cut, and then there is a lot of things in Part 3 that is just straight-out not relevant.

[09:18] And as much as I enjoy reading about them, I really do like rereading Part 3. it worries me that they're going to determine that, well, in order for us to get the adaptation to part four, we're just going to cut a bunch of things. And we've already seen, it wasn't

[09:31] Wit that did it, but we've already seen the adaptation cut a whole bunch of stuff out of part two. And so even though Wit now has it, and they're the ones, I think, in charge, or at least they're the ones on the production line, are those cuts going to keep happening?

[09:44] I don't know. So it's hard for me to then say that this season is something that I'm looking forward to. I'm going to watch it, obviously. I'm too deep into the bookwormhole to not watch it. But if you're wondering why I didn't bring it up in that video, it's because

[10:01] of this. I don't even know if people are going to watch this whole video because it's just me ranting about a thing that I will keep saying things that probably don't make sense to someone who's not in it because I'm just that obsessed and I really shouldn't be. Let's

[10:15] to be perfectly fair, not be this obsessed about something. Let's just get that right out. It's probably not healthy, but my God, do I want that adaptation to be good? I just do not think that it can be good enough

[10:28] for me to be able to recommend it to people, for me to then say that, no, this adaptation is actually goaded and Bookworm is great in animated form. I don't think that they can do that. Not only do I not think that Part 3

[10:40] is the way to do that, I don't think Part 3 in general has enough peak moments to justify that. But then also, like, the chances of them cutting things is very high. The chances of them continuing those cuts

[10:53] further on is, like, we don't know what they're going to do. We don't know. We know that they're starting in part three, but we don't know how many episodes they're going to do. Like, well, assuming they're going to do at least 12 or 13 in this core,

[11:05] but it's like, well, where's the story of this, like, 12, 13 episode core going to end? We don't know. We don't know if they're already locked in to do more beyond that. We don't know if they're going to finish off Part 3. We don't know if then they've committed to Part 4 and beyond.

[11:20] No clue. None whatsoever. We just have to hope and pray and statistically know that none of that is going to come to pass, which makes it very hard for me to be excited about this adaptation because it is not unlikely that they will just have a handful of episodes

[11:36] that may cover all of Part 3, may not even, and even if it does, who knows if it's going to be any good. So that's my rant about Bookworm, and if you're wondering why I didn't put it on an anticipated list, despite me kind of looking forward to it, sort of, but also very worried about it,

[11:50] now you know. The million is half the battle. Watch more anime, and stay frosty.