Ascendance of a Bookworm Episode 27

I Forgot How Bad this Anime Looks

Originally, I was going to be reviewing Ascendance of a Bookworm Season 3 episodes on Tuesdays. But, since what I had planned for Mondays fell through, this series is now going to be reviewed every Monday now. Mark it on your calendar.

Now that I’ve gotten that scheduling notice out of the way, let’s get right into the biggest complaint I have about Episode 27. It looks like garbage. This episode probably doesn’t look any worse than the previous 26 episodes of the series did. But, I’d forgotten how bad it looks.

Ascendance of a Bookworm is also easily the worst-looking anime I’m currently watching. It probably isn’t being helped by the fact that most anime I’m watching this season look surprisingly good. And, last season had some beautiful anime, such as Akebi’s Sailor Uniform. Ascendance of a Bookworm just can’t compete, visually.

Most viewers who enjoy this series probably don’t care too much about how it looks. And if you’ve made it to the third season, you probably enjoy it. But, I don’t think that’s an excuse to ignore criticism of the fact that it looks terrible.

I’m bringing that up because I know there are going to be some people who think I’m just being a hater. However, these are also the people who will try to say that I’m being biased because I gave Ping Pong the Animation a 10/10 despite how it looks.

Ping Pong’s art and animation style were deliberate choices made for artistic purposes. That’s not the same as Ascendance of a Bookworm having bad art and animation because it saves time and money to have fewer frames and less detail on those frames.

Myne’s Next Invention

In a lot of ways, Ascendance of a Bookworm is just like Dr. Stone. Myne and Senku are both constantly reinventing objects from their old worlds. Surprisingly, of the two, I think I actually like Ascendance of a Bookworm more.

Anyway, I brought that up because Myne introduces her latest invention in this episode: movable type. Myne explained what it is fairly well in the episode, but I’ll give you some additional information on it in case you’re not familiar.

Basically, movable type is a printing technology that allows letter blocks to be arranged so that an entire page of text can be stamped onto paper at once. This is much faster than having to write out each page by hand. Why? Because once you set the type for a single page, you can mass-produce that page very quickly.

As it currently stands, Myne is running a sweatshop of laborers out of the cathedral. She has them in a basement hand-writing each and every page of her books. Even just a single movable type printing press would be able to out-produce Myne’s current system.

Additionally, it would allow Myne to mass-produce other books, as well. Her workers wouldn’t need to spend time learning new pages to write out. They’d just have to copy her original manuscript once for each page using the movable type.

Something else about the movable type Myne’s commissioning from the apprentice blacksmith is that she’s probably going to sell the technology. As far as I remember, Myne has sold the rights to all of her inventions — including her ink in this episode.

And out of all of Myne’s inventions so far, movable print is the one capable of making the biggest impact on her new world. Newspapers can exist now. Suddenly, the masses will be able to learn about current events.

The Ink Guild

I mentioned that Myne sold her ink in this episode. She sold it to the Ink Guild, which previously had a monopoly on the production of ink. They wanted to buy out Myne’s ink patent for two reasons. First, it eliminates competition. And second, it eliminates knowledge of how to produce ink from spreading.

If the Ink Guild is the only producer of ink and its members are also the only ones who know how to make ink, then everyone who wants ink has to buy it from them. This allows the Ink Guild to dictate the price of ink.

Unfortunately for Myne, her ink has turned her into an enemy of the Ink Guild. Even though she’s now sold her ink to the guild, that doesn’t change the fact that she figured out how to produce it in the first place. That knowledge alone is dangerous to the guild.

Since I haven’t read the light novels, I obviously don’t know how this situation with the Ink Guild is going to be resolved. But, I do have a guess. Myne mentioned that even if she sells her ink to the guild, she should still be able to purchase it at a reasonable price.

It’s possible that part of the sale contract states that the guild has to sell ink to Myne at a discount. However, I’m thinking that Myne intends to appease the guild in order to have them lower the price of ink.

How would she do this? Well, by selling, or simply giving up, the rights to her movable type press. If she does that, there will suddenly be other publishers in need of large amounts of ink. And who benefits from that? The Ink Guild, of course.

Conclusion

What do you think of Ascendance of a Bookworm Season 3 Episode 27? Are you willing to admit that it looks bad? Do you think Myne will sell the rights to her movable type? And how do you think the Ink Guild situation will be resolved? Let me know in the comments.

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My review of Episode 28 is available now.