The Viewer Healing Magic from Ascendance of a Bookworm

This anime is a seemingly simple slice of life and Isekai. Our main character, conveniently named “Main” was a book addict in her previous life as a college aged woman from modern Japan. Ironically, her librarian hermit life was thwarted by a bookcase collapsing on her and she died under the weight of the words of the authors contained within her beloved books.

The family she wakes to is a loving family of four whom beyond all want their sickly youngest member, Main, to thrive and live on. Our protagonist believes they obtained the real Main’s memories and retains her modern Japanese memories, but knows the majority of her isn’t the original Main.

She starts her life, and through the unbelievable absence of books in her new life she finds a purpose and simultaneous empathic connection and appreciation for her fellow man.

Through scenes in the show, as someone who didn’t experience a normal family life I find it extra interesting. There are moments where Main speaks the best truth, the obvious loving truth but my brain wouldn’t have read the situation that way. A NPC in an opposing role mirrors my experience at seeing a loving family bond that is genuine and enviable.

In a way, Main is teaching the viewer how to love those in one’s life and feel proud for all their accomplishments- big and small.

I mostly wanted to make myself write something because honestly the point of books is the point of blogs. It’s amazing what we can do now. I can share my thoughts out into the great void. Someone may hear them, maybe no one will. But the mere fact that the chance someone could hear me and connect with this moment of my humanity exists makes the act of writing this worth it.

How many amazing lives and beautiful souls lived and died without ever getting to leave behind a legacy like the kind we can now? Almost effortlessly and with almost no barrier to entry.

Truly the greatest gift and burden of humankind is information sharing and the internet allows for such a high amount of that.

Content on pretty much any sort of platform is sharing a moment and an experience with other people who also watched it. This is the basis for why the various internet communities are such a tangible thing, this is why memes really are so very important to culture at this point. It’s a way to identify someone else with a shared experience and thus find any connection with another person. That connection may or may not serve as a strong basis for an interpersonal relationship, but it still serves that purpose for the important connection.

Human connection is what everything is about. That never ending effort of mankind pushing the boulder up the hill is being accomplished one person’s efforts at a time. Tiny steps in progress are so hard to see but as life passes me by I’m beginning to see the slight change in perspective from this part of the hill.