Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 3: Adopted Daughter of an Archduke ‒ Episode 5

After seemingly getting pre-empted by My Hero Academia last week, we now return to your regularly scheduled Bookworm. It's fine, things are still in lead-up mode in this episode, so there's a general sense of waiting anyway. What's one extra week? Not that there is no forward momentum, and there continues to be a bit more structure to the individual episodes of Adopted Daughter of an Archduke than Bookworm would previously buy into.

The bookending device directly follows on from the explorations at the end of the previous episode: the process of printing the wax stencil paper. This necessitates bringing in yet another new dude in Johann's crafting compatriot Zack, whom Rosemyne spurs into a little friendly competition to drive advancements in said printing process. I honestly feel there's less to Zack as a character than what he does to fill out the flavor of the narrative—as happens with Bookworm as it pads its cast out more and more. He reveals that Rosemyne's regular exclamation of "Gutenberg!" and referring to successful crafters with it has led the said community to adopt the term internally as a sort of title to ambitiously strive for. It's a cute touch that once again speaks to Rosemyne being a bit unaware of how much sway her actions have, and how she can introduce otherworldly information into this world in new ways (which comes up again later in this very episode).

Being a bookending section as such, there's not a ton of actual movement on the new printing techniques between Johann and Zack. They get their assignment at the start, then come back at the end with a few proposals, and Rosemyne declares that they're going to evaluate by building an option from both boys and pitting them against each other. I'll be honest, constructing two whole-ass manufacturing machines purely for an evaluation like this seems like a pretty bold expenditure of resources in such a setting. But they can also put these sorts of things partially together with magic, so maybe it works. Also, there's a nonzero chance they would use both options in the paper-printing process somehow; I'm not ruling anything out.

The foreground of working on these advancements is, of course, the preparations for Ferdinand's concert. This is Bookworm at its most straightforward and entertaining. Rosemyne and Ferdinand's dynamic of trying to get at each other while still supporting the same cause and fundraising is fun to see, even as Wit Studio has calmed down a bit on the regular expressive body language. Some of it's still there, but it's mostly embodied in the facial expressions this week. And it's shown how that drive to one-up each other lets the whole system benefit, with Rosemyne starting Ferdinand out with the tune of an affable kids' anime as a sort of snark on his character, before Ferdinand lyricizes it and upgrades it with his playing to make a certifiable religious banger. Among everything else, Rosemyne has also inadvertently invented the concept of Christian Rock. Really putting the "idolatry" in idols with how Ferdinand promotes it too.

That's the other element being explored in this episode's concert prep: the selling point that Ferdinand is really, really hot. Printing off pictures of him is enough to pique the enthusiasm of the otherwise man-averse Wilma. And getting said prints prompts the smoothest segment of animation from Rosemyne's adopted mother as she shimmies over. It's an impressively uncanny insertion. I really hope it wasn't made with AI or anything. It's just funny to see modern promotional parasocial fangirling mapped onto this classical-style setting of a story. They have to jump through several hoops to have Wilma and other artists get visual on Ferdinand to be able to draw him, as I realize while watching "Oh right, they don't have cameras or anything here, that really complicates capturing likenesses."

The other expected incidental entries let the audience keep tabs on things. Tuuli is contracted as the official High Bishop hairpiece handcrafter, giving her an outlet to directly interact with Rosemyne in an official capacity. Even as the pair have to dance around the terminology of their actual relationship, this keeps up Bookworm's quota of simply sweet family moments, which it still rules at. As well, there's a helpful callback/refresher to the Tau fruit's magical properties and baby Dirk's Devouring it is being used to treat. This also makes clear that there are instances where Rosemyne is aware of the potential for societal revolution she's sitting on in some cases, which could be an effective setup for anywhere the series might be going in the future.

There is one odd spot where the show takes a moment to have characters exposit to Rosemyne about Wilfried's weird hang-ups with her. The kid honestly hasn't felt like a big piece since the show just skipped over the immediate fallout of him bloodily dragging Rosemyne around. I understand they're probably setting him up for a future role, and there's not a ton of space in the episodes with everything else going on. But they've got to do something to make him feel more integral for that if I'm to have any reaction to him apart from going "Who? Oh, right, Sylvester's one kid." Apart from that, this is a solid welcome-back for Bookworm from its hiatus, so long as it's not spending too much more time on setup and will deliver on the concert's payoff sooner rather than later.

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Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 3: Adopted Daughter of an Archduke is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris is back to hit the books. You can see him posting about anime, transforming robots, and other quality reading material over on his BlueSky.