Myne

Myne (マイン, Main) is the protagonist of Ascendance of a Bookworm.

Myne is a small girl with golden eyes and midnight blue hair. Because her hair is straight and silky, she uses a wooden hairpin to twist the upper half into a bun, while the rest falls loosely to her lower back. After Myne begins using rinsham, others often comment on how glossy her hair looks.

Compared to most commoners, Myne tends to look out-of-place. Because of her poor constitution, she spent little time outside and has sickly pale skin. Her childhood illness also stunted her growth, making her look several years younger than her actual age. At age 5, she is sometimes mistaken as a child of 3 or younger.

In the Lower City, Myne wears a secondhand dress and a patched apron, with short trousers under her skirt. Her clothes are secured at the waist with a cloth sash. As her status improves, she begins wearing secondhand merchant clothes, and later, tailored formal robes produced by the Gilberta Company.

Urano Motosu was a 22-year-old college graduate who had just landed her dream job as a librarian. She lived with her widowed mother; her father died in an accident when she was young. Her only known friend is Shuu.

Urano died by being buried by an avalanche of books during an earthquake, and her last memory was praying desperately that she could still read books in her next life.

Before the start of the story, Myne spent most of her days feverish in bed. She was an unhappy child who preferred to lose herself in "dreams of another world". Because of her poor health, she didn’t participate in neighborhood social events, and the local children rarely saw her. Due to the Devouring, her personality and most of her memories were eventually eroded and replaced with those from her previous life as Urano Motosu. The series follows the new Myne who awakens after these memories emerge.

Before Urano’s memories awoke in Myne, she was somewhat childish and self-centered. Effa recalls that she used to throw tantrums out of jealousy of her sister, Tuuli.

After the original Myne’s and Urano’s memories combined, Myne developed a blended personality. Compared to Urano, she became much more energetic and optimistic. However, she also retained her obsession with books and literacy, a resourceful attitude, and the cultural norms and values she learned as Urano. She has a deep-seated dislike for blood, death and suffering, to the point where she sometimes faints at the sight of blood.

While Myne thinks of herself as a generally selfish person, she is generous to her friends and family and works hard to ensure their happiness. She also shows compassion for strangers and tries to prevent unnecessary suffering when she can, since worrying about others makes it harder to enjoy reading with a clear conscience.

Myne often runs into trouble by failing to consider the circumstances of those around her. Because of this tendency, Effa reflects that Myne looks like her on the outside but has her father's personality on the inside: Both often rush into plans without thinking and feel frustrated if they don't reach their goal.

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 * Myne has an unusually large mana capacity for a Devouring commoner, on par with archnobles of the same age.
 * Myne has shown great proficiency with blessings, including successfully praying to multiple gods at the same time. She occasionally gives blessings unintentionally by praying or singing religious songs. At least once, she successfully improvised a blessing that did not follow the exact wording of established prayers.


 * Myne is very good at math and is able to calculate large numbers in her head quickly. Her method of doing written arithmetic makes her unique in the new world, where most people calculate numbers using an abacus.
 * Myne has strong reading, writing and linguistic skills. Not long after learning to read the new world’s alphabet, she rewrote the archaic language of the temple’s scriptures into simpler language suited for children to create her children's bibles.
 * Myne is a good teacher. She helped Otto teach apprentice soldiers, tutored Lutz, taught the children of the temple orphanage to read, write and calculate at a younger age than even most nobles do.
 * Myne is decent at sewing, although she does not enjoy it and is not particularly skilled. However, she is familiar with several techniques that were previously unknown in the new world, including crocheting.

Using her memories from her life as Urano, Myne recreates a wide range of products and dishes which were previously unknown in Ehrenfest. She knows a great deal about paper, ink and the history of printing due to her personal interest in books.

She also learned how to make several home crafts, including hair ornaments, macramé handbags, homemade shampoo, and homemade paper, from Urano’s mother. She recalls that while her mother had a passion for trying new DIY projects, she usually gave up halfway through, leaving Urano to finish the rest of the project.

As Myne begins to make more complicated inventions, such as the printing press and the water pump, she is only able to remember the broad strokes of the design. She communicates them to Lutz, Johann and Zack, who develop prototype blueprints based on her description. After she makes the first printing press, she gives the honorary title Gutenberg to everyone who helped bring printing into the world.

マイン is directly translated as Main, pronounced as Mine. The light novel translation uses Myne to avoid confusion among the English readers. The official anime translation has used both Main and Myne in different episodes. In both the manga and anime, she uses the spelling "Main" when she writes her name in the new world’s alphabet for the first time.


 * Myne was born in the summer, which is the season of Leidenschaft, the God of Fire. The season symbolizes strength and growth, which is ironic because Myne suffered from poor health and stunted growth.
 * Myne's final memories before being subsumed by Urano were "...It's so hot. It hurts. I hate thiiis..."
 * Myne had dreams of Urano's world, where she could run and play and eat all she wanted. She wanted to sleep forever so she could stay in the other world.
 * Urano has remarked that Myne has exceptional hearing and close to perfect pitch.
 * Myne's favorite fruit are raffels.
 * Effa is convinced that Myne's behavior is taken after Gunther.

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