Myne (Anime)

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 her homemade shampoo, 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.

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.

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. Urano died by being buried by an avalanche of books during an earthquake, and her last memory was praying desperately to be able to read books in her next life.

Before the start of the story, Myne was a very sick girl who spent most of her time 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 completely eroded and replaced with those from her previous life as Urano Motosu. The series follows the new Myne who awakens after these memories emerge.

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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, macrame 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.

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'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 has Myne exceptional hearing and close to perfect pitch.
 * Myne's favorite fruit are raffels.

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