Episode 1

"A World Without Books" (本のない世界, Hon no nai Sekai) is the first episode of the Ascendance of a Bookworm anime series. It originally aired on October 3, 2019.

This episode was adapted from Part 1 Volume 1 of the Light Novel series (Chapter 1: A New Life - Chapter 4: Books: Unobtainable).

The series opens on a flash-forward to Episode 26. The Head Priest gives Myne a magic circlet to wear and asks her to drink a red potion. She falls asleep, and the Head Priest begins to explore the memories of how she became Myne.

Urano Motosu was a college student who loved books. She died after being crushed by her book collection during an earthquake, and her final prayer was that she wanted to live her next life surrounded by books.

Her next conscious thought is of waking up in the body of Myne, a sickly five-year-old girl bedridden with a life-threatening fever. A strange woman enters the room. At first, Urano doesn't understand her unfamiliar speech; however, her memories combine with Myne's, and she realizes that this is her mother, Effa. Myne is instructed to stay in bed until dinner, but she instead goes searching for a book to read. To her dismay, there seem to be no books or writing anywhere in the house.

Over the next three days, Myne struggles to adjust to life as a commoner. Her family lives in a dirty townhouse without plumbing or electricity, and while her parents are affectionate, she feels suffocated by the love and familiarity of people she barely knows. Myne also asks her new older sister, Tuuli to help her make a hairstick with which to tie back her hair.

When Myne has fully recovered from her fever, she asks to go with her mother to the lower city market, eager to find a library or a bookstore in the new world. However, there seems to be no written language in the entire city except for the numbers used to price items at the market. Myne is nauseasted by the sight of butchered meat hanging outdoors, and passes out when she sees a butcher slaughtering a live chicken.

After recovering, Myne decides to wait with a local merchant while her mother finishes shopping. To her delight, the merchant has a book locked in a case. She asks to read it, but he tells her books are far too valuable and rare to entrust to someone else so freely. In fact, most books are only owned by the nobility. Undeterred, Myne decides that if she can't buy books, "I'll just have to make them myself."

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 * While the first volume of the light novel begins with a chapter focusing on the last day of Urano's life, the anime begins with a flash-forward to the finale of Season 2. This framing device is not used in the book series.
 * In the anime, Myne passes out at the market after seeing chicken beheaded. In the light novel, it was a pig.
 * In the light novel, Effa makes Myne drink alcohol to help her wake up after she faints.
 * Effa's first line is the only time the viewer gets to hear the "new world's" language.