GIR's Anime (& Sci-Fi) Blog

What’s something I can tell you without a summary of the OVA to tell you how awesome it is. Oh ya, it has: a bibliophile who controls paper, a US president who likes launching nukes and wets his pants a lot, a secret organization that deals with books to saves save the world, historical figures with special powers, a song that makes people kill themselves and a hot girl who can go through anything while making lesbian innuendo. You know what that means. It’s time to Read or Die. (the OVA)

It starts off with miss Yomiko Readman. She’s an absolute bibliophile. To prove it she owns an entire condo building and filled it with books. Even more she has the ability to control paper. Not just moving it. She can make it stronger than steel and at one point she makes a sword out of 100$ bills and cuts through a set of metal stairs with it.

She sets off into Jimbocho on her usual trip to get lots and lots of books. So many in fact that she has to go home to deposit them somewhere before going back to but more. This makes me wonder something, how does she recognize which ones are the new ones to read? She has so many it’s a wonder she can finish even half of them. Well, back on track now. So she goes into a secret bookstore, I assume it’s secret because she needs a passcode and membership card to get in, and picks out an interesting book just as a woman is about to take it. Soon after leaving the shop it’s taken by a crazy guy on a giant grasshopper. She promptly disposes of him and gets back her precious book.

That’s the cool thing about it. For her shooting a rope of paper and restraining a grasshopper to get a book is normal. I don’t know how. She talks to the person like he’s a little kid who took a book from her, not some crazy guy destroying the town. She’s like that in the whole movie. She acts like the crazy things she’s doing to get her book back are all normal. I don’t think she ever acted really serious in the whole movie. John McLane she is not. (but she’s way more bad-ass!)

So it turns out a bunch of “I-Jin” (cloned super-humans who’s DNA come from famous people in history) are after this book for purposed not discovered ’till the the end of the OVA. Oh and that’s the thing about it. It’s an OVA not a movie. It could of been a movie but it’s just an OVA. Therefore it has three beginnings, middles, an ends. All of which are amazing. But let’s just saw part one is the beginning and so-forth. It’s hard for me to go on about the plot without giving away major spoilers so I think those phrases at the beginning can give you an idea of what happens.

I highly recommend this OVA and I suggest you watch the TV series as well.

’till next time, enjoy the anime!