Ascendance of a Bookworm - anime discussion
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@Ingraman said in Ascendance of a Bookworm - anime discussion:
TO Books announced on Thursday that the new anime from Wit Studio of Miya Kazuki's Ascendance of a Bookworm (Honzuki no Gekokujō - Shisho ni Naru Tame niwa Shudan o Erandeiramasen) "biblia fantasy" light novel series, adapting Part 3: Adopted Daughter of an Archduke, will premiere in 2026. TO Books also revealed the new anime's television series format. Along with the announcement, the light novels' third volume of short story collection (featured in posted image below) will release on December 10.
Considering how many volumes part 3 has, hopefully the series format has a bunch more episodes. 8-)
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Season 4 now officially confirmed for spring 2026.
After reading something captivating, book lovers simply need to talk about it with someone.
—Tearmoon Empire -
@Angelus said in Ascendance of a Bookworm - anime discussion:
Season 4 now officially confirmed for spring 2026.
Yay! And thanks for telling us.
Before season 3 was announced, I was told that it would be unusual to have more than two seasons, but it got more. Also in my fairly limited experience, if a season n+1 happens, it gets announced near or after the end of season n. (For example, we've just recently had an announcement of season 3 of Apothecary Diaries just as season 2 finishes.)
Can those who understand things better comment on whether this announcement is unusual, as it seems to me? Is the anime doing particularly well in Japan, in terms of viewers and DVD sales and/or driving sales of the light novels?
For this work, it would leave story lines very incomplete to abandon it mid "adopted daughter" arc, so that may have something to do with it. I do hope they're going to give us 3 seasons (30-39 episodes) for "adopted daughter", as it would be very cramped in 26 or fewer.
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@Libri-Liberorum
Not that unusual. Hataraku Maou-sama was a much more extreme case, with S2 happening 9 years after S1.Or Full Metal Panic, with S3 happening 13 years after S2.As for the rationale behind it... Search me. Anime adaptations are usually ads for the manga or LN rather than attempts to actually make money (or so I hear), but sometimes stuff just happens. Like that Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer adaptation, years after the manga concluded. Or that remake of LoGH.
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@Almond-Magnum I've heard the same things, and repeated them myself after series after series that I enjoyed only got one season to the point I stopped watching anime entirely for four or five years. But recently I've been hearing people say on the internet (without hard sources, of course) that the pendulum is swinging the other way. As demonstrated by so many second and third+ seasons being produced (and not just because they're split cours)
If I had to guess... international streaming money. Especially when compared to the market for light novels, which seems pathetic. That is, the money brought in by anime adaptations is probably more than they're seeing in increased source material sales. They'd be leaving money on the table to not plan to do more.
Though even with the "for advertising" theory, It's not like they've been inventing original endings for any of these series like they used to do. Sure, an original ending would preclude driving viewers to buy the manga/light novels, but it would also close the door on future seasons.
Circling back to streaming money... they can literally invest in additional seasons of popular anime now. The Big O (I think) is the only example I can think of of a western company getting involved in production pre-streaming, and even if there were more I don't think it was common at all.
If single season anime were really only being produced as ads for light novels and manga for a time, it was probably only a temporary aberration, and the "normal" of bringing stories to a newer/wider audience through adaptation has reasserted itself.
Assuming it wasn't just groupthink. I could get hard numbers easily enough on how many shows per broadcast season have had additional cours produced, but I don't have the data on hand for determining which anime were adaptations, and whether their cours were left open-ended or had closure...
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@Angelus said in Ascendance of a Bookworm - anime discussion:
Season 4 now officially confirmed for spring 2026.
Let's hope they don't drop the ball with it as badly as they did season 3.
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@AliceCheshire different studio entirely, so if the ball is dropped it'll be in entirely different ways.
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@Libri-Liberorum said in Ascendance of a Bookworm - anime discussion:
Before season 3 was announced, I was told that it would be unusual to have more than two seasons, but it got more. Also in my fairly limited experience, if a season n+1 happens, it gets announced near or after the end of season n. (For example, we've just recently had an announcement of season 3 of Apothecary Diaries just as season 2 finishes.)
I think I've been miscounting seasons. I was thinking season 1 = part one (daughter of a soldier), season 2 = part 2 (shrine maiden), season 3 = first part of adopted daughter, and then a season 4 had been announced before season 3 had aired, which I thought weird.
However, actually season 1 = daughter of soldier, seasons 2 and 3 = shrine maiden, season 4 has been announced some time ago and the news is just that now it has a firm(ish) release date.
So this was a misunderstanding on my part.
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@Libri-Liberorum said in Ascendance of a Bookworm - anime discussion:
@Libri-Liberorum said in Ascendance of a Bookworm - anime discussion:
Before season 3 was announced, I was told that it would be unusual to have more than two seasons, but it got more. Also in my fairly limited experience, if a season n+1 happens, it gets announced near or after the end of season n. (For example, we've just recently had an announcement of season 3 of Apothecary Diaries just as season 2 finishes.)
I think I've been miscounting seasons. I was thinking season 1 = part one (daughter of a soldier), season 2 = part 2 (shrine maiden), season 3 = first part of adopted daughter, and then a season 4 had been announced before season 3 had aired, which I thought weird.
However, actually season 1 = daughter of soldier, seasons 2 and 3 = shrine maiden, season 4 has been announced some time ago and the news is just that now it has a firm(ish) release date.
So this was a misunderstanding on my part.
It isn't too unusual, originally the first season was supposed to be a 24-ish episode run that covered all of part 1 and part 2 up until just after the trombe hunt, but COVID interrupted the schedule with a long break in the middle and then it was listed on streaming services as season 1 part 1 and season 1 part 2, but then by the time they got to the US Blu Ray release it was sold in a single box as seasons 1 and 2.
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@GeorgeMTO said in Ascendance of a Bookworm - anime discussion:
@AliceCheshire different studio entirely, so if the ball is dropped it'll be in entirely different ways.
Well let's hope the new studio doesn't continue down the same path as the previous one then. I'm really not sure what they were thinking with season 3. They constantly had music playing during dark and serious scenes that was way too cheerful for the actual atmosphere of the scenes. They also kept sweeping the darker parts of the story under the rug which would really bite them when it comes to the Hasse execution. I think I complained about this point earlier in the thread but they were writing themselves into a corner where they either whitewash one of the darkest parts of the story and completely undermine the impact or they show the execution as it was written and get criticized by people who don't read the manga or novels for it being extremely jarring compared to the rest of the series.
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@AliceCheshire, that's kind of the problem with Bookworm, though, isn't it. At first glance, it seems like a cute all-age story about the adventures of a little girl, but underneath that thin veneer there are some very dark things going on.
Have Studio Wit ended up with the proverbial poisoned chalice? We'll just have to wait and see how they cope, but a studio of that caliber ought to be able to make it work somehow.
