Maddies Manga

Using the library isn’t embarrassing—it’s a place that can ignite a thirst for knowledge, and it can also remind everyone of the joys of reading. Can the delinquent Ishida get over his initial embarrassment and recall why he first seeked out the library as a child?

Author

This series is written by Zuino, and Kei Yamakei.

Genre & Tropes

Slice of life, delinquent comedy.

Info about this series (ongoing)

This series currently has 18 volumes published in Japanese. There will soon be an anime, and a live action drama.

TL;DR rating

I enjoyed this sample enough that I will be continuing to read this one digitally. While I don’t love the male least currently, I’m hoping he’ll grow on my.

What’s this series about? (Spoilers for chapter 1)

The library can be a tough place to work. People can be rather disrespectful to books, and sometimes even damage them to the point of no return without thinking twice. Others are rude to employees, often citing them paying taxes as them directly paying their salaries. These harsh conditions have lead the two library workers this series follows to have two rather distinct personalities. While she has stayed a compassionate, kind person… he has turned into what can only be described as a bodyguard. While some grown men have no difficulties at all yelling at the poor female worker, things are put to an instant stop when her hard-faced, rather large male coworker steps in.

The two of them have a rather good system going when our main character walks in. Ishida, a boy who can only be described as a delinquent, comes looking to take out a book. Sadly, he’s informed that he has a book overdue by 10 whole years, and is barred from borrowing anything until he returns it. Of course, he was a child at the time, so that book is undoubtedly long gone. His only solution is to buy a brand new copy and return that to the library.

This should be a fairly simple task—if you lose something, it’s only natural that you should replace it, after all. It’s not all that simple for him though, as it took all of his courage for him to even return to the library in the first place. As he grapples with whether all this effort is worth his end goal or not, he starts to reminisce about what first brought him to borrow the now-lost book all those years ago.

My thoughts on this volume (Spoilers!)

As a big fan of the library, I really enjoyed this chapter! The authors captured many of the difficulties I can only assume real library workers go through on a day-to-day basis. “I pay your salary with my taxes so…” is something I have actually heard out in the wild, sadly. So, seeing that scene of the man yelling at the female worker, only to freeze at the sight of the male worker… was both aggravating and cathartic. While not exactly pleasant, it’s definitely rooted in realism.

I really did enjoy all of the realness baked into the story, as it allowed me to get sucked in. It also allowed the comedic bits to shine, as they were the only unrealistic part of the chapter. Like, we would all like to follow someone to make sure they do good on their promise…but that’s not exactly socially accepted, now is it? The comedic bits aren’t so over the top that they feel goofy, but they aren’t so subtle that they would fly over one’s head.

I also enjoyed following Ishida as he slowly broke down and bought the children’s book. I feel confident that I was able to fully grasp what the authors were trying to convey here, thanks to the way they chose to tell the story. Giving both Ishida and the two workers both time to share their perspectives really allowed for a larger picture to be painted.

For example: one worker prompts Ishida to recall why he sought out the children’s book in the first place; Ishida works up the courage to go in the bookstore; the workers talk about the importance of the library; we cut to Ishida reminiscing about why he borrowed the book… While the story is all linear, cutting back and forth like this really allowed it to flow! It also allowed for some extra comedy, as watching the library workers stalk Ishida all the way to the bookstore was really something.

You can check out this series for yourself below! (JP)