Kokoro Toshokan is yet another anime that features librarians, although instead of sleepy angelic librarians or bibliomanics with super powers, in this show we have really really cute librarians. This show is so sweet, it might make you a little diabetic.

The show is about three sisters who are librarians in what appears to be an old-style private subscription library that their parents built in the mountains of a nameless European country. The library where they work is called Kokoro, which is also the name of the youngest girl. The sisters seem to be quite dedicated to their low-traffic library, getting up early to put on their maid’s costumes with the ruffly aprons and accessorizing with giant hair bows. I wasn’t sure how to take the maid outfits, I mean, I certainly don’t look to anime for representation of enlightened gender roles but the ruffly aprons really don’t seem to be ideal for library work. You could get caught between the compact shelving, and you would probably have to do tons of laundry and ironing to keep your outfit looking neat, especially if you were shelving some dusty books. I think a nice lab coat would be much more practical. Or some pants and a stylin’ cardigan.

The sisters do deal with common problems in the library world, for example what to do when someone returns a book late. Or they try to figure out how to fix their declining gate count. Are their collection development policies to blame? They have committee meetings to decide on a marketing plan. It is a slow paced show, and Kokoro learns something heart-warming about library work in every episode. It isn’t really my thing, as usually when I watch something this cute, I need something to balance it out like Samurai or lasers. Or even better, Samurai with lasers! I’ve read a review that states that a robot librarian shows up at some point in the series, so that might wake things up a little bit.