Library Wars: Love and War Volume 1 – review and giveaway
Posted on | June 2, 2010 | 17 Comments
I will start out by saying that I am an unabashed fan of the Library War franchise. What is there not to love about stories where librarians fight censorship with machine guns? In Japan there are the original Library War novels, the shoujo and seinen manga versions of the story, the anime, and random tchotkes. Shoujo Beat is bringing out the shoujo version of Library War and I hope it does well enough that we get some of the other types of merchandise released in the US.
In Japan the government has passed laws that have created rival military organizations. The Media Betterment Committee is tasked with control and censorship over all forms of media. The Library Defense Force fights for freedom of expression. Instead of battling censorship in the courtroom, fights over books involve plenty of guns. Going to library school is like going to boot camp. The heroine of Library Wars: Love and War is Iku Kasahara, a freakishly tall athletic girl who had a fateful encounter with a LDF officer when she was a child. He defended her right to read when a book she wanted was about to be confiscated and as a result she’s determined to join the defense force to become just like her ideal “prince”.
One of the things I like about Iku is that she has some of the traits traditionally assigned to male manga heroes. She’s a dumb jock who cares deeply about her job and tries to make up for her shortcomings by trying hard. Her companion in school is her roommate Asako Shibazaki who is enrolled in the more cerebral librarian track while Iku tries to master the physical capabilities necessary to become the first female member of the LDF. The only problem Iku has with her training is her drill instructor Atsushi Dojo. He seems to have singled her out for harsher treatment, or does he just have high expectations for her? He tends to get a strange expression on his face when Iku mentions her long-lost Prince and sometimes he seems strangely familiar to Iku. Iku is determined to antagonize Dojo whenever possible, as she drop kicks him in martial arts class only to find herself trapped in a sadistic headlock.
Iku struggles to attain her goal, foiling people who attempt to deface library property, mastering classification systems, and rappelling down a building. Her strength is her willpower. She loves reading and she’s passionate about defending books. As Iku is singled out to join the LDF she’s joined by another new recruit. Hikaru Tezuka is academically perfect and doesn’t understand why the other new rookie is an emotional mess whose main skills are height and being able to run really fast.
The art in Library Wars is serviceable generic shoujo. I don’t think I’d recognize the artist’s style if I were to read another one of her works, but I’m really reading Library Wars for the story and not the art. This manga gives me the warm fuzzies. Librarianship isn’t a very glamorous profession, and the media portrayals of librarianship don’t often extend beyond the image of a tired old spinster going “shush.” So seeing librarians dressed in uniforms and performing training exercises to become action heroes was enormously entertaining. Iku’s a somewhat familiar character type, but her tendency to never give up is admirable and inspires sympathy in the reader. Seeing her unconventional friendship develop with Dojo was fun. He clearly knows more about her than he’s letting on, and she’s gradually discovering that her merciless drill sergeant might have a soft side. This manga is a must read for anyone that loves books or libraries.
And because I love this manga so much I used some of my amazon referral money to buy an extra copy, and I’m going to give it away to share the Library Wars love. To enter, just leave a comment on this post mentioning what weapon you would use to fight censorship if you were a member of the Library Defense Force. I’ll randomly select a winner on June 10th. I think I would reclaim the metal rods inside library card catalogs and use them to poke the enemies of intellectual freedom full of holes.
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17 Responses to “Library Wars: Love and War Volume 1 – review and giveaway”
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June 3rd, 2010 @ 12:17 am
I’d roll up a newspaper and bop them over the head. If I was really mad, I’d use a microfiche case. Or machine.
June 3rd, 2010 @ 6:04 am
[...] Librarian Tangognat reviews vol. 1 of Library Wars and shd liked it so much, she is giving away a [...]
June 3rd, 2010 @ 7:14 am
I would use the 590 MARC field to send hidden messages to all who know the secret code (MARC21). We could use the 856 fields to give access to URLs that lead to nonlinked pages on the Internet. Or we could use the cards from the old shelflist catalog and give our enemies a thousand paper cuts.
June 3rd, 2010 @ 7:34 am
First I’d roll over their toes with a book cart, then I’d feed every enemy of intellectual freedom to our copy machine. It eats everything.
June 3rd, 2010 @ 8:19 am
As a teen librarian, I’d shove ‘em in a locked room with my Anime Club crowd for a few minutes. I’m pretty sure those kids could handle them.
June 3rd, 2010 @ 8:27 am
I think that I’d be slowly crushing the dastardly agents of censorship in the rolling stacks. While censoring (literally, hee) their favourite books before their eyes.
June 3rd, 2010 @ 10:37 am
I’d bash people with old microfiche machines. If there’s one thing I don’t miss about the good ol’ library days, it’s those things (and, yes, I know they’re still in use, but it seems so archaic to use one now).
June 3rd, 2010 @ 1:49 pm
Since I see censorship as a type of fear (of the unknown), I would choose Asako’s method of attack–strategy and analysis.
Offhand, I would hope that someone will come up with a way to view microfiche files with the iPad and a way to digitize those files.
June 3rd, 2010 @ 2:29 pm
This would be funny accept…
The Library Defense Force need to go into specialised training to develop a super sensitive sixth sense, able to detect crime operating covertly, whether unseen (the deadliest) or in the ranks of the library profession itself (sabateurs). They would surface from this training with an unsurpassed knowledge of crime but also a supercharged sense of spiritual and physical well-being enabling them to protect themselves and readers against attacks from the unknown.
One day, when we understand ourselves… but until that day the LDF operate in a dangerous and evil world against an all pervasive enemy. Highly sophisticated communication means that cannot be intercepted and read are an absolute necessity, great agility at self-defense, but also the compassion and ability to carry out a humane defeat of the adversary.
June 3rd, 2010 @ 2:35 pm
Hi Mai – some microfiche machines now let you e-mail images of the files to yourself. It is pretty cool!
June 3rd, 2010 @ 6:09 pm
[...] really enjoyed reading Library Wars. So did Tangognat, so much so that she’s giving away a copy. Leave a comment per instructions for your chance [...]
June 3rd, 2010 @ 7:54 pm
I say, run ‘em through an old filmstrip projector and let them flap uncontrollably as they reach the end of the reel.
And yes, my library still has a projector – even though we got rid of all the filmstrips years ago.
June 4th, 2010 @ 5:32 am
If I were an unimaginative man, I’d recommend posting books and passages that have been covered up by the Government on the internet, underlining various lines that THEY didn’t want the rest of the country to read. If possible, I’d point out the banal sentences that were left out (in context of course) to point out just how paranoid the Government was about the populace having certain “ideas”. Not to mention that I’d have to keep switching servers in order to keep one step ahead of their crackdown operation, since we were an obvious threat to their “desire to avoid conclict”. After all, if people are expressing opposing views on uncomfortable subjects, it makes it harder to pass more oppressive bills & taxes.
However, if I had the option of using any available tool in the library as an offensive weapon, I’d probably choose the Encyclopedia Britanica. Since everything’s being posted for posterity on Wikipedia (and those old encyclopedias are basically unreadable anyways), I’d have no qualms about swinging them at the heads of my enemies, filling them with knowledge.
Of course, given my weak upper arm strength, the only way I’d be able to kill anyone with said brick of a book is if I dropped it on them from several stories up. Bonus points if I yelled “LOOK UP!” and they do so, their last image being a fat tome of literally dangerous knowledge.
Not to mention they’d make great lifesavers since a single volume conveniently placed closed to my heart would easily catch any bullet sent my way. Of course, its obvious weakness would be fire, which goes into Fahrenheit 451 territory. (Which could be captured on cellphone as further proof that they’re burning any old scrap of information)
June 4th, 2010 @ 2:38 pm
As someone about to enter the ranks of library school professorship, I love the idea of this series! (Can’t wait to be issued my Library School Uniform.)
I would imagine that children’s librarians would make excellent stealth soldiers. Imagine the weaponry that could be hidden within the spokes of the storytime rocking chair … or a puppet … or the Pop-Up Books of Doom ….
June 7th, 2010 @ 8:28 am
I would set up the sliding stacks in a maze, and then get them to chase me through it. They would be driven mad by my labyrinth, and end up using what little remained of their minds to give directions to those patrons who couldn’t find the right sections.
June 7th, 2010 @ 10:02 am
Being a librarian myself, I’ve always imagined the electronic compact shelving units to be like that fucked up garbage compactor in Star Wars. Our shelves are designed not to close on people, but I bet we could rig them so they would close and crush people, so that would be my weapon of choice. Cage them in between the shelves and let ‘em rip!
June 10th, 2010 @ 9:43 am
[...] got some great comments on my library wars giveaway. I will never look at compact shelving or microfilm machines again without trying to estimate their [...]