Tatakau Shisho: Book of Bantorra
戦う司書 The Book of Bantorra
Armed Librarians: Book of Bantorra
Studio: David Productions
Premiere Date: 10/2
Genre: Action
Trailers
Available via Crunchyroll

A war is being fought between the armed librarians and the mysterious Shindeki church. In this world, when someone dies their soul becomes fossilized into a book. A group of psychics known as the armed librarians are in charge of protecting these books but their secondary mission is defending against the church. The church has their own evil agendas but in particular they want to kill the armed librarians and take control of their book collection. In the first episode, the audience meets the group of psychics and the church who wants to see them die while also meeting a young man named Colio Tonies. Colio’s mind has been erased and a bomb was implanted in his chest. His one mission: kill the director of the armed librarians, Hamutz.

Good and the Bad

Book of Bantorra is one of the series that I went into this season with some of the highest hopes for. Surprisingly for me, after watching the first episode I found that most of my expectations had been met if not exceeded. Starting with the animation, Bantorra does a great job in the first episode of bringing in influences from various eras and regions. While Hamutz comes across with a very modern design, it’s interesting to see moments later all of the armed librarians wearing outfits that look like they are drawn straight from 19^th century industrial England.

Bantorra moves very quickly in the first episode to introduce as many plot hooks and story elements as it can. Always moving swiftly towards the next big scene or moment, the writing and dialogue here is not going to wait for anyone to keep up. Things are going to happen and they aren’t going to necessarily be labeled as important. Observant viewers however will constantly have their sensors going on repeatedly that they are seeing something that is probably going to matter later on. You won’t know why you have this feeling but it will be there.

Starting off with an action sequence, the early battle scene does its job towards establishing the psychic powers of these characters. As can be expected from any series featuring psychic powers, not everyone is going to get to have the cool powers that look stylish while in use. Leading the charge into battle is the air bender Volken with the ability to control spinning blades in the air. Backing him up with various other powers include guy who can make his skin hard and woman looks like she has a migraine while she’s trying to connect with someone telepathically. I apologize for not using actual character names while typing this paragraph but even with my notes it was hard to keep up with who everyone was, something that I hope will be remedied as audiences get to know each character much better.

With pleasing character designs out of the way, Bantorra spends a lot of time in this episode showing equally impressive animation and backgrounds. While some scenes out in the ocean could come across as over produced early on, the quiet moments inside the boat and around the town all had the rustic, dark qualities that I was looking for thanks to the early trailer footage released before the season premiere.

Music

Matching the retro feel in the animation and character designs, the opening animation is a series of rotating panels that look like they’ve been pulled straight out of 60’s American television. However, bathing the animation in dark colors and matching it with a theme from Ali Project absolutely makes the sequence work and sets up the episode well. Once you get into the episode, the early score composed by Yoshihisa Hirano sounds wonderful already. One can only hope that the soundtrack is filled with more haunting tracks in the coming episodes.         

Overall

Lots of little plot hooks made this episode something that I really couldn’t take my eyes away from. It’s still early but there are a number of directions that I can see this series going in and that leaves me really wanting to see more. It’s dark, gothic and is moving at a deliberate but not painfully slow pace. I can only hope that this series will continue to live up to its early potential.

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