Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 3: Adopted Daughter of an Archduke

Episodes 16-17

I'm back from a weekend at Otakon, Rosemyne is back from her adventure gathering materials, and it's back to business as usual for both of us. Maybe it's best I'm getting back in the swing of Bookworm reviews with a two-for, as the season's 16th episode on its own is absolutely one of those "workaday recap of Rosemyne's to-do list" entries. There are some fun highlights, of course, and plenty of momentum propelling the overarching story, but it's thoroughly pedestrian proceedings barely above the action of a montage before things shift around only a little more in the next episode.

Maybe it's my fault for snarking about the Bookworm anime's occasional dip into this kind of material converse to all the action in the previous episode. And as I said, there are advancements! The bookkeeping behind this Bookworm is business brought to the Gilberta company by Rosemyne's advancements in study materials. It's funny seeing Benno vacillate between coveting the extra customer base and trying not to let slip that his ability to actually manage it all is only a little overwhelmed. These are the realities of economics that Bookworm isn't entirely based around depicting (it's not Spice & Wolf or anything) but still has to acknowledge in its setting and scale. So the natural conclusion reached at the end, to spin off the bookmaking business into its own independent company, makes sense as a next step. But these are just the beginning and end of an episode that's littered with a lot that's only tangentially connected—to that plot or any of the others.

Otto quitting being a soldier to join as a merchant? Makes sense, and a nice way to keep components of Rosemyne's previous life moving up through the story. Same for the reveal of the completed, working printing press itself. This is the big advancement that's going to boost that bookmaking business, obviously, and this show is, as usual, going to linger on the loving depictions of the actual mechanics of the thing. It's cute seeing Rosemyne react to it, but beyond presenting the press for its own sake, there's not a lot of immediate tie-in to everything else that happens this episode.

That "everything else" is to the point that I'm actually glad I had to put this off to a double review so that it doesn't simply wind up being a bullet-pointed list of every vignette. Seeing Brigitte get the titular new dress and tease at a relationship with Damuel is cute. But the dalliance with Hugo potentially becoming Rosemyne's personal chef feels like an aside to the aside that the Italian Restaurant subplot has always come across as in this show. It's the weakest of stock isekai storytelling: introducing something into the fantasy world purely for novelty because the writing thinks it might be neat for the main character to have. The only actual engaging instances are as fleeting as the rest of those: Rosemyne inadvertently sending a magical reply to a correspondent of the previous, executed High Bishop, and she and Wilfried learning to hold down the fort of the Mana Replenishment Hall while Sylvester is off at an Archduke Conference. But the actual occurrence of ArchCon 2026 doesn't actually take place in the episode, so even these nominally dramatic elements feel like naught but casual errands run at this point.

Not that the story shifts up to rip-roaring as soon as Sylvester does head off to the conference in the next episode. Sure, it's not like I was expecting Rosemyne and Wilfried to throw a raging house party now that their parents aren't home (I'd watch it), but I was still a little taken aback by how much this shifted structure simply leads to another string of daily life being depicted. The most major shift is that Rosemyne is able to sneak in some extra reading time during these days, being flustered when it's still not enough.

Seeing this in line with the previous episode does make the continuity of some of these tasks clear. Brigitte's still showing off her new dress with the plot teasing that Rosemyne will need to find a way to get her and Damuel together. But of course I'm mostly going to be delighted by Angelica coming back. At first I was mildly annoyed that they just skipped over her studying and passing her classes, but in hindsight that sort of busywork wasn't going to be the entertaining part. No, now I get to be here for her "reward" in Rosemyne charging her manablade, Ferdinand's interference, and the resultant talking sword Angelica gets saddled with. It's a very dryly amusing inclusion, which also showcases the outside-the-box ways Rosemyne manages to help people with—sometimes unintentionally! So Angelica basically having her own virtual assistant in the form of a sword that sternly talks with Ferdinand's voice is a funny way to make sure she stays on top of things, even as I don't expect it to come up a ton in the show after this.

The other continuing element is much more impactful. Gilberta company splitting off the printing business makes sense…except then the show reminds viewers that part of the plan was for Tuuli to start apprenticing with the company, meaning she won't get to stay close to Rosemyne if her bookmaking portion gets spun off. As Lutz laments, it's something all those close to Rosemyne must consider as her efforts and influence grow. Being brought to Rosemyne herself resonates the same way: they're able to finagle Tuuli's apprenticeship to keep her close for now, but the logistics of Rosemyne staying close to those she cares about are only going to get more complex. It goes in hand with Rosemyne learning about the compromises she needs to make in her principles and leadership style as she gains more authority and learns the "real" way of serving as a high-ranking member of the church. The detailed, "real-world" stylings of Bookworm's constructed fantasy world can't let things shake out conveniently or optimally all the time, so goes the slow process of Rosemyne growing up.

She's got others looking out for her. There's a cute, mildly funny subplot in the 17th episode about Rosemyne's adoptive grandfather watching over her, stricken by the fact that his resting bitchface might aggravate her mana-overloaded condition. It is kind of too bad that Rosemyne never actually realizes he's got his heart of gold, but there's time in the future for that. And it's nice to see Otto formally transfer in to start working for the company through Rosemyne. It's narratively satisfying for the guy who originally loaned her his tablet and initiated her quest for reading and writing in this world to loop back around into her story this way—it keeps Bookworm's story feeling rich and interconnected in its long-term ambitions. Touches like that make the 17th episode come off stronger than the 16th, even as it's ostensibly the same sort of day-to-day checklist. It's a good comparison of what the show does effectively compared to some of its lesser habits as I return to it this week.

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Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 3: Adopted Daughter of an Archduke is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris is back to hit the books. You can see him posting about anime, transforming robots, and other quality reading material over on his BlueSky.