Ascendance of a Bookworm, a slower isekai I was lukewarm on
A book-loving woman is reborn into a world that barely has any books, so she sets out to make her own. A neat premise. I watched both seasons but never fully fell for it.
Ascendance of a Bookworm has a premise I really liked on paper. A woman who loves books more than anything dies and is reborn as a sickly little girl, Myne, in a medieval-ish world where books are rare and expensive and most people can’t read. So she decides that if she can’t find books, she’ll just make them herself, starting from scratch with whatever the world will give her.
I watched both seasons, and I was lukewarm on it overall. The world-building and the slow, methodical figuring-out of how to make paper and ink and everything else is the appeal, and that same slowness is also what kept me at arm’s length. It’s a quieter, gentler isekai than most, and the second season didn’t pull me in any more than the first did. Fine show. Just not one that grabbed me.