Fifteen years ago I happened upon an anime called ‘Library War’ with a rather unique premise, where, in a world much like our own, the a Japanese government passed a law in 1989 which allows the censorship of any media deemed to be potentially harmful to Japanese society. This law is enforced by agents for the Media Betterment Committee. Following this law’s passing, local governments established their own forces under a contrasting act known as the Freedom of the Libraries Law, which allowed libraries to defend their own library materials. Now ten years after these laws passed, ‘Library War’ introduces us to a young upstart Iku Kasahara, who is stationed in the Kantō Library Base. Kasahara is working to fight for what she believes in, triying to build a career in the library forces, all while working hard to impress a handsome, yet stern, superior officer named Atsushi Dojo.

What impressed me most about this show, despite again standing out in a medium that increasingly is copying itself out of originality, is that ‘Library War’ successfully married so many genres together so perfectly. Seriously this show has a compelling romance, with excellently plotted will they won’t they setups, fantastic drama, with high stakes politics at play in and out of the Library Task Force, as well as excellently executed action scenes, which may be expected considering the ‘war’ in the title but still is the cherry on top. Though this is a tough balancing act for any writers working to travail all these genres undoubtedly, as fans may only want one of these aspects of the series, for me this story delivered everything I wanted. Only ‘Full Metal Panic’ has had this perfect blend, which is why I definitely felt that series was an obvious inspiration for ‘Library War’.

Now though revisiting this series fifteen years later, what stands out more than the romance is the urgency, and realism, of the pull between pro-censorship and anti-censorship forces. Fifteen years ago we were still in the Bush years, and the Patriot Act’s surveillance measures which included surveillance of library records, made this show feel relevant for the time. However as bad as we might have imagined that time, now is worse as libraries have becoming increasingly targeted by pro-censorship forces under the guise of ‘societal betterment’. Though we are not to the point where there’s a federal law promoting censorship, one can imagine a different political body taking these local anti-censorship efforts and nationalizing them all too easily. This makes this show not only relevant, but scarily prescient, and a must watch all these years later.

‘Library War’ is adapted from a Japanese light novel series by Hiro Arikawa, with illustrations by Sukumo Adabana.