図書館戦争 Library War

I stumbled upon this anime series one time I was surfing the net. It’s based on a Japanese novel written by Hiro Arikawa and is inspired by the Statement on Intellectual Freedom in Libraries of the Japan Library Association.

Library War’s story involves the passing of the Media Betterment Act (MBA) as a law in 1989. It allows the censorship of any media believed to be of potential harm to the Japanese society by deploying agents in the Media Betterment Committee with the mandate to go after individuals and organizations trying to exercise the act of conducting freedom of expression activities in the media.

Local governments opposed the MBA and established armed anti-MBA task force units to protect libraries from being raided by MBC agents under the Freedom of the Libraries Law.

Library War follows the life of Iku Kasahara, a new recruit in the Kanto Library Base. After joining, however, she finds the pace to be very demanding, and that her drill instructor Atsushi Doujou seems to have it out for her by making it especially difficult for her.

Kasahara is enlisted into the base’s Library Task Force, an elite group of soldiers who go through rigorous training in order to respond during difficult operations.

Along with Kasahara, another new recruit named Hikaru Tezuka is also enlisted into the task force who is much more capable at the position than Kasahara. Kasahara continues to try her best in the face of difficult challenges while protecting the books she has sworn to protect.

(wikipedia.org)