Theo doesn’t look like anyone else in his small, remote village. He knows why — he has a mixed heritage and the various races in this world don’t get along with each other. Theo tries to not let it get him down, frequently escaping to the nearby forest to play with the animals instead, but it’s hard when he’s not even allowed in the village library because he’s poor.
But one day librarians from the Central Library, kafnas, come to his village, and Theo’s world will never be tiny again.
As someone with a degree in library sciences, I definitely think that most stories romanticize libraries too much and get their functions confused with what an archive does. So I never have high hopes for “accuracy” when starting a story about libraries, especially one in a fictional setting like this manga; but while we haven’t yet seen much of the titular, Central Library so far we have seen a robust system of public libraries with a well-defined mission of serving communities, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well that reflects the mission of real-world public libraries!
There were even several, well-done arguments on why both libraries and bookstores are both valuable and, while the ideas weren’t breaking any new ground, I suspect that these aren’t the ideas that every reader has spent time musing on. Heck, there was even mention of the techniques used to create and preserve books which seemed fairly accurate as well (going by the classes I’ve had on preservation). This is one detail that I’m happy to see right since Ascendance of a Bookworm has been driving me up a wall in that regard (untreated cellulose is a terrible paper base!). Mitsu Izumi seems to have truly done her research because this level of detail is going above and beyond for what was already a great story.
But what about the other “author” on the cover of this work? This is a question that has been apparently baffling both English and Japanese-speaking readers for years, since they’re listed on the cover of both versions, and I think the theory that “Kafna of the Wind” by “Sophie Schwimm” is a fictional, in-universe work is probably the correct one. I am a bit annoyed at Kodansha USA for including that detail on the cover of each volume (even if that was also the case on the Japanese edition) since this has lead to both “Sophie Schwimm” and “translator Hiroto Hamada” being listed as actual creators for the series on places like the website WorldCat, which is a major source of cataloging information for real-world libraries. Not many libraries employ catalogers anymore and those that do usually focus on unusual works that require original cataloging. Public libraries (who are more likely to carry manga) either outsource these “tech services” positions altogether or are given pre-made catalog entries when they receive items.
I.e if a mistake has been made once in a widely used cataloging source it can propagate to literally hundreds of library systems and will serve to further confuse new readers like myself who are trying to figure out who “Sophie Schwimm” is. To Kodansha USA’s credit they didn’t list these fake credits on the actual copyright page. But, as someone who has done cataloging work for an institution before (and on items with, lacking copyright pages), I too would have erred on the side of caution and include credits listed on the actual cover of an item in the catalog record which is most likely how this metadata got ingested in the first place. I find it ironic that there is so much related to libraries to both praise and complain about in a work about the power of libraries!
But there is so much more to this story than just the libraries themselves. After meeting with the kafna in the first volume, Theo now aspires to become a kafna himself; the second volume jumps from his childhood ahead to when he is in his early teens and eligible to take the bureaucratic test to become a kafna and focuses largely on his trip through the country to the Central Library. These moments, and the extra illustrations of famous landmarks included between chapters, reminded me of the pastoral scenery in Blissful Land and the strange, most-likely magical, places Theo comes across reminded me of some of the more unusual locales in Somali and the Forest Spirit.
It’s an astonishingly good-looking manga. Mitsu Izumi creates both beautiful landscapes and highly detailed costumes and sets, and I would have been satisfied with these looks alone if the story had been weak. Thankfully the story isn’t weak at all! Theo himself has possibly too few flaws — he’s athletic, smart, and kind — but it’s clear he’s been through a lot to get to where he currently is and that he was truly raised by a village that helped nurture these aspects of him.
The story itself also feels smart in various ways; like mentioned earlier there is a nuanced discussion on the uses of both libraries and bookstores (something pertinent to any reader), class and race are divisive factors no matter where Theo goes, and he even gets pushback for wanting to become a kafna not because it’s a profession dominated by women (and therefore “girly”) but because he is a man and that means so many other options are available to him, so why would he then “take” a highly competitive spot away from a woman who doesn’t have those options? Izumi is methodically building a layered world and promising great exploits that I sincerely hope she’s able to someday fulfill.
Magus of the Library contains a love for the story it’s telling and the world-building that shapes it in the same way Witch Hat Atelier does. And with art that takes your breath away page after page, fans should not sleep on this series which is only just beginning to tell a wonderful tale.