DVD Toshokan sensô

In the 1980s, the Japanese government debates and ultimately creates the Media Betterment Department, whose purpose is to confiscate those books deemed to be detrimental to the Japanese population. Following a horrific massacre and book-burning in 1999, some librarians decide to fight back, and thus the Library Defense Force is born. Fast-forward to 2014 and young Iku (Nana Eikura) has found the last volume in a fantasy series, but Media Betterment officers try to confiscate it; a member of the Library Defense Force arrives, declares the book authorized and saves the day for her. Iku is smitten, and resolves to become a member of that dedicated body, and in 2019 she finally becomes an officer of the Library Defense Force. But it's a harder job than she thinks, involving as it does military-level physical training and organizational skills. In addition, her military commander, Dojo (Junichi Okada) seems to dislike and despise her, and he does all he can to get her to quit the Force…. This is a really strange idea, that librarians are a para-military force whose purpose is to defend against censorship, but director Shinsuke Sato pulls it off magnificently. The film is part farce, part rom-com and part gritty war film, which might suggest that it's all over the map, but in fact it all holds together beautifully. Apparently the main 6 or 7 characters are all played by superstars of Japanese cinema, and we're definitely treated to their expertise in all these styles of acting; and the way the film ends sets it up perfectly for a to-be-hoped-for sequel, yay!

I saw this at Fantasia Festival here in Montreal. It was billed as a "warning cry against the excesses of censorship and a thrilling, high-powered action film." Well, it did a fairly decent job at the latter, but sort of fell down on the former.

I think Library Wars couldn't quite decide whether to be a light-hearted romantic comedy or an action movie with a cool urban backdrop. It attempted both, at times fairly well, interspersing shoot-em-up military action scenes and martial arts against a classic tale of a slightly inept heroine looking for her prince charming. There were plenty of funny moments in the romantic plot line, and the action sequences started slow but the pace picked up in the second half. So the movie, overall, was entertaining enough.

The thing is, entertaining doesn't necessarily mean smart. The whole premise of the movie didn't really stand up to much scrutiny. You had two ostensibly legal government forces fighting one another using military force, which was a bit of a head-scratcher. The dialogue and script were — even allowing for a poor translation — pretty cheesy. And for a movie supposedly set in a near-future in an alternate reality, there was next to no attention paid to world-building.

Most problematically, the movie claimed the turf of an important, highly relevant issue — censorship — and then relegated it to little more than a MacGuffin. After establishing the Library Defence Force as the good guys and the Media Betterment Committee as the bad guys, you basically have an old-fashioned western with white hats and black hats, and the issue they're fighting for is never explored or delved into in any way beyond that setup. They could have been fighting to protect anything and the plot would have been exactly the same. We never get the sense that books or the thoughts they contain matter to the storyline or to the message of the film.

Library Wars is based on a book, which I haven't read but can only assume spent more time developing some of these premises. As for the film, it was good for a few laughs, some charming (if exaggerated) comedic acting, and a few good action sequences. I could easily envision it being turned into a video game, with a female main character battling bad guys through library stacks.

But the film never quite rises to its subject matter. The issue of censorship has perhaps never been more topical, relevant or critical, and Library Wars doesn't really seem to have anything of importance to say about it, which is disappointing considering all that it could have been.