Welcome back to the weekly recap for Ascendance of a Bookworm! This week, we are looking at Episode 18, Orphanage Reforms. For anyone just joining in now, the previous weekly recaps for Honzuki no Gekokujou can be found here:
As a quick recap of the season so far, Main is working at the cathedral so that she can have access to the library’s books, and has needed to figure out how to earn the respect of her retainers so they don’t all hate her. During the previous episode, she was taught about alms of the gods — the only food retainers are allowed to eat — and was given the church orphanage’s director’s office.
This episode starts with Main telling Fran to take some pizza to the orphanage as alms, then she requests that Gil show her around the orphanage. When Gil shows her to the main dining location where the orphans get the alms, it is the barred wooden door from the ending of the previous episode.
When they open the door, the room is dark, chairs are knocked over, Main recoils from the stench, and children practically materialize from the shadows to take some of the bread Main brought. When one of the kids grabs Main’s robes and screams, Gil gets her out of the room and closes the door. Main then passes out.
When she wakes up, Delia tells her that the grey-robed priestesses are gone, and reiterates a previous point about there not being as many alms as before due to a decline in nobles, so there’s no one to take care of the kids and the ones who are left are starving.
Gil wants Main to do something to help. Fran thinks that it's too risky for Main, but seems to agree something should be done. Delia wants nothing to do with it. In a flashback, we see Delia was in the same situation and was taken away, hence her crying in the previous episode that she would prefer to die rather than go back to the orphanage. After hearing the retainers’ opinions, Main decides to bring it up with the Head Priest.
When she meets with him, he says the situation does not need to be changed — the church does not recognize unbaptized children as people — and if Main cannot do anything, she shouldn’t say anything. We also learn that Main doesn’t have any personal funds left at this point and can’t simply buy food for the orphans.
On the way back, Fran asks if Main would like to go to the library. We see her reading for a few seconds, then closing the book, thinking about how she can’t focus due to how much the orphanage is bothering her.
Main then meets Lutz when leaving the church and cries into his shoulder. Fran explains what happened and the groups have some back and forth explaining the rules of the cathedral versus the sensibilities of downtown, such as how if anything goes wrong, the director will be held responsible.
In the end, Lutz recommends Main just make all the orphans her retainers so that she can send them on errands outside of the cathedral. Main then adds that there will be no food to forage in winter, so instead, she can send them to gather wood for her paper. That way they’ll still have a way to survive even when she’s gone. Main and Lutz dub it “Main Studio, Orphanage Branch.”
Fran, Gil, and Main try to formulate their plan in secret since clearly Delia wants nothing to do with it, but Delia is aware of what they are doing, anyway.
When talking to Benno about the idea, he is exasperated and wonders why Main would just want to make a headache for herself. She counters that it was his idea originally and he admits that he never thought she’d actually go for it.
As they work through some of the details, such as how they will need to request to build a workshop on cathedral grounds, Main comments on how much more cautious Benno is being. He says it’s because they’re working with nobles and need to lay the groundwork of their plan before the first meeting is even scheduled. As he describes how it works, Main’s inner monologue realizes that it’s basically corporate politicking.
Fran ends up taking the initiative for the first meeting, partly because he knows the proper etiquette and previously worked under the head priest (so he knows that the priest shares Main’s disgust with the current situation), and partly because Main always jumps into things without thinking them through.
Main questions why the priest said nothing needed to change if he was on her side and Fran clarifies that he was essentially trying to make sure the high priest didn’t have anything on him to use as leverage in the future.
This leads to Main’s meeting with the head priest. At first, it seems like the meeting will be held in someone’s bedroom, but the priest reveals there is an illusory wall with a door hiding behind it. When he and Main enter, there is a room filled with scrolls, books, and scientific equipment.
He says the entryway can only be used by people with a certain amount of mana, so not even retainers can follow up. As he says, it’s the perfect place for a secret meeting.
Main realizes that if they’re meeting in such a secretive location, it probably wasn’t just about the orphanage. Their conversation ends up being much more about Main’s inability to act like a noble thus far. The priest specifically notes how he lost years off his life when Main criticized the high priest’s policies in front of one of the high priest’s own retainer and ally, the priestess and noble who were in the room at the time.
When Main clearly didn’t realize that one of his allies had been present, the head priest goes on about how she can’t read between the lines, doesn’t hold back her own opinions, doesn’t know who her enemies are, and so on. As he puts it, these all fatal errors for a noble.
At the end of everything, he appoints Main the director and corrects her words to sound more like a noble's manner of speaking when she thanks him. He starts to leave while muttering that he’ll need to get her a priestess to teach her how to talk. Before he can fully make his exit, Main asks him why he’s not like other nobles, and we learn that while he was raised in noble society, he wasn’t raised by the church.
Back with her retainers, Gil starts crying into Main’s hands thanking her and Delia comes up the stairs, puts a basket of bread in Main’s lap, and says she’ll keep it a secret from the high priest. Main better not mess this up.
The episode ends with Main bursting open the barred wooden door to the basement of the orphanage and telling everyone to get out so they can get washed up and then eat as much as they can.
How are you liking Ascendance of a Bookworm so far? What other problems do you think Main is going to have with noble society? Will she ever actually get to make her own book? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
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Kevin Matyi is a freelance features writer for Crunchyroll. He's been watching anime for as long as he can remember, and his favorite shows tend to be shonen and other action series.
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