YMMV / Ascendance of a Bookworm

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Myne is the character that makes or breaks this series. People either love her or drop the series because they can't put up with her childish selfishness and single-minded focus on books. Her actions to help others also amount to using child labor and the established system of slavery.
  • Sylvester is a very controversial character. While it is acknowledged that he ultimately is not a bad person, he is regarded as completely politically inept, a bad father, and a lazy ruler, who lets Ferdinand and later Rozemyne largely do his work. This is something many readers and in-universe characters agree on, to the point that even Charlotte, his own daughter, starts verbally tearing him apart after he unnecessarily makes life harder for everyone in Part 5.
  • Wilfried receives as much hate as he is pitied. On the one hand, he is very annoying and keeps making one blunder after another (especially compared to Rozemyne and the younger Charlotte). On the other hand, this has largely to do with his upbringing. He was and is surrounded by terrible guardians, who do not pay as much attention and care to him as Rozemyne is given. Like Sylvester, his heart is in the right place and with the right education he would even be a great leader, but he was put in a bad position from the start and is given bad advice on top of all that.
  • Lestilaut. The fanbase is divided on how to view him. During his first appearance, he tries to strongarm Rozemyne into giving up Schwartz and Weiss, having gone so far to accuse Ehrenfest of treason, but he actually only wanted them because he mistakenly thought that his sister wanted them. It's also acknowledged that while his actions in Part 5 are rather questionable and extreme, it was an act of misguided chivalry, as he had good intentions.
  • Ferdinand, especially as his romance with Myne develops. He is constantly scheming and clearly willing to Shoot the Dog; while most of this scheming is for the greater good, many people aren't happy with the way he sometimes manipulates Myne as part of those plans.
• Cargo Ship:
  • Myne loves books. The way she acts, it's not hard to imagine that she really loves books.
  • Eckhart is one of the male characters easy to interpret as having somewhat of a crush on Ferdinand. Angelica, with whom he often ends up in the same room, has a sword that speaks in Ferdinand's voice. As of Part 4 Volume 3, Eckhart and Angelica getting betrothed to each other, alongside the fact that the webnovel ends with a status quo making their marriage very likely to actually happen, only makes fandom jokes accounting for both those facts easier to come up with.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • In the first popularity poll from 2016, Ferdinand and Myne were the most popular characters as expected. However, the third most popular character of all people turned out to be not Lutz or Benno but Damuel, who plays a very minor role in the story. He also debuted almost mid-way into Part 2, which is signifcantly later than six out of the seven characters who came behind him in the Top 10 ^note Sylvester managed to sneak into it at eighth place.
  • In the second popularity poll from 2017, Rozemyne and Ferdinand were once again hogging the top two spots, Damuel was still holding a very respectable fifth place, but third and fourth were held by secondary characters who had only debuted in Part 3: Justus and Georgine respectively. The holder of sixth place is noteworthy as well: Hartmut, who, aside from an Early-Bird Cameo that doesn't give the reader much more than his name, debuts in early Part 4.
  • The entire greater duchy of Dunkelfelger. While due to the trouble Lestilaut causes they are initially not liked, this changes by the end of the story. Characters like Clarissa and Hannelore (the latter eventually even became an Ascended Extra and got her own Spin-Off), and Ferdinand and Rozemyne's general positive relationship with Dunkelfelger are some of the reasons why readers love them.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Referring to Myne's Glowing Eyes of Doom state as her "Reading Rainbow Powers".
  • Of course, it is just as common to refer to her as "Darth Myne" when the Crushing starts.
  • Stenluke is called "Swordinand" by some fans because it's a Talking Weapon with Ferdinand's voice.
  • Chinese and Japanese fans love to use Ferdinand's Red Baron title 魔王 (Demon Lord/Lord of Evil) because of his long name and his ruthlessness towards his opponents.
  • Yurgenschmidt is called by some fans "Yogurt" or "Yogurt Smith" to make fun of the fact that the official English translation decided to use a "Y" instead of the usual German "J" for names, and "Schmidt" being the German equivalent of "Smith". ^note Jürgen is a German variant of George. Jürgen Schmidt is thus a typical German name.
  • The Dunkelfelger method to force a marriage proposal from someone is called "Dunkel-don" by some fans, a reference to the Japanese "kabe-don".
  • Hannelore is called by some Japanese fans "half price", since 半値 is pronounced "hanne".
  • Hannelore's mother is also called Hahanne or Mamanne, both being portmanteaus of "mother" and "Hanne".
  • Erwarmen the God of Matchmaking is called "Treesus" by some fans, a portmanteau of "tree" and "Jesus", due to his descent to the mortal plane and founding of Yurgenschmidt 10000 years before the story begins and the fact that he is now a tree.
  • First Prince Sigiswald is called "Dusty" or "Golden Dusty", a reference to Rozemyne dusting his engagement gift with a touch of her hand accidentally.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Once Detlinde comes of age she starts wearing her hair in one of the most unique hairstyles ever seen in the entire history of Yurgenschmidt.
• Friendly Fandoms: The Ascendance Of A Bookworm fanbase are on friendly terms with the fanbase of Witch Hat Atelier. Given the similar premise of young girls overcoming challenges set by society of the time and trying to make it better through their skills. It is of no surprise that both fanbases are on good terms. This goes double when considering that the author of WHA is also good friends with the author of Bookworm.
• Les Yay: Being a Lonely Rich Kid, Frieda's friendliness towards Myne gets rather intense. Several of her lines towards her sound like she might be nursing a childhood crush.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Members of the fandom tend to use "Praise be to the gods!" as a shorthand for "this makes really, really happy" or "this is excellent news", thanks to Myne's tendency to pray when she's at her happiest.
  • Because of Myne's reaction to finding the temple's book room being ransacked, members of the fandom often call for a bloody carnival when they are informed of anything bad happening to books. For occasional bonus points, the books involved in the incident being physical copies of the light novel isn't completely unheard of.
  • Pretending to not be able to tell the difference between Myne and a shumil.
  • Chairman of the Brawl jokes about Hildebrand. The final event of Part 5 Volume 2 is two of Rozemyne's suitors playing ditter for her hand. A short time after hearing about the game before it starts, Prince Hildebrand, who has a crush on Rozemyne but isn't participating in the game, leaves his next casual conversation for a I Need to Go Iron My Dog grade reason. Pre-pub readers responded by speculating that Hildebrand was leaving to make plans to crash the ditter game one way or another, resulting in someone joking about Hildebrand being that person who shows up with a steel chair in wrestling matches. The mix of the mental image conjured by Hildebrand being a frail, soft-faced, literal 8-year-old and the ditter game actually getting interrupted by characters who could have believably been doing Hildebrand's bidding at the time caused the joke to get a call-back on the part of those that remembered it. It got even more of a hold in that part of the fandom thanks to Hildebrand's crush on Rozemyne also motivating him to be a discrete contender for the throne with the potential to pull a politcal "steel chair move" in the future.
• Play-Along Meme: The light novel has revealed that most nobles are skittish enough about physical contact that mentioning that two lovers are touching each other without making use of an elaborate euphemism in a piece of fiction is the equivalent of an extremely detailed sex scene for the vast majority of the real-world readers. By those standards, many romantic scenes from the light novel itself, whose youngest target audience is young teens, might as well be pornography. Some fans have taken to generally acting as if the light novels are much more lewd than they actually are. A later reveal that Holding Hands is enough to mix mana, which is something considered so intimate that outright asking for it is on par with inviting someone to go to bed, has resulted in that specific gesture becoming a prime target for the meme.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: A common criticism is that until Myne meets the priestess and begins her apprenticeship, which is where most of the cast, worldbuilding, and magic system is introduced or expanded upon; the beginning of the story lacks the same level of engagement when compared to it's later stages. Until that point, the story is largely focused on Myne attempting to make books and failing over and over again due to a lack of the proper resources or ability, which can result in Arc Fatigue for some.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: An over time increasing criticism of the official English translation was that some name spellings were arbitrarily changed, despite being approved of by the author herself. As a consequence, the translator eventually decided to adhere to what they believe is the most accurate spelling, which is why some Barely Changed Dub Names like Laurentius were reverted.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Considering her relevance in Part 1, there are some readers who think that Freida was underutilized, especially after the author revealed that in the original draft Myne was supposed to make paper with Tuuli and Freida, before she decided to create Lutz for that role. Starting with Part 2, since Myne gets more and more involved with the nobility, Freida, as a commoner who is not involved in making books, is slowly put on the sidelines and stays there despite the reveal at the end of Part 2 that the noble with whom she signed up is Damuel's older brother. Even Hendrik becoming one of the laynoble scholars involved in the printing industry doesn't change this.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Benno's rough behavior, including shouting at people and hitting Myne occasionally, are met with mixed responses. In Japan this isn't frowned upon, especially in a Boke and Tsukkomi Routine, while there are western readers who think it's blatant child abuse.
  • Some things that work in Japan are preemptively removed in the official English translation because they would confuse a reader who is not as well-versed in Japanese culture. For instance, Gunther and Myne talking about marriage is cute in Japan, but may come off as creepy outside of it.
  • The overall treatment of Justus' crossdressing being Played for Laughs doesn't travel well, as some of it relies on attitudes and myths that are contributing to making the life of trans people, real-life crossdressers and gender non-conforming people much harder (and risky) than it needs to be in many places:
    • Rozemyne, who is supposed to be the character with the most progressive outlook, is not much less prejudiced about that particular topic than most of the other members of the cast who know about it. Even members of the cast who genuinely appreciate Justus as person, such as Ferdinand and Rihyarda, come across as bearing with that side of him.
    • Rozemyne not wanting Justus to crossdress in the presence of the orphanage's pre-baptism children and everyone's reaction to Hartmut's willingness to crossdress if it's part of the job, when considering the extent to which Think of the Children! has been used to pass transphobic laws.
    • Rozemyne resorting to threatening to fire Hartmut (in a setting where even willingly resigning can be a big deal) to get the idea of crossdressing out of his head, which is also a recurring problem for those populations.
• Viewer Pronunciation Confusion: Brigitte's name is not much of an issue in Japanese, where the kana ブリギッテ (Burigitte) are given. However, many people frequently mispronounce her romanized name by using the French pronunciation instead of the German one, which often leads to incorrect spellings of her name, too.
• Woolseyism:
  • The author didn't put too much effort into some of the names. For example in Part 1, Lutz and Myne are looking for decent wood that they could use to make paper. In Japanese, the lumber salesman offers woodone, woodtwo, woodthree, or woodfour. Lutz and Myne decide to go with woodfour. The English translation tries to make it look more presentable and changed woodfour to volrin (vol being based on the word "four").
  • A lot of the character names are romanized in a certain way in the official English translation because the translator (and author) focuses more on helping the audience get the pronunciation right or because it would otherwise lead to confusion. This is why names like Effa and Rihyarda are romanized like this, even though they match the German pronunciation of Eva and Richarda respectively.
  • The same applies to names of objects like the harspiel instrument (fespiel in Japanese), which is a portmanteau of harp (Harfe in German) and spiel (German for instrument). The "schtappe" is actually meant to be "Stab", the German word for wand/staff, but since there already exists a word in English that is called "stab", the word was intentionally romanized differently.
  • In some cases where in the original Japanese My Nayme Is applies, the translator just outright changes the name back to what it's based on, like with Sylvester (Jilvester) or Justus (Justicus).
  • Rozemyne and Sylvester being on a First-Name Basis in the translation happens because it sounds awkward for Rozemyne to keep addressing him as "adoptive father" in English, and calling him and Karstedt both father would be confusing. As Rozemyne and Sylvester have less of a father/daughter relationship and more like one of equals, it was deemed more sensible to just address him by name.
  • Honorifics are generally dropped and how people are addressed is changed to something western readers can better relate to. For instance, Rihyarda and Justus call Rozemyne 姫様 (hime-sama; high-ranking lady), which is changed to "milady" in English.
  • The anime often takes this a step further from the LN when it comes to terminology for clarity's sake. Instead of "shrine maiden" (which is an overly literal translation), it uses "priestess" to refer to female clergy. And instead of "High Bishop" and "High Priest", it goes with "High Priest" and "Head Priest", which spell out the difference in their positions (one is the official top cleric, the other is the church's administrator).