Yami to Bōshi to Hon no Tabibito
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| Yami to Bōshi to Hon no Tabibito | |
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| ヤミと帽子と本の旅人 (Yami, the Hat and the Travellers of Books) |
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| Genre | Seinen |
| TV anime | |
| Directed by | Yuji Yamaguchi |
| Studio | Studio DEEN |
| Network |  Animax, MBS |
| Original run | 2 October 2003 – 25 December 2003 |
| No. of episodes | 13 |
Yami to Bōshi to Hon no Tabibito (ヤミと帽子と本の旅人, possibly translated as "Yami, the Hat and the Travellers of Books", nicknamed "Yamibou" by fans) is both a visual novel eroge published in late 2002 by ROOT, and a non-adult, 13 episode anime series released by ROOT and Studio Deen in 2003. Many of the characters are taken from other ero-game titles, some unreleased. Although the characters and their relationships remain basically the same in the game and anime, the storyline is quite different.
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[edit] Overview
The story follows the travels of Azuma Hazuki, a tall, brooding high-school girl, as she searches for her adopted older sister and love interest, Hatsumi, in many different "book worlds". Her search is rather more of a focus in the anime series, in which Hazuki is the main character, than in the game. The main character of the game, the player, is nameless and occupies a different body in different "book worlds", including Hazuki's at some points. After the disappearance of her sister in the anime, a talking parakeet nicknamed Ken-chan introduces Hazuki to another major character of the series; Lilith, the caretaker of the Great Library. Each book in the library contains a different world, and the guardian of the library takes on the title Yami. As Yami, Lilith wears the enormous single-eyed hat named "Joe Harry", referred to in the title. In the game, the main character's constant companion is Ken-chan. The anime is an attempt to bridge the gap between shōjo and shōnen anime; without the fanservice, the series could be considered shōjo anime, since it is mostly character-driven and focused upon developing relationships. For this reason, as well as the fact that most of the female characters seem to be attracted to Hazuki, the anime series is popular among shōjo-ai fans.
The anime YamiBou is sometimes criticized as being difficult to follow, due to its non-linear plot and self-referential nature. Fans of the series claim that once a viewer has grasped the story, it is a deeply moving and sometimes depressing work.
[edit] Main Characters
Azuma Hazuki (東 葉月) is an obvious example of the "tall, dark bishōjo" archetype. She is quiet and serious, with long dark blue hair and sharp blue eyes. (This is the closest thing to a seme or "top" that appears in most yuri.) Hazuki appears cold and unfriendly and is fiercely protective of Hatsumi. She is actually very vulnerable and romantic, even to the point of being submissive, but refuses to show weakness or depend on anyone but her adoptive sister, Hatsumi - unless she is forced to. One example of this is her first encounter with Lilith, where she initially refuses Lilith's help in looking for Hatsumi/Eve. Only when Lilith notes she won't be able to travel from world to world without her, does Hazuki agree to travel with her and even then, only tacitly. As soon as she no longer has any need for Lilith's help, she shows no regard for her or her wishes with regards to Eve. Hazuki idolizes Hatsumi extremely and, as such, considers her sexual attraction to Hatsumi vulgar and shameful. This is best shown in episodes 1 and 7, in which the viewer is briefly shown the content of her thoughts.
Azuma Hatsumi (東 初美) is Hazuki's adopted older sister and love interest. Hatsumi appears to be mute (though it is proven otherwise on several occasions) and communicates mostly through gestures and facial expressions. Despite being older, Hatsumi is much shorter and thinner than Hazuki. Childhood memory flash-backs show Hazuki as a small, sickly child who might not have lived if not for Hatsumi's care. Although it seems that Hazuki's love is one-sided, episode 7 shows that Hatsumi does have romantic feelings for Hazuki, though she seems inept at expressing herself (eg. sending Hazuki anonymous love letters). In the first episode, Hatsumi disappears in a burst of green light ("souma") at midnight on her sixteenth birthday, as Hazuki tries to steal a kiss in her sleep. The events that follow lead Hazuki to a mysterious library in another dimension, in which all the worlds are kept in books. Hazuki learns from the Library guardian, Lilith, that Hatsumi is only one of the forms of the previous guardian (Eve), and that Eve stays in different books for fun until she turns sixteen.
Lilith (リリス) is the guardian of the library. She is the third Yami, after Adam, the creator of all the worlds, and Eve. In the anime, Lilith is attracted to Hazuki and flirts relentlessly, though she is always turned down. Lilith appears to dislike Eve and have interest only in her own ends, but her kind and vulnerable sides are sometimes shown, especially when she encounters children in trouble; adults do not seem to move her to compassion as much. Her more childish mannerisms are fairly constant, but Lilith sometimes shows considerable wisdom and knowledge. She claims that Eve left the duty of being Yami and went off to play in the book worlds, and so she wants to find Eve and return her to the library. Towards the end of the game, it is shown that Lilith misses the past, when she was close with Eve and Adam, or "Yami Yama". In the game, Lilith uses the main character's love for the wayward guardian to find Eve, and in the anime she uses Hazuki. At the end of the game, Lilith may either fall in love with the main character, or continue to pine for Yami Yama. In the anime, Lilith is attracted by (and flirts with) both men and women, though she never develops any deep romantic relationships. At the end of the anime, it may be suggested that Lilith and Eve share a sexual relationship from time to time.
Arya (アーヤ; Aaya) is a mysterious silver-haired boy who appears in every episode of the anime and during certain times in the game. In the anime he claims to be cleaning up after Hazuki and Lilith. Also, he offers Tamamonomae to perform repairs on her Space Hall. He is always cosplaying as some type of character or animal. At the end of the anime series, he is shown closing a book that seems to contain the world of the Book Keepers.
Kogechibi (コゲチビ) lives in the library, and looks like a 4-inch-tall Eve, though with different colored eyes. "Koge" refers to the one-eyed cloak that covers all of her but the eyes. In the game, when the main character is occupying "Koge", the girl is referred to as "O-chibi-chan" ("o" being an honorifix and "chan" an endearment). Kogechibi's vocabulary is composed of unintellible sounds akin to baby talk. In the anime, she has a disturbing love of fireworks and can say a few words if they have something to do with explosives; she builds miniature catapults and launch platforms, and fills hollow fountain pens with gunpowder and uses them as bottle rockets. She plays a small part in the plot, but is mostly comic relief in the anime. In the game, it is revealed that the guardians "fragment" when they overexert themselves, and that the fragments take on a life of their own. Kogechibi is a fragment of Eve.
Gargantua (ガルガンチュア) appears in episode 2 of the anime as a madman, with three bumbling demonic henchmen and a servant named Seiren (セイレン) (derived from the Hellenic Siren). His main goal is to find Eve. In the next two episodes, the viewer sees his past as an orphan boy in a book world that appears to correspond to our 900 AD. Eve is present as the mute, magic-using Jill, assistant caretaker of the orphanage. Gargantua is fiercely attached to her, and accidentally stabs her fatally with a knife when he jealously tries to dislodge a fellow orphan, Ritsuko, from Jill's arms. Jill's body disappears in an explosion of souma, drenching the two children in her life force. In the game, Gargantua and the main character both hold and try to acquire more fragments of Eve. For a while, Gargantua takes over Joe Harry and the command of the "hunters" (smaller, one-eyed hat-looking creatures). At the end of the anime, thanks to Eve and Tamamonomae, Gargantua has a change of heart and returns to the realm Lilith gave him for the sacrifice of princess Mariel, taking Ritsuko with him.
Ritsuko (リツコ) first appears along with Gargantua in episode 3, though she plays a greater role in episode 4. Set approximately 100 years after episode 3, she is an immortal magic user and appears no older than 25, despite being over a century old. Ritsuko travels the countryside performing healing miracles. She has never forgotten Jill or Gargantua, and carries small protraits of them in her locket. When she comes to the castle to heal Princess Mariel, she is taken in as the court alchemist. One day, while escorting the princess around the village, Ritsuko meets Gargantua, who is also immortal because of Jill's souma and has learned dark magic. He kidnaps Princess Mariel and tries to sacrifice her to Lilith, in order to be shown where Eve is. Ritsuko stops him, but is framed for the kidnapping and thrown into a dungeon. Ritsuko is a user of sexual magic in the game, and one of the bodies occupied by the player is under her spell. She is also seen travelling through the books with two children. Her true name, the name she uses as a character in another ero-game, is revealed towards the end of the game. At the end of the anime, thanks to some interference by Eve and Tamamonomae, Gargantua returns for Ritsuko, freeing her from her cell and taking her back with him to his own realm.
Quill (クイル) is a relatively minor character who appears in episode 5, in an early Stone Age world. She leads Hazuki and Lilith to her cave-village, where they notice an evil presence. A giant monster breaks out of the people's primitive shrine and Hazuki enters her first swordfight. The monster shrinks and disappears after its defeat. Quill loses the ability to communicate with Hazuki and Lilith after the defeat of the monster. It is suggested that Arya may have used magic to enable Quill to communicate with Lilith and Hazuki, possibly in a bid to make the two defeat the beast, which had been worshipped as a god. Quill does not appear in the game.
Miruka (ミルカ) appears in episode 6 under the care of Seiren. She is a girl with a cruel past who is trapped in her five-year-old body. Miruka lives on an island, and has no one to befriend but Seiren and her white tiger, Rascaless. Her initial caretaker was an older woman who used to whip the child as a punishment for such trivial offences as talking back to her. Eventually, the old woman is killed by Rascaless when Miruka isn't watching. Initially afraid of Hazuki and Lilith, she warms up to them and has Seiren take them to the villa at the center of the island. Miruka's world is subject to periodic reality shifts she calls "rip-rip", during which the sky and the ground rip open as if in an earthquake, only to close without a trace. These drive Miruka wild with pain, and she collapses at times. At one point, a "rip-rip" splits the sea, and Miruka wanders into the gap, mumbling about crossing the ocean. The rip closes and she is nearly drowned. Hazuki attempts a rescue, but it is Rascaless who saves Miruka. Afterwards, Miruka realizes Rascaless killed the old woman for her; she thanks him, but asks him never to do such a thing again. Back at the villa, it is revealed that Seiren was grooming Miruka to use her magic against Lilith, as revenge for abandoning her. However, Miruka apparently has no magical powers even though she does not age. Lilith shrugs it off and tries to reconcile with Seiren, and then sends Miruka across the ocean on a ship, at her right age. In the ero-game, Miruka is sent to live on the island by her older brother, for whom she has romantic feelings, because of her poor health. Seiren sings on the cliffs everyday to keep all of Miruka's brother's soldiers under her spell, and Miruka on the island. She also tries to manipulate Miruka through her dreams. After Seiren and Lilith's reconciliation, Miruka goes back to her brother with Rascaless.
Fujihime (藤姫; Princess Fuji or Princess of the wisteria) and Youko Meirin (Mei-lin the fox creature) appear in episodes 8 and 9, which take place in a book-world that corresponds to the samurai era of Japan. Fujihime looks like Hatsumi, but has purple eyes instead of red. She can talk, and possesses the comb with which Hatsumi was using in episode 7, in modern-day Japan (Hazuki asks Hatsumi if it's "an antique", and gets a positive answer). Meirin is a cheerful, wily kitsune girl with two tails who is trying to "raise her rank" by getting close to the princess. As Meirin and Hazuki both have to enter the "Bamboo Fortress" to achieve their goals, they meet. The samurai who attacked Meirin earlier were actually Fujihime's guards and, at her orders, treat Hazuki respectfully. Hazuki spends a long time at the fortress under the care of Fujihime, and is given the comb. That night, a pack of evil kunoichi sneak in to steal the comb, which is a link to Eve. After a swordfight, Hazuki defeats their leader and escapes with Lilith and the comb. The player of the game meets Meirin after he enters a body, the previous owner of which she unintentionally kills. To make up for it, she takes him to Fujihime, who is another form of Eve. Fujihime lives deep in the mountains, but the humans are cutting down the bamboo forest dangerously close to her hut. She is good friends with both Meirin and the god of the mountain, who is in love with her.
Lala (ララ) is the monolithic AI controlling the spaceship upon which Hazuki and the others find themselves in episode 10. The book-world is well beyond our time period. The ship is an "emigration spaceship" taking the former inhabitants of Earth on a search for a new home planet. None of the passengers appear over ten years old, yet they have been drifting for over two hundred years. Hazuki and Lilith discover that all the adults died in a plague nine years ago. In one scene, Hazuki's young guide talks to her mother, gets a response, and then leaves the room. Hazuki looks at the mother's bed and sees a decaying corpse. Lala was the one who answered, and was likely doing so for all the children. Eve appeared in this world as Lular over a hundred years ago, and had vanished on her sixteenth birthday while fixing a malfunctioning part. Not even the spacesuit was ever found. This futuristic world and its characters do not appear in the game.
Tamamonomae(-han) (玉藻の前; Tamamo no mae) appears to be Meirin's future form as a kitsune woman with nine tails, though she exists in a different book-world. Possibly, she and Meirin may simply be alternative versions of one another; she described Meirin as her 'other self', which in context may mean that Meirin is her creation or an independent creature which fissioned off from Tamamonomae, as Seirin from Lilith and Kogechibi from Eve. In the anime, she is more sexually voracious than Lilith, and flirts with and gropes Gargantua when he stumbles into her floating "Space Hall" with his henchmen. She keeps a tiny fire dragon as a pet. Tamamonomae appears to be well familiar but not very respectful of Lilith and has a great love of saké. Her powers apparently surpass Lilith's and possibly Yamiyama's, as she is capable of removing the Hat from Lilith's head without suffering any ill effects, greatly weakening Lilith in the process. Tamamonomae-han, despite her sexual and alcoholic tendencies, is not an unsympathetic character; she has considerable insight into people and does some fairly altruistic things for some of the other characters; she restores Marieru to human form, helps Gargantua to acknowledge the truth, returns the Hat to Eve and finally seems to have taken Gargantua's henchmen in as permanent guests. The Space Hall seems to be a place like the library of worlds, and is beyond the flow of time of the book-worlds. All three parties (Gargantua and his servants, Hazuki and Lilith, and Eve in her "raw" form) appear here at the beginning of the end. In both the game and the anime, Tamamonomae lives in her Space Hall with a servant who looks like the princess under Ritsuko's care. (In the anime, this -is- the princess, restored to her human form but not her old memories, by Tamamonomae-han.) Arya appears at her Space Hall frequently. In the anime, it may be suggested that Tamamonomae-han did more than grope Arya during his appearance there ... It is later revealed that Tamamonomae is an SD (super deformed), nine-tailed kitsune girl named Mizukume (藻女), and is wearing the Tamamonomae body as a zippered suit.
Seiren is a beautiful, blue-haired woman who initially appears as Gargantua's ally in the anime. He describes her as a devil, but apparently trusts her, using her aid in his search for Eve. Seiren holds a grudge against Lilith, claiming that she was abandoned by her. She is most upset when they meet again on Miruka's island and Lilith doesn't even remember her. It is possible that Seiren is an aspect of Lilith that split off, just as Kogechibi split off from Eve. If this is so, Seiren has certainly developed better than Kogechibi. Seiren's plan to use Miruka against Lilith fails, but Lilith makes an attempt at reconciliation which may or may not have succeeded.
[edit] Other media
There is a one-book manga adaptation, Yami to Bōshi to Hon no Tabibito ~Romance, illustrated by Aya Sakurai. It is a compressed version of the game's events, following the storyline that leads to a romantic relationship between the nameless main character and Lilith. Its ISBN is ISBN 4-04-713593-3.
