First episode… I’ll grudgingly give the anime a nod of approval.
On the hand the art style is totally different and I felt lacking, I do approve of the age increase given to Dalian. It gave her more of a more mature, solemn, noble grace which made the scene of her lying in Huey’s arm while Huey pulls the books out of her incredibly beautiful, I think visually it would not be the same if she remained a loli, though it does work in the book of course. Plus it differentiated further from GOSICK, not that Dalian was ever close to being like Victorica.
The music and presentation style was also top notch, conveying the general atmosphere of the original light novel well I think. Beautiful, creepy, and always filled with an air of sadness.
More importantly they stuck to the plot and character portrayal, well chronologically the book is supposed to have the stories all out of order, but I think for the anime bringing Huey and Dalian’s meeting to ep1 made sense.
The challenge ahead however is dealing with the short stories, afterall Bibliotheca Mystica de Dantalian is not really about Huey and Dalian, though their interaction is certainly fun, but in the larger picture they are bystanders to a world mad with forbidden books. They are witness to people’s greed, lust, envy, sins. And of course the occasional pureness of heart.
