By now you'd think I'd be used to Japanese animation which was a bit... off-kilter, but for a short series which doesn't seem to be intended as a comedy (though there are plenty of fluffy moments) this one rates pretty high on the 'out there' scale.

The last of the three episodes stuffed up halfway through on my machine, and even using various computer players, which handled it slightly better, I missed five or eight minutes of the last fifteen, which I'm sure didn't help it make sense.

Yumiko is a serious bookworm. I mean, in a used bookstore she behaves like the average male would if it were raining Penthouse Pets. Actually I must admit her house looks rather like parts of mine (in fact, last week I tripped over when a stack of books collapsed).

I can't really pretend to understand the thing properly (Yumiko is conscripted into a secret agency, who are battling clones of various long-dead evil people; they (the agency) turn out to be British. She has amazing powers to control paper, and an almost homo-social relationship the large-busted and older Nancy (who has the power to pass through objects, but not, apparently, the power to stop solid objects passing through her), and meanwhile a gigantic fortress erupts from the ocean whose purpose is to make most of the human race commit suicide by playing Beethoven to them.... err, I'm sure I missed something)

What I did like is the ways in which it failed to fall into some expected anime cliches. A couple of nice women appear by the end of the first episode, and there isn't some inevitable, nerdy 14 year-old who they're all inexplicably attracted to, for example. On the other hand it does fall into a few others. For instance the stars are female, but the bosses (who are rather distant and emotionally unimportant to things) are male (as in Neon Genesis, or Robotech)

Still, I enjoyed it, even if I gave up wrestling with the end of the last episode. It's hard to imagine those few minutes changing my rating, though.

Oh - one thing I didn't get. At the start, she seems to be just an average person who seems as disconcerted to be conscripted into a secret service as you'd imagine. Next thing she's got magic powers, and acting like she's always had them. Did I miss something?

Yumiko Readman is every bookworm's role model. She has stacks of books on every flat surface of her apartment, and spends her money and free time shopping for more. One day she finds a rare old German book. Suddenly a hideous cloned mutant bug-man on a giant insect invades the town! Of course, Yumiko is reading and doesn't even look up. Until, that is, the son of a beetle STEALS HER BOOK!!!! The nerve! Of course, she chases down the murderous maniac and battles him, because, as she explains to him several times, "I haven't finished reading it yet!" Fortunately she is also a secret agent with uncanny paper-controlling powers.

Is it just that I'm a book lover and Yumiko expresses my soul so well that I love her? Maybe, but this OAV has excellent animation (well, for anime), subtle humor, and fun characters. Something for the boys, too, as there seems to be a certain amount of what we shall simply call 'jiggle' in the animation.

I would have loved to give it four stars, but I'm afraid I couldn't justify it in the face of the Saturday-morning-cartoon-level plot and villains. Yeah, Beethoven wrote a Death Symphony, and for some reason it has been preserved and divided up in some old books. Yeah, right. If it's supposed to be satirical, I'm afraid I missed the humor and took it seriously.

In spite of the flaws, though, it's a series to watch, especially for book lovers! (The OAV is divided into three half-hour episodes.)

(There is also a TV series, which I've only been able to see part of so far: Yumiko is missing, and her sister and two friends--also paper masters, and two of the three are also book freaks--are working as bodyguards for an author. What I saw was good.)