Anime Review of Read or Die

The first time I had seen the anime "Read or Die" was back in 2002. A friend of mine had purchased the DVD off of this online store called Animeniacs. For some reason my friend didn't like the anime that much. He let me borrow it to see what I thought of it.

This anime movie is split into three half-hour episodes.

Read or Die revolves around a young half-English and half-Japanese woman named Yomiko Readman. The "Readman" is basically a pun on Yomiko's hobbies and personality. She's pretty dense because her nose is always in a book. Yomiko has a huge love of reading. Her entire apartment is filled with books and books.

There's hardly any furniture around the apartment as the space is made for bookshelves storing all sorts of books.

The anime opens up in Washington DC. A person that's apparently a clone of Gennai Hiraga who created the Electrolator box that controls electricity. He's a samurai with electrical powers in Read or Die and channels his electricity to use in a blade that looks like a light saber.

Gennai effortlessly blows up the entire White House leaving the President of the United States cowering in fear. This person seems to speak with a Texan accent. One could say that this unnamed President is a parody of George W. Bush. He basically wet himself when the White House exploded.

Interestingly enough, the United States government is portrayed to be extremely weak in the three episodes of the Read or Die OVA.

Then it starts out in Japan where Yomiko does her usual everyday routine which is buying books. Yomiko is the epitomy of all bibliomaniacs. She buys books left and right to add to her personal library. In a sense she has both bibliomania and biblophily which is defined as a love of books. In the bookstore, Yomiko finds the book that she wants and purchases it.