Girls Bookmaker Shiawase no Libretto - Alice was cute, but Match...

Girls Book Maker: Shiawase no Libretto (ガールズ・ブック・メイカー -幸せのリブレット-) is a visual novel developed by Yumemiru and released in 2019. It also received three rather small (4-5 hours of content) fandisks under the subtitle "Grimm to Sannin no Ohime-sama". I actually completed reading the main game a few years ago, but I procrastinated on the last fandisk until late last year.

The story follows the life of Kuri Eito, a rather normal high school student who loves reading. One day, he gets teleported to a huge library in another world. Once he arrives, a small girl who introduces herself as the "Head Librarian" tells him that this place is a repository of every story in existence.

They called him in as a temporary helper to prevent the rot and decay of some of the books, as this would cause the relative story to disappear from the human world too. He accepts the offer and becomes a Librarian in this world, gaining the power to travel between these fairy tale worlds to solve the issues causing the decay.

Together with the mysterious blonde girl called Tale (who has no memories of her past), the Head Librarian Historia, and the coworker librarian Kotonoha Shiori, he sets out to solve various mysteries. This leads to lots of interesting adventures with characters from popular fairy tales like "The Little Match Girl" and "Alice in Wonderland".

The setting is quite original and the delivery is just as great. The idea is that in each of these worlds, both the writer (called a Register) and the story characters live their lives normally as "humans" (all Registers and characters are female). They do, however, act out their roles from time to time to preserve the story, like actors of a sort.

The visual novel follows a mostly episodic approach with a particular book being the focus at a time (with some extra stories added later). There are no routes whatsoever and the story is linear with one single ending for the entire visual novel. Each heroine gets her time to shine and her share of ecchi scenes, which is quite a change compared to your typical visual novel where these are restricted to the specific routes of each heroine.

The stories you will be experiencing are:

"The Little Match Girl"

Featuring the Register Andersen and the protagonist Match. This was a hilarious one because the reason for the decay was that Match went rogue and started using the matches to hypnotize people to live the great life she didn't get in the original story.

"Arsene Lupin"

Featuring the Register Maurice and the protagonists Lupin and Ganimard (the detective always chasing Lupin). Lupin here is extremely clumsy and insecure and is often helped by Ganimard to keep the story working as it should.

"Alice in Wonderland"

Featuring the Register Lewis (who has one of the funniest voices I have ever heard), the tsundere protagonist Alice, and the gyaru Heart (Queen of Hearts). Alice is one of the most prominent characters in the story due to the importance of her story.

"Taketori Monogatari"

Featuring the Register Hourai (who has mom-like looks) and the protagonist Kaguya, who is a hikikomori VTuber in this iteration. Trying to get her out of her room will be a challenge not easy for our protagonist.

"Faust"

Featuring the Register Goethe and the protagonist Faust, a cool woman quite popular among girls that is currently completely devoid of interest in anything, and Mephisto (a succubus-like woman).

The fandisks cover three stories from the Brothers Grimm:

"Cinderella" with the Register Grimm and the protagonist Cinderella.

"Snow White" with the Register Grimm and the protagonist Shirayuki.

"Little Briar Rose" with the Register Grimm and the protagonist Ibara.

I won't go into much detail on each story to avoid ruining the surprises, but all of them have their own charm and you will get to love the characters in them. Especially as they don't just disappear when their book is over; they appear as helpers of the protagonist in the battles that happen in successive books.

In the overarching story, there are two more characters called Mushiko (that looks like an anthropomorphized version of the monsters we fight against) and Grimoire who act as antagonists for most of the game's story. You will learn to hate them and then... well, that is something you will have to read yourself.

The art style is top-notch all around and each character has a very distinctive and memorable design. I like how they played a lot to make the characters true to their original story while adding a twist to make them original and "alive" in this world.

The opening "Wonder Libretto" and ending "Recall My Sketch" songs are both performed by popular singers Sakakibara Yui and Shimotsuki Haruka. There are generally quite a few popular seiyuu working on the various roles, like Haruka Sora (real name Sendai Eri) as Alice and Ayumi Sarah (real name Okamoto Rie) as Tale.

I really suggest this series to anyone wanting to start a new visual novel. It is a solid story that will keep you busy for a long time (over 50 hours) with lots of funny and sometimes even emotional moments.