Whoever Steals This Book
“Anime’s Meta Fantasy Adventure”
Released in Japanese theaters on December 26, 2025, Whoever Steals This Book (Kono Hon o Nusumu Mono wa) is an anime film that turns the act of stealing a book into a full-blown reality-warping crisis. Adapted from Nowaki Fukamidori’s fantasy novel, it takes a familiar “bookish” premise and twists it into something much more playful and meta.
Mifuyu Mikura is a high school girl who hates books, even though her family manages Mikura Hall, a once-renowned private library founded by her great-grandfather. An old "Book Curse" comes into play when multiple books are taken, changing her entire town to fit the worlds of those stories, clockwork, and bookish worlds that distort reality. Mifuyu must literally enter various fictional worlds to pursue the thief and retrieve the stolen items, restoring reality. To restore reality, Mifuyu has to dive into the books themselves—literally entering different fictional worlds to chase down the thief and reclaim what was stolen.
The hook for anime fans is how this “entering book worlds” setup lets the film constantly reinvent its visuals. Each story Mifuyu enters carries its own genre logic and aesthetic, from lush fantasy to gritty steampunk, giving the animators at Kagokan (also credited as Kagome Company in some listings) an excuse to shift styles dramatically from world to world. If you enjoy the genre-jumping, reality-bending feel of shows like Flip Flappers or Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, this looks like it will scratch a similar itch—only with a strong bibliophile twist.
From a creator’s lens, the content is very much in line with Fukamidori’s reputation for embedding love letters to literature in her stories. Still, here the affection comes with friction: the protagonist actively rejects that legacy. Mifuyu grows up surrounded by books, yet resents them; the curse forces her to inhabit the narratives she dismissed, turning the plot into a literal journey through genres and a more personal confrontation with her family’s history. It’s the kind of premise that invites both visual creativity and thematic resonance about how stories shape us, whether or not we think of ourselves as “book people.”
On the production side, the film is directed by Daisei Fukuoka (Radiant, Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope’s Peak High School), animated by studio Kagokan, and distributed by Kadokawa Animation. Yasuhiro Nakanishi handles the script, with character designs by Keiko Kurosawa and music by veteran composer Michiru Ōshima, whose work often leans into rich, cinematic orchestration. The main cast features Rin Kataoka as Mifuyu and Sora Tamaki as Mashiro, the mysterious girl who appears when the curse is triggered, with the theme song “Share” performed by YUKI.
If you like anime that treat genre as a playground and stories as living spaces rather than static texts, Whoever Steals This Book looks poised to be one of those films that rewards watching it with a creator’s eye—paying attention not just to what happens, but to how each book-world chooses to look and feel.
