A girl who hates books gets cursed into living inside them. The premise sounds like a joke until you realize the movie is using that contradiction as the entire architecture of its story, every twist depends on what happens when someone forced to care about narratives discovers she was never outside them. The pacing moves so fast you'll miss connections on first watch, but that's not a flaw, it's the point. By the time the curse reveals what it actually cost her to enter those stories, you understand why her hatred of books was always the real plot. Visual direction that treats each story-world like a place she has to survive, not a metaphor she has to understand. This one operates on a completely different frequency than anything else trying the "world inside a book" angle.

Mifuyu comes from a family of book fanatics. Her great-grandfather built Mikura Hall, the town's famous library, and everyone around her is a devoted reader. Everyone except Mifuyu, who can't stand books. When a thief at the library sets off an old curse, the town is threatened with a magical doom. The only way to stop it is to recover the stolen books by going inside their stories. Mifuyu finds herself pulled into the very tales she has always despised, facing fantasy worlds and mysteries she never asked for. A mysterious figure named Mashiro appears at her side to help as she tries to restore her great-grandfather's collection and save her town.