Books are dead. The last book has been printed, the presses shuttered. Everything has moved to electronic media.

But in a town of bibliophiles, the British Library has gathered a covert force of bibliomaniacs to gather and “kill” the remaining books in the world. Among them is Yomiko Readman, a girl who will go to any lengths to find, read and “kill” every last book in the world.

Welcome to R.O.D. Rehabilitation. As part of the lineup of Shueisha’s Super Dash & Go magazine, this seemed like it would be sure-fire win. After all, the previous incarnations of Yomiko made it into an 11-volume Light Novel series, two 4-volume manga series and three different anime versions.

This new iteration of Yomiko takes some getting used to. The creators have labeled her “dark” but you know, I always saw the old Yomiko as pretty much nuts, with a dark streak of delusion. Apparently what the creators meant is “she kills people for books.” Oh, okay then, she’s dark. It’s not the old Yomiko, in fact, her name is spelled with different kanji (the original was 読子and the new one is 読魅子,) so it’s probably a good idea to think of her as a completely different character, rather than the return of any Yomiko we know. The difference between the two names is interesting, but I’ll hold off on that for now.

Not surprisingly, I am not a fan of the new character design, which feels like they dug through Peach-Pit’s dumpsters for design ideas.

I’ve only read two chapters of the 3 chapters of the new series, so there isn’t a lot for me to work with in terms of character, plot etc. When the first volume comes out, I’ll have a better idea if I think it’s worth continuing. (Chapter 4 comes out next month, so we should see a late spring/early summer release for the volume.)