The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash

Recommended for those who like slow-paced shows with good story building, and character development. Story: The story is very similar to pretty much any other isekai, but what makes it stand out is the execution of that story. It follows the traditional route of introducing characters first and then giving their backstories but handles each element quite elegantly, unlike an average isekai. This gives a fair amount of time to each of its genres and themes, be it drama, adventure, fantasy, or even isekai. You won't easily find an isekai where you get reminded of the isekai element every episode. But still, some of theparts of the stories in later episodes might feel a bit stretched. 7.5/10 Characters: The story revolves around Ivy and there are many secondary characters, and most of them impact Ivy's character development. So none of the characters' introductions feel forced or unnecessary. There aren't many cheesy characters that an average isekai has. 8/10 Art and animation: The studio is pretty new, considering that, they did a pretty solid job on both the art and the animation and one will barely notice any flaws in animation. 8/10 Soundtrack: It has a decent soundtrack that might sound like a classic Disney fantasy soundtrack. 7/10 If you liked Frieren, Campfire cooking you'll like this one.

This feels like one of those shows that's going to end up on an "Incredible anime you've never heard of" list. No single aspect is particularly impressive, but as a whole this is a well produced nice story that's worth your time. It's an isekai that really doesn't fall into most of the common pitfalls of the genre. It's not horny, this is huge. It's way too hard to find fantasy anime low on "fanservice". The MC is technically overpowered, but it's balanced well. The pacing is near perfect, providing plenty of time to actually develop characters. I hope it gets a chance to continue.

“The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash” is what happens when You want to write a feel-good story but have no idea how to do it well. Judging by the positive reviews I’m probably gonna get some flack for this but… This show is pretty bad when it comes to logical writing. A lot and I do mean A LOT of plot points happen only because they have to, to evoke sympathy for the main character and not because they make sense. It uses a lot of the same cheap tricks as “To Your Eternity” but does it more heavy headedly. Let meexplain… The plot revolves around Ivy - an 8 year old girl posing as a boy (“Kino’s Journey” anyone?). When she was 5 she partook in a ritual to reveal her skill and proficiency in it. Turns out our heroine, then still going by the name Femicia has zero start (I guess point in proficiency? That part is also not explained well). As a result her family and the whole village turned their back on her and practically exiled her. After some really bad plot BS she’s forced to run and pretend to be a boy in hopes she won’t get caught by the residents of her former village. Apparently she’s a reincarnate and possesses her memories from the past life but I don’t think it’s the proper statement. It appears that her former self (or maybe part of it) is communicating with her at some level. They even have short conversations often. That’s not how memories work, then again the way she acts as a child is more in line with possessing those memories. I have no idea why that changes but for most of the show she acts almost like having an imaginary friend who happens to be from another world. It’s really poorly explained and to be fair I could probably think of other options what that voice in her head could be. As a protagonist she’s one of the worst types possible - the type that can do no wrong and the whole world bends over backwards for her (minus the village incident of course). Let me spell it out better. It’s an 8 year old kid, who can’t do anything wrong. Even when she does something really stupid, like… oh I don’t know… walk to a wounded predator. Her brain damage doesn’t stop there. She witnessed firsthand that Sora (a unique slime, she tamed) is able to heal her wounds and yet was still reluctant to feed him her best healing potion. Yes. It’s a slime that eats magical potions, but only certain kinds. The “tragedy” that was the catalyst of the whole show is also a bit idiotic. You want me to buy that parents who cared for a child for 5 years would so easily just reject her? I’m more inclined to believe that her siblings would do that, kids are assholes after all, but her own father and mother? I’m not buying it. Mere-exposure effect is a bitch after all. If I have to guess, the author wanted to have a very specific protagonist and wrote himself into a corner of how to logically achieve it. Despite its heavy handedness I guess it works. Not as good as it could be but a start is a start. Now the second logical shit show. The whole skills and stars system. It’s stated that people have one special skill given by god and stars represent it’s power. Ok. Cool, but.. How does that work? There are people who can run fast but how does that relate to people running without that skill? Do other people can’t run at all? That’s not the case as we see in the show. Does someone who trains and runs for miles everyday could never be as fast as someone with even 1 star? We meet a woman who has 4 stars (apparently a very unique trait) in cooking. But Ivy’s cooking is said to be delicious. How is it compared to someone with a starred skill? The whole system is poorly explained and full of logical flaws. Ivy has zero stars and yet was able to, I guess “tame” is the wrong word for it, “befriend” maybe… a dangerous predator that most tamers can’t tame. How does that work? Don’t give me the crap about the “power of kindness” or some other bs, let’s call it what it is “Plot armor” and “lazy world building”. When it comes to people Ivy meets during her travels they are… basically NPCs. Most have one trait pumped up to 11 and pretend it’s character. They are there to tell Ivy how awesome she is and basically pump her self esteem. Listen, I get it. Ivy had a shitty episode (no, she didn’t have a shitty life, her first 5 years are portrayed as pretty good and full of love) and it’s good to have a scene where she’s praised and where she can feel that she’s not unwanted, but don’t give me that shit every 5 minutes. It defeats the point of having a story about a hard life and making something from it. The other thing is that she isn’t really shown to struggle much. She finds a lot of useful things in trash heaps and people she only just met help her out. To the point that the whole of city guards in one of the cities watch out for her and protect her at every step. They must really not have much work. The last arc really pissed me off when it comes to logic. A 8 year old girl (well… I guess for everyone she's a boy) practically accuses an adventuring party of benign the big bad guys and she doesn’t even have to give proof before everyone just believes her? She’s among a group of adventurers and she just tells them that another group whose members are friends of some of them, work for a shady organization and they just buy it? 8-fucking-year-old-kid! Because kids are known for their detective skills. Listen, I get it. She tells them about Sora’s power to detect lies but she does that AFTER accusing someone and only AFTER the adventurers give her self-worth a blow job. EFF THAT! That's one of the most idiotic if not the most idiotic plot points of the show. After that, they even let her come up with plans to arrest everyone. Are people in the city guard or other adventurers so incompetent that they need a child to do their work for them? It’s a bit like in most Final Fantasy games the world does jack shit and a bunch of kids have to save everyone and everything. No one questions Ivy, her education or even has a conspiracy theory about why a goddamn 8 year old practically plans a SWAT operation. Sorry to say but the show is full of cliches and cheap tricks. Main of them is Ivy being scared and on the verge of crying. That state is enough for her to summon some kind of deus ex machina to get her out of trouble. Adventurers believed her without proof after she saw her like that. A town guard captain decided to help her with almost everything after he scared her a few times (unintentionally). I can forgive one, maybe two such cases but it goes on throughout the whole damn show. It’s like the writers never read a book in their lives and use only the same repetitive shit You see in other anime and movies nowadays. Do I think this is a bad show? No. Despite having lazy writing and using cheap tricks to make You care about Ivy the execution is solid. I would even say that there are exceptional moments when the music and visuals work perfectly together. I can honestly admit that there were moments when I actually enjoyed myself watching it. But that’s not the question that MAL asks. The question is “Would you recommend this?”. The answer is no. There are shows that are much better in the writing department so unless You have a preference for shows where You don’t have to think, there are little to no stakes and the whole world bends over backwards for the MC I really can't recommend it.

Overall a fairly polished anime, but also a very disappointing one. The animation has some flash to it surprisingly, it's pretty good and a pleasure to watch. The character detail can be a bit lacking at times, but overall it's exceptionally tidy. The backgrounds are really good and consistent to boot. The story and characters start out fantastic. There's depth and intrigue, it's fairly dark and hits home. However, much to my disappointment, the latter epsiodes start to be more of the typical isekai cheese. Character development slows, and the characters around the main character lose most of the charm the previous characters had. Thestory also slows down quite a bit and loses the grit it began with, becoming rather typical and lackluster. The voice acting was pretty much the same story, but dropped off pretty quickly. There was a character with fantastic voice acting in the first couple of episodes, but then it grew more average in terms of performance. It was still decently cast and not grating, but a little disappointing given how it started. The soundtrack is actually pretty decent as well, but gets a little cheesy towards the end. I love the op, but the ed is... weak. Not sure how else to say that, but weak is a good desciptor. Overall, I'm pretty disappointed. What started out looking like high 7's to low 8's and a real hidden gem turned into a fairly mediocre isekai. Not bad, just not to the level of the intitial episodes. So it ends up being more of a high-ish 6. Sad days. I really don't think there is any coming back from this either. I don't see how they can reattain the intial grit they had given the direction the characters and story are heading. 6.75/10.0 Dubbed