The Winter 2024 Anime Preview Guide

The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash

Young Ivy can't catch a break. Though she has a few memories of her past life, she was reborn into an RPG-like world in the weakest class, and worse, as the weakest rank. As a no-star Tamer, even her parents want nothing to do with her, and she soon realizes she must survive on her own. She learns to live off the land and salvage what she can from other people's leavings. But everything changes for both of them when Ivy manages to tame Sora, a lowly slime. There's something special about this frail little monster; Ivy's care will bring out the best in both of them.

The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash is based on a light novel series of the same name by author Honobonoru500 and illustrator Nama. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

Call it an unfair bias if you want but I've been burned too many times by terrible isekai to let my guard down—so you can't blame me when I hit fight-or-flight mode and begin to instinctively hiss and scratch whenever I see a series with a title that is any variation of “The Strongest/Weakest [INSERT GENERIC MMORPG CHARACTER CLASS HERE] Does A Thing For A Reason!?!?” Most of the time, the anime in question may as well be waving a giant, bespoke flag above its head that reads, “Don't Bother, I Am Almost Certainly Going To Make You Regret All Of The Life Choices That Brought You Here!”

Leave it to this weird winter season to deliver so many exceptions that prove the rule because The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash gets to join The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic as the isekai shows that have just impressed me, despite all of my misgivings going in. In both shows' cases, too, it all comes down to execution and depth of character. Ivy, the dumpster-diving little heroine of the story, follows in the tradition of all functional and enjoyable fiction by being an actual character with a personality (even if 80% of that personality boils down to being cute). She's resourceful without feeling boringly invincible (at least so far) and she's precocious without being annoying. On top of that, the show has made the very novel decision to incorporate the memories/spirit/jingly-bell-ghost-thing of her past life as a reflexive internal dialogue—which makes it feel like Ivy and whoever Ivy was before she got isekai'd are two distinct characters. It's a really neat touch that I don't think I've ever seen before and it makes all the scenes of her just trying to figure out how to survive before she meets her slime pal a lot more compelling to watch.

Also, it helps that the show is quite the looker. Aside from a couple of questionable camera angles that lay just a bit too much at Ivy's legs and behind, I have almost nothing to complain about when it comes to the show's presentation. This is a well-shot and colorful production that doesn't skimp on the small touches which ensures that the whole premiere just feels…lively, I guess I would say. It's amazing how much more invested I can get in even the more formulaic of stories when it has taken the time to make genuine artistic choices that, you know, make an anime fun to watch.

I am very pleasantly surprised by The Weakest Tamer, and as shocked as I am to have two whole isekai anime that I am personally excited to keep up with this season, you won't find me complaining. If even a quarter of the shows we got every season were anywhere near this good, the industry would be in a much better place.

There are times when I hate writing for this guide. I mean, I have to watch a lot of terrible shows—anime I just know going in is going to be painful to get through. Then there are shows like this one—hidden gems I never would have watched normally—that make the whole venture worthwhile.

With The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash, we have a world much like that in Banished From The Heroes' Party, where the gods bestow skills on mankind which, in turn, affect one's place in society. In this case, having a low-level skill is seen as a divine judgment of worth—leading to our zero-star tamer Ivy being exiled from her small village (and later being hunted by them).

While that story itself is solid enough—I mean, it's not hard to care about a young girl suffering from the prejudice of idiot adults—it's not hard to imagine this story adapted as a serviceable mid-tier anime that I'm rating this so much higher for one reason: the directing.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the way a story is told is just as important as the contents of the story itself—especially in a visual medium like animation. This episode uses Dutch angles, extreme closeups, and crane shots, and has a focus on Ivy's hands and feet as much as her face. Through visual storytelling alone, we can see that Ivy's world is small, dangerous, and lonely.

And then there's the aural component. The music is beautiful—woodwind and strings with wordless vocals that support the emotions of any given scene without being overpowering. That said, there are large sections of the episode with no music at all, just ambient background sound—which forces us to focus on the only sound we get: Ivy's voice.

Aside from the village chief in the cold opening and the tamer hunting for Ivy, every other line in the show is spoken by Ivy herself. Neither the slime nor the memories of her past life have a voice that we can hear. It's a fantastic directorial choice that further imparts a sense of loneliness upon Ivy's world—and voice actress Aina Suzuki certainly rises to the challenge.

All in all, this is a fantastic 24-minute anime that took me from uninterested to completely hooked. It is easily the best-directed first episode of the season and puts the artistic side of anime front and center. If you skipped over The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash, expecting yet another paint-by-numbers isekai adventure, know that this first episode is anything but. It's well worth your time.

Told another way, this could be one of those horrible Victorian children's stories about kids abandoned in the forest and died quietly under a tree somewhere. Some of the imagery of this episode is very aware of that: the scene of Ivy curled up beneath a tree, still wearing her rags, is almost an exact match for the illustrations found in those books. Fortunately for Ivy, she's the hard-luck protagonist of an isekai fantasy, not the heroine of a moralizing children's book, and even though the episode doesn't skimp on the sadness of her situation, it also starts moving things in a much more positive direction by the halfway point.

I have to say that I like how this adaptation has chosen to use its source novel. Opening with Ivy (or Femicia, as her parents named her) in her home village would have been a much darker choice, albeit one that would have laid out all of the background information that she tells Sora towards the end. Instead, we're left to come to our conclusions about why the old man in the opening wants Ivy dead and gone while still getting the idea of the sort of hardships she's going through. No matter how old she is, we can all agree that she's too young to survive on her own in the wilderness, although the implication is that a now-deceased fortune teller took her in for some time. The only real nod to the isekai aspect of the story is that every time a bell chimes, Ivy responds to a voice we can't hear – presumably the voice of her previous life. It works to give Ivy someone to talk to while keeping her isolated, but I also feel like it was just added so that "isekai" could be one of the novel tags to get more eyes on it.

I also really like the art, particularly for the backgrounds. The story may feel a little thin right now, but the beauty of the woods, fields, and rivers gives a sense of a pastoral wonderland. What's even better is the dump Ivy comes across. I spent a lot of time growing up wandering around the woods looking for old cellar holes and dumps, and a lot of them had a similar appearance to the one Ivy finds, and just as much treasure. Of course, I was in more danger from broken bottles or rusty metal than spears, but the lure of pulling things out is well captured here. I know that's odd to say, especially given that Ivy's survival relies on it, but still. Also, it's fun to look at Sora, Ivy's tiny slime friend; granted, they're not that different from other cute slimes, but something about this one comes across as more earnest than most, and I'm going to put that down to facial expressions.

All in all, this is a very pleasant watch. It has heft in Ivy's situation, but it's not devoid of hope, and it looks lush, at least in the background. Ivy seeing herself in Sora's situation is sweet (yet sad), and I'm hopeful it will live up to the light novels.

I've seen a dozen premieres this season where there's a good idea at the core, but some failure of execution leaves the whole thing hamstrung, piling up potentially impacting material in a pile of mangled plot points and half-measures. That's certainly the impression I came out of this premiere with. There is a lovely little story in here of a kid who's abandoned by her village but perseveres on her own, finding companionship and purpose on her journey. Yet the actual delivery of that idea can hardly take a step without tripping on some minor issue of execution until, by the end of it, that solid idea is shambling along, bruised, and mildly concussed.

Take, for example, the isekai element of this premiere. Ivy has access to vague memories of her past life and said past life likes to chime in with commentary, presented to the audience as a bell ringing, followed by Ivy repeating whatever the voice in her head just said before responding to it. That is just an awkward way to give our lone heroine somebody to talk to, and it adds very little to the story, feeling like a vestigial narrative element from a first draft that should have been reworked. Either have Ivy be alone at the start of her journey, or just let the audience hear what her past life is saying. I'd prefer the former since that little jingling bell never says anything of worth anyway.

Confused choices like that permeate this whole premiere. The first half of Ivy's journey leaves a lot up to suggestion and implication to fill us in on her journey so that by the time she meets her slime friend, we've got a pretty good idea of what led her to flee her village and change her identity. Then Ivy explains every detail of her life to said slime friend, taking up nearly the entire second half of the episode to reiterate information and emotional beats we already know. When she reaches the conclusion of her story and starts breaking down, and the music begins to swell, it almost brings you back around after the redundant exposition. The music has been swelling throughout the episode, firing up the orchestral strings and heavenly choir every minute or two to punctuate even the most mundane milestone of Ivy's travels. So what should be the emotional capstone to this whole episode just sort of flops onto the screen?

That's a shame because Ivy is a good protagonist. She's determined and likable, but there are plenty of moments where she's scared, unsure of herself, or lets the mask slip and cries like the overwhelmed kid she is. Despite the weird RPG determinism of her world, the promise of her building a life for herself is emotionally powerful and fertile ground for growing interesting stories. If this were being told just a little more competently, with a little bit better direction and polish, it would be a slam dunk. However, what we have right now is just too clumsy to function like it should.