Courtesy: Crunchyroll

Anime

English Dub Review: The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash “On a Journey, the Three of Us”

By David Kaldor

March 30, 2024

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)…and just like that, the entire criminal organization has been apprehended, with a large reward given to everyone, including Ivy! Aside from finding out Meela will likely be given leniency for trying to stop her brothers, that wraps everything up. Ivy decides to reveal Sora’s existence to the rest of the adventurers, which also reveals that he’s a pretty rare slime. Ivy also opens up about her Zero Star status and that she was driven out of her village, even though her taming may be stronger than most. To everyone’s surprise, she decides to continue traveling alone and leave the Blazing Sword behind, so with some upgraded magical bags, she heads out with Sora and Ciel back on the open trail.OUR TAKEAnd that wraps us up on The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash. I already stopped having very high expectations for the show awhile back, but it’s not a good sign when the episode opens and my heart immediately sinks. I really thought we were going to get to see the final confrontation against this big criminal empire, but it seems it happened off screen with nothing else significant left to see. To be fair, the focus of this show has never been the action, but how Ivy has managed to survive and thrive by making meaningful connections, with both human and beast alike. I guess this whole arc with the Blazing Sword was more about the former category, but with the climax, I was sure that the latter would come into play somehow. Like maybe Sora would bond with Meela’s slimes and combine for the final battle or…I don’t know, SOMETHING. But no, I guess this whole last episode was just a wrap up and breather, even though the whole season never really got that intense to begin with. Crazy how everything with Ivy’s tragic backstory basically became an afterthought in the end, not relevant in the slightest until it’s mentioned again mere minutes from the show being over.I was prepared to give this a 4/10 or lower for all of that, but oddly what bumped the score up was the last bit at the end; a post-credit wordless scene showing Sora and Ivy’s first meeting from Sora’s perspective as a slime struggling on their own just to survive in the wild. It’s weird to feel this way but I think this is what the show should have been all along. Ivy viewing standard RPG monsters in their natural habitats and bonding with them. Maybe not go full David Attenborough like a documentarian, but definitely taking notes observing behavior and perhaps having significant interactions to see their typical lives and existence completely devoid of adventurer interactions. Perhaps get into that with some of the more aggressive monsters that are hunted or that are often a threat, but yeah, see these “monsters” as just other types of animals in a fantasy ecosystem. Alas, that is not what we got, and what we did get was rather disappointing in the end, but this last bit…weirdly gives me hope that maybe we’ll get something like that in the future. Oh well.