At five, Ivy learns that she is starless in her useless beast tamer skill. Because of this, her family distances themselves from her and
even sides with the village chief when he demands her sacrifice three years later in order to end their curse and make life better for everyone else in the village. With the help of her only friend, the village seeress, Ivy successfully runs away and makes her way toward the capital.
Ivy disguises herself as a boy, based on a vague feeling from a previous life, and survives by hunting and foraging for food and supplementing her supplies from the various trash piles she comes across on her journey.Ivy forms a bond with a very rare type of slime and a large cat monster. Not trusting people after how her village treated her, Ivy mostly keeps to herself; however, after she arrives at a new town, the captain and vice-captain take a liking to her and go out of their way to help her (all while thinking she is a boy).
Ivy learns that there are good people in the world but gets spooked when reports of others fleeing her village reach her. She decides to move on to continue her journey.This story is an isekai (someone from our world is reincarnated or summoned to another world-either with game-like mechanics or fantasy elements), but unlike in other isekai, Ivy doesn’t seem to remember any specifics from her previous life, just feelings or facts about that help her survive.
This story features a young girl under 10 disguised as a boy, which would appeal to younger, middle grade readers. And I would recommend putting it in your middle grade graphic novel collection. The only issue that might come up is that in later volumes (4 or 5) starts an arc that deals with child abduction into the slave trade. This arc is also included in the anime adaptation. If the anime followed the manga, then none of the violence against children is shown on screen. Most of the fifth manga volume is actually just discussion of events and possible solutions, including using Ivy as bait.I appreciated that the theme of the series seems to be on trust and building relationships with caution and kindness.
A nice departure from the more violent isekai that focus on beating monsters to level up. I also liked the world building aspects. There’s quite a few scenes devoted to money, banking, and trash clean up. Specifically, trash is collected in specified areas near town and monster tamers who bond with slimes travel around to dissolve the trash that can’t be reused. I don’t think readers will be put off by these bits of world building since they are sprinkled throughout the character building.The art style matched the story, whimsical and fluid, lots of small details to flesh out the characters and the world. And it’s consistent through the first five volumes as well. It softens the harsher discussions and themes. Each volume has also included a bonus comic and short story. There are six manga volumes out in English and volume eight of the original light novel was just released in December with volume nine planned to release in April 2025.
The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash
By Honobonoru500
Art by Tou Fukino
Seven Seas, 2022
ISBN: 9781638584124
| Volume | ISBN |
|---|---|
| 2 | 9781638587323 |
| 3 | 9781685795429 |
| 4 | 9798888430477 |
| 5 | 9798888433973 |
Company Age Rating: Teen
Series ISBNs and Order
Related media: Book to Comic, Comic to TV
NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Tween (10-13)
