Crunchyroll’s Quiet Isekai Is The Season’s Unexpected Best Adventure Tale

Warning: The following contains minor spoilers for The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash episode 12!

Summary The unexpected twist in The Weakest Tamer leads to a slow but successful narrative climax.

Sharing secrets and trusting the right people is a key theme in the series, leading to an unexpected adventure.

The show's subtle and relaxed approach rectifies major flaws in adventure anime, highlighting the importance of mundane moments.

It's likely that nobody guessed The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash would turn into an incredible adventure story, but it's actually the best one of Crunchyroll's winter season. Of course, the title was already highly misleading to begin with, since the eponymous weakest tamer, Ivy, actually began her journey because her village was literally hunting her down to kill her for being weak, but, its first season still delivered.

This twist is especially shocking, since the journey itself was very slow-paced and ostensibly uneventful, but that's part of what made the narrative so succesful in its climax. This supposed boring part of the adventure helps underscore the power behind the series' underlining theme.

This theme revolves around the importance of finding the right people to share one's secrets. Before Ivy could trust anyone, she kept to herself at every village she went to and eventually fled after she grew paranoid of the people around her. This, in turn, prevented her from getting too involved in the village's business. But, when she finally reaches Otolwa and opens up, she gets involved in taking down a massive conspiracy.

The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash Uses Subtle Adventures To Reiterate a Major Theme

Produced by Studio Massket; based on the original light novel series written by Honobonoru500

Together, this creates a compelling image where the more Ivy is able to share about her past, the more involved her adventure becomes. This, in turn, justifies the more uneventful parts of her journey when most of the action involved her hunting small animals and selling the meat for food and other items. Of course, when Ivy was originally given this advice, it was because she was advised that those she divulged to would be able to better support her. This is proven from a more literal perspective when she flees Latome. The friends she made there had already figured out her past, but they couldn't help her since she didn't trust them, so she continued on alone, still afraid.

[The Weakest Tamer] helps rectify a major problem that many adventure anime fail to address, even One Piece.

While it eventually ends up being true in Otolwa as well, Ivy initially opening up to her friends there gives them the means to solve a problem that had been plaguing their village for years. In other words, Ivy's friends become the immediate benefactors of her trust in them. She doesn't immediately benefit. In fact, Ivy's life is put more at risk when she agrees to help them. This reverse outcome is important because it serves to underscore how Ivy's decision to share her past greatly impacts her adventure. After all, the journey is crucial to the story, since it is in the title, despite it being mostly misleading.

Fixing a Major Problem in Adventure Anime

Having a more relaxed take on fantasy adventure works wonders to repair many of the genre's failings

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The fact that nothing seems to happen in the first few villages also helps rectify a major problem that many adventure anime fail to address, even One Piece. Although lauded for its complex exploration of each island on the Grand Line, One Piece's delivery is blatantly formulaic since there just so happens to always be some sort of war or major conflict going on that must be addressed.

Related Crunchyroll's New Villainess Anime Defies the Isekai Premise in One Major Way Villainess Level 99: I May Be the Hidden Boss But I'm Not the Demon Lord strays from common isekai character development in a major way.

In contrast, The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash thankfully understands that every place doesn't have to be beset with something horrible. In fact, The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash teaches the important lesson that, sometimes, subtly and the mundane can actually be much more compelling and even underscore a more important message, which, in this case, makes it Crunchyroll's best adventure series of the season.

The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash is streaming on Crunchyroll.

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