The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash
When Ivy is found to have no ★ stars in tamer skill, she is abandoned by her family and village.
She was saved by the fortune telling lady of the village and was taken care by her for some time. But when the lady died, her father and the whole village is trying to capture and kill her.
↓How she felt when she over heard what her father said.
I think the production team purposely arrange these upsetting contents to reveal at episode 3 instead of episode 1. Perhaps they worry audience found it too setting and abandoned anime after the first episode.
The Weakest Tamer Began A Journey To Pick Up Trash Episode 1: On A Journey Alone
Now, if I didn't already know about studio Massket's history, I wouldn't have batted an eye at this series. I'd think it's well done, somewhere towards the top end of the midrange for anime in a season. It's got pretty art, fun designs, and good-slash-consistent animation. But I do know about Massket's history, and I know that this is their first ever anime. And they did a better job than a lot of established studios out there, so I have a lot to chat about!
I think the strongest and most consistent aspect of this first episode is certainly the art direction and backgrounds. It's a lovely style and it really pulls the most out of the fantasy genre. Really bright, rich colors that fill the screen to the brim give the world a wonderous feeling.
Conversely, I think the closeups in the episode also really help sell the level of detail, which is very high, that Massket is gunning for with this series.
They really pulled out all the stops in the art department, and that includes character designs too. Ivy's design is really solid, and animates impressively well despite the level of detail in it. I mean, she carries around 4 different bags and they still find a way to include sequences of her running, or falling down a hill, or even just putting those bags on. The consistency of these animations is one thing, but their quality is totally different. This is the kind of work that you expect from an experienced studio, not a first timer.
And even then, there's really not much inconsistencies in the character designs. Of course there's a few moments that have slipped through the cracks, but the largest moments with her character remain intact, as evident by the number of close up shots on her in the episode.
And funny enough, these closeups are a pretty good segue into my only complaints within the episode- simple inexperience. The boards for the episode are pretty great, amazing even in some sequences like the one below. But at times they can be awkward to follow and give off the feeling that you're missing something in between. It's not anything terrible in terms of quality of the studio, but does speak to some of the inexperience of the staff.
And the only other real area that I can point my finger towards is composition. Yeah, a little odd considering how good it is in the majority of the episode, but it's more about the consistency of low level aspects within. Shadows not appearing in certain scenes, colors remaining flat or out of sync with the environments, feeling the presence of layers in a scene. Just little things here and there that feel more like lapses than they do failures. And truthfully, the vast majority of these struggles manifest exclusively in brighter environments. When there's less light and more shade in a scene, the composition always does considerably better.
So all in all? I'm deeply impressed if this remains the quality for Massket's first anime. This is a level of polish that some studios aim for. Sure, there's dips in quality and other issues like I just pointed out, but almost all of them come from a place of inexperience rather than an inability. We've been shown what good and great look like from Massket, so I'm not too worried about lesser areas that will certainly see improvement.