Generally, I’ve got issues with stories that send a character on an adventure for poorly explained reasons. We’re thrust into a world where we are told that having stars is fundamental to survival, as they go towards a given skill for a given individual. That’s fine, but the series seems to both buy into this premise way too much and way too little simultaneously.
It buys in way too much because Ivy lacks stars and is exiled and pursued with murderous intent for it, mainly built on religious zealotry, chalking it up as ominous and somehow as the cause of another character’s death. While similar circumstances can happen in the real world, I found her family’s decision to hop on this train immediately jarring. It’s also all the weirder because this seems almost entirely unique to the village where she grew up – it’s unclear that anyone else holds these views.
It buys in way too little because, as the series progresses, it becomes very clear very early that people can subsist without stars. Ivy’s father put a lot of stock in how important it was for her wellbeing to have stars in a skill that was valuable, emphasizing that it was essential to her future. Yet it becomes clear that, while you probably won’t make a name for yourself or a huge living, stars aren’t required to get by just fine hunting critters in the forest.
So, the series didn’t do much to invest me in the worldbuilding, and even ends up leaving much of those aspects behind almost entirely just as Ivy did. If anything, the way this is built out put me off the series.
Yet, I say it is endearing, and that still holds. You really feel for Ivy and all she has to go through, including the slow gaining of her trust by others as she tries to stay under the radar. Her finding Sora, an extremely weak slime, and taming, raising and bonding with it are so wholesome and sweet that it’s easy to love everything they do. And it helps that so many of the people around them are the exact opposite of the people in Ivy’s village: warm, welcoming, supportive and helpful. That might all change if she ever lets on that she doesn’t have stars, but at least throughout these 12 episodes, you get the distinct impression that many of them accept her for who she is and wouldn’t be swayed by that knowledge. That said, many of the side characters do seem somewhat interchangeable. There’s great variety in character models, but with a couple of notable exceptions, we don’t get a lot of opportunities to see most of their personalities shine through.
And it helps that the narrative goes in interesting directions. Each new town she lands in presents a different set of both positive influences and new trials to overcome. Ivy is helped along by another personality that lives rent free in her head. Unlike so many isekai’d characters, Ivy is wholly herself: a girl who grew up in this world, rather than a person from another world who was reborn and grew up here. The isekai’d character is entirely in her head, a confidant who gives her ideas and inserts comparisons to our world. It’s a nice change of pace, though most of the time, it feels superfluous, as it’s mainly there to give Ivy someone to bounce off of when she has no one to talk to. Later in, that voice goes a long way towards explaining how capable Ivy is despite her being a 9-year-old. It does seem strange that that isekai’d personality doesn’t talk at all about the fact that Ivy, who is very rich by the end of the season, is still for some reason committed to the same subsistence practices that she was early in the series.
Some aspects of this series do end up feeling a little overly convenient. Sora’s ability to tell apart “bad” people from others, which she discovered just before she needed it for the final arc, certainly felt that way. It would have been nice if Sora was wrong on occasion or if there was some recognition of nuance, particularly with Meela, but it was still a nice inclusion. The series also drags in places, prolonging events that don’t necessarily need to play out in their entirety on screen. Maybe the goal was just to give us more time with these characters, which I certainly don’t oppose, though it does mean somewhat missing out on understanding the circumstances that brought her here. We get a nice resolution to that plot in terms of how Ivy regards it and how she sees her path forward, but scant little understanding of why it happened and how the others regard it.
But I still think this was delightful. Like Ivy herself, it went through some hard times, picked itself up and made a great deal out of a bad situation, and it’s nice to even get some payoff on how being starless helped Ivy without making her ridiculously overpowered like so many isekai would. A worthwhile watch.
