Honobonoru500 is the pen name of the Japanese author behind The Weakest Tamer Began a Journey to Pick Up Trash, a popular 'heartwarming' fantasy light-novel series. As is usual for light-novel writers, they keep no public biography, and little about the person behind the name is known.
The story began as a web novel on the Japanese platform Shosetsuka ni Naro ('Let's Become a Novelist') in 2018 before print publication by TO Books. It follows a young 'tamer' branded worthless because she is born with no stars to her name; cast out and travelling with only the weakest of monsters, she slowly discovers that her supposedly useless designation carries a potential no one had imagined - a gentle, hopeful tale of found family and quiet resilience rather than grand heroics.
Illustrated by Nama and published in English by Seven Seas Entertainment, the series has grown into a franchise, with a manga adaptation by Tou Fukino and an anime from Studio Massket that began in 2024. It remains Honobonoru500's defining work.
