The episode opens with the main character — Umika Konohoshi — in her home, preparing for her first day of high school and lamenting on how her words can’t reach others. However, she has a wish to meet aliens, thinking that she’d be able to communicate with them. When a shooting star flies by her window, she makes a wish to meet an alien. We then get to look inside of a dark building as we see a girl wake up, confused about her surroundings, and noticing that she has a student ID.
On the first day of school, Umika is nervous, culminating in her wiggling her way through her introduction. As the class makes their way to the entrance ceremony, we get to look into Umika’s thoughts and how she feels that she doesn’t belong on Earth, and instead in a different world. During this, she comes up with a dream for herself: go to outer space! Once all the members of the class that were present arrive at the area for the entrance ceremony, a door opens, and we get introduced to Yu Akeuchi, making the bold declaration she was late because her spaceship broke. Yu is also the same girl we saw in the dark building earlier.
After the entrance ceremony, Umika is trying her best to build up her courage to talk to Yu, even having an alien language dictionary. However, after hearing two girls say that Yu’s statement of being an alien was a joke, Umika’s confidence falls, as memories of the previous times she’d talked about aliens and the negative things that they said play back in her head. Really the only gripe I have with this segment is that one of the characters referred to UFOs as just “make believe on TV”. UFO is a term that’s used when a flying object cannot be immediately or easily identified. They’re not always alien spaceships, as a lot of UFOs eventually get identified. But due to her now fallen confidence, Umika runs out of the classroom.
Yu comes out to talk to Umika, where we get introduced to Yu’s power of foreheadpathy. When Yu connects foreheads with somebody else, she’s able to read their mind. And when Umika realizes that she’s talking to a real alien, her mind begins running wild, causing her to collapse. Later, in a dream of Umika’s, she’s looking for aliens and encounters Yu, planning to properly introduce herself, even going to the lengths of planning out what she wants to say. The next day, the class has to do a tag team scavenger hunt, where pairs needed to find task cards and complete the tasks on them, for class orientation. The pairs are decided by lottery, and when Umika is too nervous to pull out a slip of paper, we find out that Yu has pulled out two of the same number, and hands one of the slips to Umika.
The two look around the school, having not found a task card yet. After a conversation, Yu’s alien radar tells her to go to the roof, with Umika following. Here is where Umika ends up introducing herself and sharing her dream, with Yu revealing that she needs to go back to space, with that being her own dream. This causes the two to team up to fulfill both dreams. And when they do find the task card…it’s to talk about their dreams!
Some time later, Umika tries to follow Yu, but fails. When Yu finds Umika later, the former invites the latter to visit her place…with the place Yu calls home being a light house. When Umika finds Yu’s space voyage log, it’s revealed that Yu doesn’t remember anything before Earth. Umika puts her forehead to Yu’s, utilizing Yu’s foreheadpathy to tell Yu what she wants to say, causing the two to become closer. Before the credits roll, however, we see a girl approach the lighthouse. And before the scene that says the name of next week’s episode, there’s a small skit where Yu puts various parts of her body on Umika, before concluding that the forehead is best.
I discovered this series through Crunchyroll’s Fall 2023 Seasonal Lineup, and even with just reading the synopsis, I felt this was a show that I would enjoy. And, for me at least, the first episode was enjoyable, with the ending of this episode having a hook for viewers to potentially come back next week. It will be interesting to see how Umika grows across the series, and what all occurs throughout the series.
Additional posts about Stardust Telepath:
Sara Talks Anime 
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