Stardust Telepath

Umika Konohoshi, a shy high school girl, struggles with communication and believes she may never truly connect with others on Earth. Fascinated with space since childhood, she dreams of meeting aliens and one day traveling beyond the planet where she feels she does not belong. On her first day of high school, Umika meets Yuu Akeuchi, a transfer student who claims to be an alien with no memories of her past. Yuu possesses a unique ability that allows her to understand others by touching foreheads, which helps her connect with Umika despite her social anxiety. Encouraged by this encounter, Umika begins forming her first genuine friendship. Sharing a desire to reach space, the two decide to build a rocket together. They are soon joined by classmates who support their goal, forming a small group dedicated to their project. ==Characters==

; : : :A young girl who has a fascination with outer space and aliens. However, due to being ridiculed for her belief in aliens, Umika became shy and introverted and finds it difficult to communicate her true feelings to others. Due to the sense of social isolation she suffers, Umika believes she can only communicate with aliens and dreams of traveling to space in a rocket to visit them. She went to the same junior high school as Matataki. ; : : : ; : : ==Media==

Manga Written and illustrated by Rasuko Ōkuma, Stardust Telepath initially started in Houbunsha's Manga Time Kirara magazine on May 9, 2019, as a two-chapter guest work. It began a full serialization in the same magazine on July 9, 2019. The first was released on July 27, 2020. As of February 2025, five volumes have been released. It is produced by Studio Gokumi and directed by , who also supervised the scripts with Natsuko Takahashi. Takahiro Sakai designed the characters and served as chief animation director, and composed the music. The series aired from October 9 to December 25, 2023, on AT-X and other networks. Crunchyroll is streaming the series outside of Asia. Muse Communication licensed the series in Southeast Asia. Episodes Drama A television drama adaptation produced by TV Tokyo and was announced on March 17, 2024. It starred the idol group AKB48 and was directed by and Tomoya Sugioka, based on a screenplay by Sugioka. Shinno Nakamura and Yuichi Shibahara served as the producers. The series aired on TV Tokyo from June 26 to August 28, 2024. The theme song is , and the ending theme song is , both performed by AKB48. ==Reception==

In 2021, the series was nominated in the seventh Next Manga Awards in the Best Printed Manga category. The anime adaptation received mixed reviews. Yuricon founder Erica Friedman, reviewing the first two episodes, resonated with the desire of Umika to "find a solution to her loneliness outside human society," called the anime's focus on the fun from amateur rocketry as "terrific," said the series is "off to a good start," and praised the opening sequence as "quite lovely." However, she criticized the "extremely high-pitched voices" and found the focus of the series around "people with severe social anxiety" made her anxious, which lessened as the series went on, and she criticized the series for having animation "not to my taste," for occasional fan service and hoped the story will be about "making friends with neurodivergent classmates and building hope along with rockets." In Anime News Network's anime preview guide for Fall 2023, Richard Eisenbeis described the series as about "a young person trying to find her place in the world" and developing skills that can be used repeatedly "to make friends," while Rebecca Silverman said the series reminded her of Wish Upon the Pleiades, praised the imagery as adorable and related to Umika's social anxiety, but enjoyed less as it continued, with a strong dislike of the teacher, Nicholas Dupree argued that compelling parts of the protagonists "have been sanded down to comedic gimmicks by the end credits," and James Beckett praised the series for lively animation but for only being a "slight variation in the usual coming-of-age comedy formula." Reviewing the first episode, Vrai Kaiser of Anime Feminist was more positive, calling it "about that fantasy of heart-to-heart connection," praised the empathy, gentleness of the show's tone, how the feelings of Umika in being alone in the world is a "deeply resonant one as a queer viewer," and said that if the series mages the "same emotional tenderness...and mental health struggles" as Bocchi the Rock!, it will "turn out to be quite the keeper." In a later Anime Feminist digest, the series was described as a "sweet sci-fi yuri about an anxious girl bonding with a psychic alien." ==Notes==