Replacing markdown "*" with italics

[taratears]

I have a fanfiction series that I imported into obsidian, but all of the items that were italicised are now framed with*. I used obsidian instead of importing the individual epubs to stitch together multiple entries, but to be able to remove everything but the story text, without notes or tags. How would I auto remove and replace the "*" with proper italics on either side? Thank you for any help.

[Quoth]

Import to MS Word or LO Writer, or anything else that interprets simple markdown.
*<space><some text><newline> becomes a bullet
and *<some text>* is bold.

Search and replace bold with italics

import docx to Calibre.

Or import to Calibre and use Replace/Del Spans etc tool to change the bold to italic.

There are other solutions.

Usually italics uses /<some text>/ though some people use _<some text>_

These simple markdowns date from 19th C. use of the typewriter. There are more complete markdown syntaxes invented since.

[taratears]

Thank you, very much.