in another world with my smartphone

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by HJ Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

This is not the final volume of In Another World with My Smartphone – the 22nd volume is out in Japan, and no doubt there are limitless numbers of stories that could be told about Touya and company in the upcoming years. But I had decided a while back that this, the volume where Touya marries his wives and they go on their honeymoon – would be my final volume of the series. I definitely had a lot of fun with the early books, but as the series has gone on I’ve been exposed to a few too many of the author’s awful choices and toxic characterization. Fortunately, this is an excellent volume to end with, featuring a minimum of poor taste (though the girl who gets aroused by good deeds becoming a teacher reminds us it’s still there) and a nice victory lap for Touya and his companions, showing them finally tying the knot, having their first times (except for too-young Sue), and bopping around Earth. Yes, Touya’s honeymoon is back in Japan.

As noted, the first half of the book deals with Touya and company preparing for the wedding. As you can imagine, this features the brief cameos of three-quarters of the regular cast, which has ballooned out so much that I barely remembered which one was which. Most of the wedding day jitters are on Touya’s end – his relationship with his spouses that are of age may go all the way this time around (offscreen), but it’s very on point that even during his actual wedding he kisses each of them on the cheek. This is one shy boy. And I mean that literally for the second half of the book, where God allows Touya and company to go to Japan… but since he’s dead there, he goes in disguise as a five-year-old boy. This, as you might imagine, leads to some wacky hijinx. He also drops in on his parents, who have a newly born daughter, in a dream and reassures them as best he can that he’s happy “in the afterlife”.

His parents take this better than you’d expect, as it turns out God has been sending Touya’s adventures as dreams to his parents and his best friend from school – who is now drawing it as a manga. I’d say this beggars belief, but hey, Smartphone. It was amusing to find out that it was not power that went to Touya’s head – he’s always seemed to be a bit sociopathic, and we see him dealing with delinquents before he was killed in much the same way he dealt with bandits in his new world. But really, most of this book is watching the wives shop. And shop. And shop. Oh, and go to the zoo. They get piles of food, they get accessories, they see zebras and hippos, they even go to a school festival and watch a high school production of Beauty and the Beast. It’s a full, rich two weeks.

And in the end, they go back home and life goes on. In the meantime, if, like me, you have been looking for an excuse to not read Smartphone anymore, this is an excellent one, as it could easily also service as a final volume, and leaves few to no loose ends that might niggle at you. Thanks, Smartphone. You drove me crazy, but you were never boring… OK, that’s not, true, you were boring a lot. But I’ll see you off with a smile.

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by HJ Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

I’d said before that I plan to read this series until the wedding/honeymoon and then drop it. Perhaps the author heard me, and also knows I was planning to do the same thing with Irregular at Magic High School and didn’t make it, because this volume seems to be filled with my least favorite things. Now, to be fair, Touya does not commit genocide, but that’s only as he’s starting to run out of countries, even with the addition of an entire new map thanks to the Reverse Universe and Touya’s own crashing together. No, instead we get a roundup of all the niggling little Smartphone things that get under my skin. Inappropriate sexual humor, gay rape as comedy, ‘henpecked guy’ as comedy., etc. The joy of seeing the J-Novel Heart line start, and other women-oriented light novels and isekais catch hold over here, is that it will mean fewer series like this. And it started so well, too…

Now that the Phrase and Evil God have been dealt with once and for all, it’s finally time to prepare for the wedding of Touya to his brides. Of course, nothing there is going to go smoothly. Touya is forced to intervene between two countries who are always at war, and essentially solves the problem by turning the two kings into The Defiant Ones. Back in “heaven”, there’s a war among the various gods as to who gets to attend Touya’s wedding, and he gains a “grandmother”, the God of Space and Time. Turns out Touya’s quite popular. Then he has a new crisis when a princess shows up asking to be another one of his brides… but she may be a fake. For this particular crisis, Touya is told to stay home and let his fiancees handle things. That said, the problem turns out to be more of the same: ancient tech gone wrong and a villain so evil it’s amazing you don;t see him kicking puppies.

If you were to ask me which character I least wanted to see become a regular, the unicorn from the last volume would likely be tops on the list. And yet, here he is, used as the “comedy” punishment for the villain, and it’s just as funny as it was last time, which is to say not at all. The start of the book also get very bad very fast, as Touya has to deal with the captured Luna, whose mind has been possessed so long that it’s hard to break her of her pain-loving ways. That said, Touya’s solution was fairly obvious, and I could ALMOST have accepted it as sort of fanservice comedy… if he didn’t then take her to a goddamn elementary school. Fuck. That. In between is the usual Smartphone stuff, but fortunately nothing else that stood out as monstrously awful like those two. It’s typical Smartphone. And it was nice seeing the fiancees show off how they’re now just as OP as Touya. (Could have done without the “ranking”, though, even if Touya insists it’s not him.

So next volume is the wedding and honeymoon, and barring a cliffhanger that is REALLY good, it will be the end of the line for me. This volume is recommended if, like me, you can’t seem to let go of this thing.

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by HJ Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

It’s never a good sign when people keep asking why you’re still reading that series as you tweet about it, but that’s what’s been happening for me with this Smartphone, which seems to have worn out its welcome for everyone but the most hardcore of fans. It’s not a bad question, why do I read it? Especially given the beginning of the book, a reprehensible pile of crap that involves getting a unicorn horn, slutshaming the entire female cast while ALSO having them insist they’re all virgins, and finally ending with a “ha ha, he was gangraped by men and now he’s gay” joke. I recommend just skipping the whole chapter. After this, thankfully, it does improve, and indeed it feels like the author may have been told to wrap this up soon, as we’re resolving one of the remaining storylines, as everyone in the world, including Touya and his fiancees, battle the wicked god and the wicked Phrase that has allied with it.

The fiancees are getting a bit impatient, wanting to actually get married, but Touya has decided not to do that till the whole “evil from another world coming and killing people and destroying their souls” thing is dealt with. The first half of the book involves preparations for this, including the aforementioned horrible scene. They slowly purify the world with the help of a “puretree” (no worries, fans, this tree is a virgin too) and, unexpectedly, help from Luna Trieste, the Himiko Toga of Smartphone, who thankfully gets locked away for the rest of the book. The second half of the book is the battle against the Mutant Phrases, evil normal Phrases, the evil NEET god, and Yula, the Phrase who set this ball rolling in the first place. Even more unfortunately, Touya gets sealed off in a pocket dimension away from the battle. Can our heroes win without their OP husband-to-be?

Credit where credit is due, the plan that Touya has to counteract this sort of attack is very clever indeed, and I was impressed. It also helps that he tells Yula about the plan with a line that is so cheesy you cannot help but laugh out loud. I like this series when it’s being big dumb. That said, surrounding it is a lot of the same old same old. There are mecha battles, there are guns being fired, there are near misses… and, in the end, Touya does actually save the day. I mean, it’s his series. Aside from the battles, which do take up a good 2/3 of the book, we get Touya becoming more comfortable with being a god (which is why his initial attacks didn’t work well – he was too attached to humanity) and getting more comfortable with actual love and affection (he’s snuggling his fiancees without even turning red!).

So in the end, this is another volume of In Another World with My Smartphone. It has crappy and offensive rape jokes, but on the bright side, Touya doesn’t commit genocide here. If you’re reading it, keep going, you know what you’re getting. If you haven’t read the series but you’re thinking of reading it, Christ, no.

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by HJ Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

Any Smartphone book that manages to put Touya in actual danger is automatically more interesting than most. This one actually does it twice. Not that anything actually happens to him… remember what you’re reading. But the Mutant Phrase descend with an anti-God weapon that is so poisonous that it takes Touya out for three days, and later on an inadvisable attempt at waking an ancient weapon results in time literally being rewritten to make sure it didn’t happen… something Touya is aware of but no one else is. Unfortunately, neither of these crises serve to move Touya beyond his typical bland facade… generally the only thing that can do that these days is mentioning love, as per most awkward overpowered male leads in isekai. Sadly, the weddings are still a fair ways away, but at least we’re seeing a number of other plots starting to come together. Could the end be in sight? (Probably not.)

At the start of the book, the regular Touya world and the Reverse World finally merge together, and much of the rest of the volume is spent dealing with the political fallout from that. It does not help that the bad guys choose this moment to launch their ‘anti-Touya’ poison attack, which destroys one of the kingdoms we’d seen previously. (Not Touya’s own hand this time, so that’s good.) We actually get a few Phrase battles this time around, including Ende getting his revenge against the evil twins who mopped the floor with him last time. And we finally get an idea of what happened back in ancient times when the Phrase first invaded, and hopefully a way to avoid it happening again. In between there’s the usual wacky slice-of-life stuff… a young idiot prince comes by to show how strong he is and gets his ass kicked; Hilde’s sister fights a dragon; Sakura sings Freddie Mercury songs. The usual.

I admit, much as I grouse about the series when it’s doing things wrong like having Touya be history’s greatest monster, when it doesn’t happen there’s very little TO talk about in a review of Smartphone. Touya is bland. His fiancees, though they have more emotional range, are equally bland. There’s the royalty of the neighboring kingdoms… they’re pretty bland as well. This is sort of like a “slow life” series without the slow life part. The author says that we’re going to be fighting the Evil God next time, which is good, because when there are fights at least something is happening on the page. The wedding might also help, but that’s still a few books away. That leaves us with Touya wandering around doing Touya things, which is… boring. Dull. Nearly getting killed was the best thing to happen to him all book.

The series is still worth reading for the tiny little things that make it bearable – Sue’s Hammer Throw was great – but I suspect most readers, like me, are waiting for Touya to get married and simply paddling along ill that happens. 2 out of 5 Smartphones this time around.

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

As with so many prior volumes of Smartphone, the lighter and fluffier the series gets the better it is. As such, let’s start with the less light and fluffy stuff, which is mostly towards the end. Touya and company get themselves involved in a murder mystery in another country, one that is – as with many countries we’ve seen in this series – having a succession crisis. Unfortunately, they’re being manipulated on both sides by what’s left of Yulong, the country taken out mostly by the Phrase in a previous volume. They say Touya did it, which he denies. This is true, but perhaps acting like a smug asshole and killing off the royal family part might be some of the reason. But this is Smartphone World, meaning that the bad guys are all REALLY REALLY EVIL, so it’s OK. This was my least favorite part of the book, mostly as Touya, who is passive at the best of times, is really unlikable as a passive killer.

The best section of the book is, without a doubt, the Mario Kart race. Now, names have been changed to protect the guilt,y but that’s essentially what we have here. Touya is asked to hook up the nerdy engineer price we saw in a previous book with another princess, who also turns out to be a nerdy engineer. They love the sweet cars – erm, Ether Vehicles – but disagree as to exactly how they should be modded, and so get really angry at each other. Clearly a race is the answer, and with a course designed by the Mad Scientists of the book, it’s gonna be Mario Kart. The main reason this is so fun is that Touya spends most of the race grumbling and not doing well, and then is the first one eliminated. Given that Touya is the standard perfect hero who an do anything (and is a literal God by now), this pleased me. Also, the couple bond over their cars and fall in love. Aww.

In between we have the rest of the book. Another country is wiped out by the Phrase, but this time in the reverse world. What’s more, the Red Cats base is destroyed, so now they’re in Touya’s universe. Which is going to be irrelevant soon, as the next book promises to have the two universes merge for good. Oh yes, and Touya also helps save a mom ‘n daughter diner from the forces of eeeeeeeevil (another typically broad villain from a series that can only write broad villains) and gives his spy/sex worker friend a magical panther to be her bodyguard. The other notable part of the book is Ende, who was introduced as the enigmatic know-it-all who gave Touya important info, and has somehow become comic relief, abused by his love interest and his teacher. How the mighty have fallen.

Should you read this volume of Smartphone? Well, if you’ve read the others, sure. It’s not a good jumping off point if you want to stop, and certainly has a good cliffhanger. I’d read it for the go-kart race.

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

It is very telling – and a bit sad – that a chunk of this book is some of the best Smartphone prose I’ve seen in some time, and it’s the part narrated by someone else, with Touya absent. I do worry about the afterword, where the author and editor discussed cutting this bit as it did NOT feature Touya or his fiancees. I get the sense that we’re looking for different things in this series. Rest assured for Touya fans, though – if there are any Touya fans left – that he gets a lot to do here, including finding a lost heir to the throne, battling yet another evil and bonkers leader of a foreign country (this time, thankfully, not also taking out the rest of the country as well), and catching giant fantasy-world tuna. As for getting closer to his fiancees… well, thanks to Sue not knowing the basics, the fiancee horde learn about sex in this book. Perhaps more than they really wanted.

In the Reverse World, there’s a brief Phrase battle, but aside from ominous foreshadowing it’s fairly inconsequential. The main thrust of the book is the survivors of a destroyed kingdom asking Touya to find the missing heir, who disappeared as a newborn infant. The heir turns out to be in the place they’d last expect, and also not particularly invested in returning to help get revenge on those who killed his parents and destroyed their kingdom. Meanwhile, a third kingdom is trying to invade, using its awesome Golems and its mad scientist leader, who does all but scream about how they laughed at him at the academy and is a literal brain in a jar by the end. Touya is his usual callous self in the battle with this guy, but of course we’re made to see that he’s super-duper evil so it’s all good. And of course more jokes about Touya’s genocides. LOL.

Thankfully, the last third of the book is excellent. Touya joins forces with the Guild of Adventurers to start an Adventurer Academy, where they can compete to see who deserves to level up. He also puts an inside person on the job, Sarutobi Homura, last seen as one of “those three ninja girls”. We’d seen her mostly be the loud one who acts least like a traditional ninja, and there’s a bit of that here, but for the most part she actually proves to be quite competent and cool. The other adventurers are very much “I don’t want to work with that guy” sorts, so there’s a lot of struggle, and we see them screw up quite a bit, especially when their “test” mission turns out to be far more dangerous than expected. Everyone gets a chance to be sympathetic, the fights are cool, and Touya and company are there to make sure no one’s really hurt. I would not mind more of these guys.

Unfortunately, In Another World with My Smartphone still stars Touya. But that’s fine, we’re mostly here to wallow in the trash. It’s just nice to get a really good meal once in a while.

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

Readers of Smartphone will be delighted to hear that absolutely fuck all happens in this volume. I say “delighted” because readers of Smartphone have by now realized the inverse quality ratio: the books get worse the more that there is actual plot in them. For an example, I point to the 14th volume, or any of the others where Touya commits genocide and then says “la di da”. (He says that here as well, but it’s for the running gag.) But when Touya spends the whole time wandering around the world seeing what’s going on, helping out a country or two for the heck of it, and continuing to be the blandest light novel protagonist to ever get nine wives to want to marry him… it’s surprisingly decent. I will ignore the Native American stereotypes we get towards the start, mostly as they don’t get nearly as bad as Realist Hero. No, this is just Touya chilling.

I mean, obviously SOME things happen. We continue to see that there are people in this world who do not like Touya or his nation in it. They try to use a magical wood that causes beasts to go insane, but are discovered and stopped almost immediately, because that’s the kind of light novel you are reading. Touya helps another country (with the aforementioned Native American types) from attacks by giant squid, and shows them how delicious squid can be when cooked. There is a second beach party, which reminds the reader how frigging big this cast has gotten. (Honestly, even WITH the cast list at the start, I’m still trying to recall names much of the time.) And the reverse world is still fighting the Phrase… or rather the new Golden Mutant Zombie Phrase, thanks to that annoying God. The actual Phrase are (try to contain your shock) holed up in Touya’s castle eating snacks. That said, Ende wants to get stronger, and so the God of Punching Things, who looks remarkably like Ryu from Street Fighter, something that is lampshaded, is there to help him (and Elze) get stronger.

Again, this book is never going to actually be good, but when it’s not jokingly having Touya be callous as fuck, it can be fun. It’s like walking through your favorite trashy dollar mart. I was amused at how there’s a suggestion that Touya may have been seduced and the fiancees’ reaction is essentially “we know you don’t have the guts”. We keep swapping out fiancees to try to give them equal screen time, which works better when there’s character development, but I’ve given up on that. Everyone is what they are. We also meet the Mikado of Eashen, who turns out to be a gorgeous young woman but thankfully does not appear to end up in Touya’s orbit. Oh, and Yae’s brother gets to prove he is manly enough to have a fiancee.

As I said, there’s nothing that really happens here. It’s a bunch of normal, boring old Smartphone antics. Which makes it one of the safer ones to read. I admit I’d kind of like to see the wedding soon, though, but I suspect I have a few more volumes to go.

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

Well, you can’t blame the author for nothing happening in this particular volume of Smartphone. it’s very plot-heavy, with the Phrase coming up front and center and Touya also finding out that he’s going to be getting a lot more responsibility pretty soon. What’s more, the Reverse World gets another look-in, and that and Touya’s world may soon be much closer to each other than is really comfortable. Indeed, some of the Mutant Phrase (the ones influenced by the God) are now invading that world as well, and it doesn’t have its own Touya to come in and save the day… yet. And Touya still finds time to help out a kingdom that is at war with another. For once the entire ruling class aren’t poorly written sneering villains. But we do get a few of them. Whoever said “fat and ugly”, you sure know your Smartphone. Hated it before, still hate it. Light novel authors have to write better villains.

The main non-Phrase plot that happens here is that Touya is now the main “god” for this world, meaning that he needs to fix what’s going wrong with it (the Phrase invasion), or else the God of Destruction is going to destroy the world and everyone in it (bar Touya’s fiancees, who will be spared I suspect as they worry about his sociopathic tendencies already). This includes the Reverse World, which eventually is going to merge into the same world with Touya’s own. (Both worlds are flat, which helps.) This also means he has to get the Spirits on his side, who have mostly been absent from the series to date but as long as we’re adding to a cast that already numbers in the hundreds, why not? Getting them on his side involves the female spirits loving him and the male spirits hating him as a “harem bastard”, basically. But he can beat them up, so we’re all good. Oh yes, Touya also has his usual “ew, gay” reaction too.

I’ll gently glide over Touya’s helping two kingdoms in their war, except to note that the enemy kingdom’s chief knight turned out to be Ende, who’s become a little bit Brainwashed And Crazy. As Touya and company gets more powerful, so are the Phrase, and Ende ran afoul of another set of stock characters in these sorts of stories – Evil Twins. Fortunately for Touya, he has also now located the Phrase Princess, who is imprisoned for her own safety, but this does allow her and Ende to have some cuddle time. Speaking of which, the location of the Phrase Princess’ core, as well as getting it removed, was probably one of the more well-written parts of the book. And I also liked Yumina reassuring Touya about his godhood – Yumina is still “first among equals” among the fiancees.

Smartphone is, at heart, a very conservative series, despite the polygamy. Given I am not conservative, it’s not surprising that I frequently find myself infuriated with it. And no, everyone lampshading with a smile when Touya is ‘evil’ doesn’t help, really. That said, I can’t bring myself to drop it either. I’m hoping for less stock villains next time and more things like Touya building cars.

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

Smartphone continues to be a series with two very different types of interlocking plots. The first is the “main” plot, showing Touya battling the Phrase, deducing what’s actually going on in this world, and traveling to other worlds and having adventures. The second is Touya basically wandering around, goofing off, and leisurely talking with everyone in his kingdom. The problem is that the author is very good at the second thing but consistently falls down on the first. Oh, the Phrase battle was pretty good, except for one consequence which I’ll get to later. But when Touya comes back to the Reverse World, he promptly runs into a villain. Stop me if this surprises you… the villain is insane to the point of mad laughter, gleefully kills tons of innocents, and is also a bit of a sexual deviant. Touya learns that her personality might be degraded due to the golem she’s contracted with… but then undercuts it by saying “no, I think she’s like that anyway” so as not to upset readers with that fetish. Guh.

Sorry to say that despite the cover we do not get to see Touya and his fiancees racing early 20th century cars around the kingdom here. The majority of the book is supposed to be the Festival that Touya set up last time, and we do get to see the front end. It’s pretty fun, with baseball tournaments, shogi tournaments, lots of shops, lots of food. Touya gets to walk around with a fiancee or two, chat, and just be his usual bland self. It’s refreshing, and it makes it more entertaining when he has to actually try hard NOT to be his bland self. The best joke in the book has him walking with Hilde, one of his more insecure fiancees, and having to reassure her that he loves her by saying it out loud. This gets back to the others… and he now has to say it to all of them, something which causes him to nearly break down in embarrassment. It’s really cute.

Unfortunately, despite setting up for an entire festival (and even bringing God down from Heaven), the Phrase show up somewhere in the smoking remains of not-China and Touya and his mecha army have to go take them out. The plot here is actually interesting. The Phrase seem to be having a civil war, with Phrase that have been infected by the evil God killing the non-infected Phrases in a way that reminds me of the old Dalek civil war in Doctor Who. We also see the return of Gila, the arrogant Phrase construct who looked to be a reoccurring villain… till Touya killed him here, cutting that off pretty rapidly. Touya also has to use God powers to do it, meaning afterwards he falls unconscious… and we miss the entire rest of the festival as a result. This really irritated me, especially as Touya rattled off all the stuff that happened in a couple of paragraphs.

So, cute but also frustrating, bad villains but good fiancees and a bland hero who is at his best (and worst) when he tries not to be bland. In other words, typical Smartphone.

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

It’s actually been a while since I’ve had a volume of Smartphone that didn’t irritate me in some way. Touya does not take the time to wipe out and entire country full of evil cliches here, which helps a lot. Instead, we get what are essentially a bunch of short stories, as always – Smartphone has an ongoing plot, but it sort of judders along, and gets abandoned whenever the author feels like it. Here Touya investigates the hidden island discussed in prior volumes and makes contact with them; deals with a return of the creepy soul eating monster, which he now knows is being controlled by the rogue God (the one bit of ongoing plot here); travels to another dimension to help a group of phantom thieves; and tries to resolve a political romance. In between there’s time for a forest that’s being taken over by bad guys (and fanservice), and a puppet show. A very leisurely Smartphone, in other words.

The art is… mostly good, except for that cover, which has creeped me out ever since I first saw it in the original Japanese. Yae and Leen’s expressions are just deeply wrong. In any case, the fiancee horde actually gets a fair bit to do here, with each of Touya’s missions except the third one involving him traveling with one or more of the girls. The third, the one in the alternate world, honestly reads sort of like a backdoor pilot for a different series, and given most of the thieves are cute young girls, it’s likely for the best that the fiancees didn’t come along. They’re still not married, having a couple years of waiting to go, though after a fertility device works as planned (Sue’s getting a little sibling), Touya does take the time to ponder having children with his wives, and the wisdom of perhaps staggering them out a bit so he doesn’t have 8 kids at once. And, let’s face it, Linze’s puppet making ability, and the show that follows, runs on pure adorable. I won’t even complain about the forest of monsters that involves licking the heroine’s butts, though I will roll my eyes a bit.

As for Touya, the author has found a nice balance between him doing ludicrous things and his getting called out on doing ludicrous things. Given Touya’s lack of emotional range (he’s the sort to say “that makes me mad” in the same vaguely cheery voice he uses for everything), everyone around him has to pick up the slack a bit. This is shown off best in the final story, where he is forced by circumstances to fight a 10-year-old girl who is very strong in both fighting and magic and has grown rather proud and arrogant as a result. He’s asked to teach her humility… and he does, literally saying “it’s time to dunk on a 10-year-old”. Leaving aside how weary I am of terrified girls wetting themselves in Japanese series, the fight is hilarious, as is the reaction of everyone else, which is basically “I know we told you do to this, but eeeeeehhhh.” Poor Touya, once again history’s greatest monster.

If you’ve been avoiding Smartphone because it’s been leaning a bit too hard on the genocide sort of thing recently, this is an excellent volume ot pick up. It’s relaxed, fun, and features Touya being ludicrous.

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

I am somewhat tempted to copy/paste much of my review of Vol. 10, which would work just as well here. Most of this is relatively tolerable Smartphone, and there’s even a bit about 3/4 into the book which was reasonably horrific and well-written. But it wouldn’t be Smartphone without its worst trait ether, and given that fantasy China has basically been totally destroyed, it’s time to go after fantasy Arabia. We have more of Touya meeting up with really obvious villains, fat-shaming them, and killing them. Actually, I tell a lie. The villain is killed by a slave girl. He then returns as a zombie JUST so that Touya can humiliate the man himself. Smartphone has always had a bit of a “is this a parody or not?” aspect to it, and I honestly wish it would lean towards parody more. Even though the character introduction describes Touya as impulsive and dangerous, it’s not what I want to see.

As usual, the book is decided into sections that make it seem more like a short-story collection. Touya and company have another big competition to see who is worthy to become a knight in his kingdom. I appreciated that they weren’t just looking for strong fighters – one weak and feeble guy who has good knowledge of plants passes the test. There’s also a rather thuddingly over the top “racists are not welcome in our group here” sequence, but given where the world is in 2018 I’m OK with racism call-outs being obvious and overbearing. There are a few plot strands dangled that will likely be resolved in a book or two – they’ve found a hidden island that seems to be inhabited by people and giant monsters, making me wonder if we’re going to get Mothra showing up. We definitely get Gamera this time around, as the new Phrase monster is a giant turtle, who sadly is not a friend to all children. Oh, and we get four new gods, three of whom are pointless, and one of whom (the underage lush) is seriously annoying, to both me and Touya.

There’s a new Phrase alien who basically drops by to scout out the area and leaves, but he also manages to hook up with the rogue God that Touya and company have been trying to catch. The result is not pretty, as Sandora (the pseudo-Arabia run on slavery) loses an entire city to some sort of negative emotion virus. Worst of all, it eats their souls, so the people there can’t be reincarnated. It’s a chilling sequence, something that’s a rarity in the otherwise relaxed Smartphone, so it’s worth singling out. Unfortunately, we then get the Sandora plot itself, which I’ve gone on about already, but I will also note that the author’s (and Japanese light novel authors in general) casual attitude towards slavery irritates me, particularly the “well, the criminals can continue to be slaves” part, though at least he has Yumina and company sift out those wrongfully convicted.

Basically, a typical Smartphone volume, for good and ill. I wish it had more scenes of Touya and the girls all staying up after drinking too much coffee and less of Touya mocking fat ugly evil people and then killing them.

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

Three-fourths of this volume is a fairly typical Smartphone volume, with the added bonus of actually resolving some long-standing plot developments and introducing a “new” character who, while I may not love her, certainly has the ability to put a lot of things in motion. Unfortunately, that leaves one-fourth of Smartphone which is absolute garbage, having all the worst tendencies of this series wrapped up in an awful bow. Touya’s sociopathy, villains who sneer and cackle but are also cowardly and ugly, barely disguised hatred of China. It’s all here, and it sucks. I’ve talked before about how I sometimes wonder if Touya is meant to occasionally be a deconstruction of some sort, but it just doesn’t hold up all that well. The author thinks that having the occasional character remind Touya that he’s in danger of becoming a monster, and Touya essentially going “Oh, OK”, will take the curse off of it. It does not.

The cover features Sakura, whose backstory is finally revealed as Touya, hilariously, realizes he could have cured her amnesia all along with a simple spell. The recovery of memories allows us to be introduced to yet another smothering father type, a running gag in this series (to the point where the girls all admit that Touya will certainly become one of those as well), and also allows Sakura to join the harem, which is now “complete” at nine wives, though some of them girls are a bit wary of accepting that it’s a closed circle now, given Touya is, well, Touya. They’re more concerned about succession than actually jealous, though. The cover also features a young girl who, I’m sad to say, is Professor Regina Babylon, now in the present day and also in the body of a child-sized gynoid because, I think, the author finds it amusing. She’s just as perverse as ever, and when she and Cesca team up it’s bad news for everyone. I could have easily done without the spanking, though.

Touya also finally admits to his wives that he’s not from this world, something which they accept fairly easily. He also starts to show them anime, which may be a mistake, especially with the Professor watching Gundam. We also get a short story developing Ende and the Phrase, and explaining what happened in the past and why the Phrase keep on attacking Touya’s world. It is, at heart, a love story, and I liked Touya admitting that, despite the hideous loss of life, if it were him he may have been the same. (This is not hard to imagine given how much Touya doesn’t care about Yulong or anyone in it, though admittedly he only seems to meet bad guys there due to the whims of the author.) I suspect the majority of the Phrase are still evil, though, which means expect to have more giant robot battles in the near future. Which now include Sue, who is getting into the swing of things very fast.

Despite wanting to punch Touya and the author in the face for the Daydream Believer chapter (which also ruins one of my favorite Monkees songs), I’m still somehow still reading Smartphone. It’s one of the rare series which is at its best when doing dumb harem slice-of-life, as Touya needs to be constantly belittled by near everyone or else he becomes a monstrosity. Oh yes, added points to the illustrator, as the first three black and white illustrations in the book each made me laugh out loud, combining the text and a picture perfectly.

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

I’ve frequently described In Another World with My Smartphone as being “entertaining but not good”, and that applies just as much to this volume as it does to the others before it. There’s no real plot beyond “watch what Touya does next”, the characterization can vary depending on what needs to happen, and the author’s tendency (and he’s hardly alone in this regard) in writing all his human villains as ugly, whining petty and completely 100% evil is wearing a bit thin. On the other hand, there was some brief attempt at backstory and depth for the Phrase, of all things, which made me very interested in what was going to happen next with them. (not much, at least not in this book.) And honestly, seeing Elze gleefully punching things with her giant robot would put a smile on anyone’s face. Smartphone is dumb fun. Emphasis on the dumb, yes, but also emphasizing the fun.

We start off with another Phrase invasion, which gives us an opportunity to talk some more with Ende, who is clearly connected with them in some way (as we see in the backstory I mentioned above), but who otherwise continues to be Kaworu-lite. There’s another kingdom with a waffling, non-assertive leader, whose scientific advisor (the eeeeeeeevil villain of the book I mentioned above, though he’s also super pathetic) shows off his wood glems as being just as good if not better than Touya’s powered suits. Spoiler: they aren’t. We also go back to Eashen, which is dealing with more internecine wars, and would probably be far more entertaining if I was up on the actual history. And we also meet the leader of a magic-heavy kingdom… who’s actually far more like the other kings we’ve met, as it was his now dead brother who had all the magic powers. He’s just a big powerful guy. He’s also in love with Lu’s sister, which gives Touya another boisterous in-law, to his chagrin.

If it sounds like nothing happens in this book, you’re not wrong. There are lots of events, and several things occur which look like setup for a larger plot down the road. In addition to the Phrase stuff, there’s also Sakura, who still has amnesia and still isn’t a wife (damn you, anime spoilers). She finds a dark elf with a tragic past… which we don’t find out about, but she gets to join the Royal bodyguards anyway. And Touya keeps meaning to tell the other girls that he’s from another world, but still hasn’t gotten around to doing so, despite hints from his “sisters” (who also grace the cover, along with Sakura) that he needs to do thins sooner rather than later. Taken individually, these scenes are mildly irritating at worst and a lot of fun at best. But they’re the opposite of someone like Ryohgo Narita in Durarara!!, who sets up dozens of plot guns over a few books, then fires them all off. This is the adventures of Touya wandering around and seeing what happens next, and occasionally using his godlike powers.

I mean, I’m still reading it. It’s still entertaining. But it’s also still not very good.

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

Sometimes I wonder if the author of this series is even aware of the disquieting implications of what he writes. At times it looks like he is. The start of this volume has Touya discovering, at last, the Library of Babylon, with its ridiculous number of ancient scripts. Leen, who is over the moon about this, proposes to Touya on the spot. Touya is rather nonplussed by this, as is the reader, because in the last seven volumes we’ve seen nothing that puts Leen on the same level as the other girls in love with Touya. Indeed, later on the rest of the fiancees confront her and express doubts as well. It’s nice to see the author realized he didn’t really do enough foreshadowing. Sadly, the entire situation is resolved in about three paragraphs, after which she’s given a pass. So maybe the author is not as aware as I’d like.

That said, Leen is now a fiancee, which means she gets the main bonus of Touya turning into a raging villain whenever anyone threatens to rape her, something which happens a lot more in this series than I’d like. Again, because Touya is so bland of a protagonist, the fact that he’s casually cursing evil mooks with curses that are brutally horrific gives the reader a giant sense of disconnect. We also get more examples of his ridiculous power here, though that’s downplayed by the occasional bout of stupidity he has, like “oh, right, I really should give my kingdom laws”, or “maybe I shouldn’t have gone off somewhere with my new fiancee and not told any of the others.” (This also allows Leen to be blushy and embarrassed, which honestly seems grotesquely out of character for her.)

The plot, as with most Smartphone books, is divided into three. First we get the discovery of the library and its bookaholic maintainer, as well as Leen’s proposal. Next, young dragons are attacking cities, and it’s up to Touya and company to teach them a lesson. Finally, there’s a new dungeon that’s been discovered, leading Touya to do some dungeon crawling, something he really hasn’t done in his series, as opposed to most isekai titles like this. This leads to the discovery of a slaver ring, which Touya needs to break up. Oh, and we also have the Storehouse and its dojikko maintainer. Side stories include Leen needing to get permission from the fairies to get married, which mostly involves her upset kohai, as well as Regina Babylon, who does a lot in this series despite being dead, tricking Touya and company into playing an embarrassing real-life board game, which is mostly an excuse for fanservice. It also allows Touya to briefly have a libido, something he only seems to gain in these side stories.

Again, Isekai Smartphone is one of those series you’ll enjoy if you’ve enjoyed previous volumes, and after briefly making me think it would turn it up a notch has settled back down into “not good but entertaining”. Which is fine, I like being entertained, but don’t think I don’t notice the major characterization issues on display here.

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

This s another volume of Isekai Smartphone, with all that that entails; the work is almost review-proof, as no one would be reading Vol. 7 of this series without knowing exactly what it’s like. The main cast continues to have the depth of tissue, but I think depth might actually hurt the series more than it helps. No one wants to see Touya angst and brood about what he is becoming. Is he god? Is he man? Who cares? He can build the Great Wall of China, or its fantasy equivalent, in six days. (One presumes that on the seventh day, he rested.) He can also tell us about his little known piano lesson backstory, which allows him to build a piano (grand, of course) so that he can bring out Sakura’s hidden singing talent. No one reads Smartphone to see Touya be dull. Well, I mean, he is fundamentally dull, but you know what I mean. He doesn’t do dull things. Smartphone is rarely boring in that respect.

There’s one new character, but for the most part what we get in this book are characters we briefly saw previously returning for a more expanded role, starting with Hilde, the knight that Touya saved in the previous book. She’s since fallen head over heels for him, and upon hearing of his more recent exploits (more on that later) goes to see if she can be his knight… and his bride. Of course, then she meets Yae, who is also a fantastic swordswoman and already married to Touya, and realizes that there’s no way she can be anything but a carbon copy. (She gets her “shy tomboy” personality more from Elze.) Fortunately, who Touya loves is not really his own decision, mostly as he’s so kind and easygoing to everyone. And so his “Bride Council” decide that she’s acceptable. And so she’s bride #7. Two more slots! That said, Pam, the Amazon woman also from a previous book, will not be getting into the harem. She doesn’t love Touya, the one big requirement. She just wants his babies.

We also get the Goddess of Love, who has come down from heaven supposedly to look for an errant God, but mostly to mess with Touya’s love life. She declares that she’s his older sister Karen, and the rest of the cast, who Touya still hasn’t told anything about his past, accept it relatively easily. She’s the classic “slightly immature big sister” type, happily dishing out advice (some of which is actually good!) and also dishing dirt, as she’s fully aware of Touya’s life on Earth before he was killed. We also get his *other* older sister, the Goddess of Swords, who we hadn’t met before but who seems to fit in quite well. She’s great at tactics and combat analysis, but less so at other socialization. As for Touya himself, it’s brought up that he’s becoming a God himself, something he tries not to think about too much. Given the occasional flashes of rage he gets whenever someone hurts one of his fiancees, I’d be worried if I weren’t sure the author was absolutely not going to go there.

As for the plot, the book is essentially divided into three. The first part deals with a massive invasion by the Phrase, far bigger than anything we’d seen before. Fortunately, Touya now has a bunch of Gundams that he can use in the battles, and a large quantity of people trained to use them. He also has Ende, who leaps into his own Gundam clone faster than you can say Kaworu Nagisa. Ende may not do much other than exposit and run, but I’m still amused by him. That said, the Phrase are essentially just bugs, as Touya himself says. We need a more obvious villain, because what’s Smartphone without the bad guys being OVER THE TOP EEEEEEEVIL! And so we get the Nation of Yulong, which is a stand-in for a Nation here on Earth that should be obvious. The word “bashing” applies liberally here, as the Yulong Nation prove to be scummy in every possible way. The rest of the book is more sedate, as the second part is Hilde’s Bride Introduction, and the third has a tournament arc, as Touya won’t sire Pam’s children but will help her tribe win a competition.

The plot may be getting away from the author a bit – we met no new Gynoids and got no new parts of Babylon in this book, and Leen was totally absent as well. Still, it’s enough Smartphone to tide us over for now. The series is ridiculously plastic and shallow, but I honestly love it just for those very qualities. It’s the light novel equivalent of eating a bag of Skittles.