The Spring 2021 Manga Guide

In Another World with My Smartphone

What's It About? 

Touya Mochizuki is dead, the victim of an accident caused by God. As such God feels guilty and decides to give him a second chance. Touya is given new life and a few physical and magical boosts, along with getting to keep his smartphone, and is sent to another world to build a new life.

In Another World With My Smartphone is based on the light novel by Patora Fuyuhara, with character designs by Eiji Usatsuka. The manga is drawn by Soto and Yen Press has released the first volume both digitally and in print for $6.99 and $13.00 respectively

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

In Another World With My Smartphone is a perfectly fine adaptation of the source light novels, which is to say that it's equally toothless and continues not to do anything new with the genre. That's not a blanket negative, although I admit it sounds like it; there's still enough of an appetite for the basic isekai fantasy that if you're just looking for a simple, unadorned story about a guy being transferred to another world and given ludicrously strong powers, then this will fit the bill. It doesn't play around with fancy magic systems, exotic plants/monsters, or even, as of this volume, any fantasy races. It's just a by-the-numbers story of a local boy making good in another world, and it does precisely as advertised.

This time around our protagonist is fifteen-year-old Touya, who was accidentally killed when God let fly a lightning bolt, presumably while playing Zeus. Feeling awful about the whole thing, God serves Touya tea and tells him that while he can't send him back to Japan, he can set him up with super-buffed stats and his smartphone in a vaguely Medieval fantasy world. Touya, who's still a little confused about the whole thing, accepts, and the next thing he's aware of is waking up under a tree. Within moments a clothier has offered to buy his machine-stitched school uniform for an astronomical sum, and the luck doesn't stop there. While on a walk Touya helps out twin sisters Elize and Rinze, who form a party with him and help him do things like learn to read and write and how to use magic. Soon he's meeting another girl, Yae, and the whole group of them are saving a duke's daughter. It's like nothing can go wrong for this guy.

Since that's the point, or at least what God in the story wants, that's hardly a surprise. It is, however, kind of dull reading, and the fact that the art is very static with almost no sense of movement at all doesn't help. This story's besetting sin is also likely to be its appeal for some readers: that it just doesn't try to do anything new at all, opting instead to dwell on Touya's bland awesomeness as he barely uses his advertised smartphone in his new world.

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Lynzee Loveridge

Rating:

This is about as bland as they get, folks. In Another World With My Smartphone is inoffensive, but it's also completely flavorless. The dearly departed this time is Touya, a guy who is cool about pretty much everything, even when God slips up and strikes him with lightning. He's cool-headed in the face of being dropped into a completely unfamiliar world and he's down to breaking up fights with thugs he's never met. Nothing phases Touya, the epitome of unwavering competence.

It's not like every isekai lead needs to spend the first chapter freaking out, but there's nothing to latch onto in this volume. The art itself is very workmanlike with no backgrounds to really speak of. The characters lack any standout design details and at the end of the day it's hard to get excited in a gimmick that centers around a guy's cellphone. Now, I didn't watch the anime adaptation of the light novel, but I did read the reviews and heard a lot of similar complaints: that the story is dull as a box of rocks.

This might be worth flipping to if you're looking for a casual read that expects zero thought and offers neither a compelling story nor engaging humor. Otherwise there's a ton of other adventure stories out there.