One day a boy died unexpectedly and since his death was unplanned he wound up in front of a deity who offered him a chance at another life in a new world. He was granted one favor and he used it to bring a presumably useful item with him only for it to fall far short of its potential as he became an adventure built up a harem of useless girls and tried to survive in a fantasy world of unfamiliar magic. If it sounds like I just rattled off the plot of Konosuba with all the interesting and funny parts taken out well yeah. Thats what this is. Not literally but pretty much. In Another World with my Smartphone which Im just going to be calling Smartphone from now on was produced by Production Reed a studio so obscure that Im honestly surprised that Ive mentioned them before. They were fairly prolific in previous decades mostly sticking to obscure genre fare but it seems like theyve made efforts to produce more modernstyle work for several years now. Smartphone is one of only six anime I can find credited to them since 2003 sporting a far more polished aesthetic than anything from their roots. Honestly some of these titles look pretty good. I mentioned in my Vampire Hunter D review that it looked passable despite having a low budget and the same applies to Smartphone. There are costcutting tricks spread all over the series but theyre only really noticeable when youre looking for them and theyre fairly unobtrusive. Ive said before that I prefer cheap productions that managed their budget well over big lavish productions throwing around Pixar level money and while Smartphones animation isnt anything revolutionary it does what it has to do to stay smooth and consistent. The character designs as well are more than serviceable. Theyre easy on the eyes although theyre also painfully generic. Youve got the dark haired samurai girl the outgoing loli the rich blonde girl who brings up marriage way too fast the twin sisters whereand stop me if youve heard this one before the older sibling has longer hair and a more outgoing and dominant personality while the younger sibling has short hair and a more reserved and submissive personality. And of course you have the harem lead who looks pretty much the same as every other harem lead. Like I said none of the characters are bad looking... Im willing to bet they do just fine at pushing merchandise... But youve seen them all before. The English dub is pretty solid and its probably the best thing about the series. The actors blend into their characters so well that I find myself taking the presence of actors for granted and that kind of speaks for itself. The only detail of note is that Josh Grelle spends most of his time just spouting generic haremlead dialogue asking questions spouting exposition and just being blandly nice but he suddenly goes way over the top any time his character has to show actual emotion. There are random moments of dialogue where hell basically take any excuse to overact and give a melodramatic delivery. Its like he spends most of his performance as a bent hose just occasionally unwinding for bursts of personality at unpredictable intervals and I kind of love that. So many years ago I had a group of friends that liked going to movies together. It was our thing. When the first trailer for The Purge came out in 2013 of course they all wanted to go. I did too kind of but there was something about the premise that nagged at me. The more I thought about it the more I began to realize just how huge the concept it was presenting really was. One night where all crime was legal... The implications were horrifying. There are so many awful things people could do if given that kind of an opportunity and this movie was using it as a cheap excuse for why the cops arent called during a home invasion story. In a wide release American movie. Dont get me wrong they portrayed some stuff. Looting murder property damage. But the true extent of that concept was too gruesome soo dark and way too consequential for a major studio to ever stake its reputation on. What about arson? Entire neighborhoods burning to the ground all because of some random dude with a rag and a lighter? Or not even a random dude but the KKK burning down minority neighborhoods? What about animal abuse or all the unspeakable things parents and likeminded adults could do to children? There would be long term planning involved with a lot of this. I dunno maybe the sequels addressed some of this shit but at the time I had no faith that an American movie with that kind of backing could ever go as far as it needed to go to do such a terrifying idea justice. Why am I bringing up The Purge you ask? Because there were multiple points during Smartphone where I found myself saying You know at least The Purge had an excuse. The concept of an isekai protagonist bringing a working smartphone into a magical world with him is an inherently creative idea. Much like The Purge it also happens to carry a ton of implications and possibilities. Off the top of my head maybe he looks up the news about his death? Maybe he looks up his family and friends on social media to see what theyre saying about him and how theyre dealing with his loss? Hell hes fifteen Im sure his parents would have a lot to say. Imagine him alone in some scene reading his mothers heartfelt facebook post about him while he tears up silently in the night. Or how about people see the mysterious artifact and accuse him of using arcane or demonic magic? Maybe people see how much hes able to do with it and they instantly distrust him? Or maybe somebody steals it and becomes corrupted in some way by the knowledge they find on it? Maybe he can download movies to show his new friends? Or they become addicted to some weird games on it? They dont do anything I just mentioned. Literally none of it. Throughout the series he only has two uses for his smartphone that stand out to me He looks up how to make some things an he takes some pictures. Thats it. He also uses it to enhance his magic in some scenes but the magic itself is far more memorable in every instance. Hell the fact that he has unprecedented access to all forms of magic FAR outweighs his actual smartphone usage by a substantial margin. That is not how you should use a gimmick that you based the title of your series on. Probably worst of all is the fact that pretty much everything he does with it SHOULD still be revolutionary and worldchanging but the biggest reaction he ever gets from anybody is along the lines of Thats so cool or Would you look at that... And the lack of imagination goes a lot deeper than just the premise. I made a brief comparison to Konosuba at the start of this review which might have made some of you cringe but the two shows are somewhat similar. In Smartphone we open with the protag already in front of God being told that he died. Hes surprisingly cool with it. God lets him go to a new world and he gives him a ton of convenient advantages to help him survive there. This scene technically works as it does set up the premise at least in a barebones sense but all we learn outside of that is that Touya has no real personality and God apparently has rules he has to follow. Somehow. Compare that to Konosuba. We see Kazumas previous life his pathetic death and an entirely unique scene where hes mocked by the deity he meets in the afterlife so he gets back at her by dragging her into a new world with him. This opening is brimming with personality and humor. Rather than just set up the plot and introduce a couple characters like Smartphone it lets you know right off the bat what kind of people the two leads are just how meanspirited and diabolical the shows sense of humor is going to be and even the fact that youll probably never feel guilty for laughing at it. The dynamic between Kazuma and Aqua is so unique and hysterical that you immediately crave more of it. Im not going to go into all of the characters... I implied how generic they were when I discussed their designs and theyre pretty much the exact characters youd expect them to be at least down to the lowest common denominator. You never learn literally anything about Touya throughout the series and the girls are all madly in love with him andaside from the twins have no unique dynamic with each other outside of being each others competition. I could talk about the world they inhabit but honestly theres nothing special about that either. Its just your typical fantasy RPG world. There are attempts at world building but little of it matters in the long run. Not long after Touya arrives for example a passing noble obsessively offers to buy his strange otherworldly clothes. This is a good building block for future development as well as a convenient way to get some currency in the protags pockets but it never really comes back and its undermined several episodes later by a beach episode where everyone just conveniently has normal modernday bikinis. Similarly the fact that Touya had to invent ice cream was also an inspired idea but it feels weird that they already had cake and all the ingredients for ice cream just happened to conveniently exist. This also doesnt really go anywhere. Hey remember the massive impact flavored burgers had on the world of Log Horizon? Good times. The invention of bikes also fails to really make an impact. Look an isekai anime doesnt necessarily need a strong cast and it doesnt necessarily need a strong world but it should at least have one of those things. Konosubas fantasy world was honestly kind of generic pretty much on par with Smartphones but it didnt matter because of how strong the characters were. You put Aqua and Kazuma in any environment its gonna be entertaining. On the other side of the coin the main cast of 12 Kingdoms wasnt much to write home about but it didnt matter because the world it sent them to was unique complex and full of breathtaking details. Smartphone doesnt have a strong cast of characters OR a strong world so the only chance it has left is if it takes a page out of Escaflownes book and bets all of its chips on the power of its writing. So how IS Smartphones plot and story? Well let me put it like this. I was not surprised to find out this show was based on a light novel. Most isekai are. Most shows with annoyingly long titles as well. Im not a huge fan of light novels in general as even the best one Ive read made abridged novels look complex in comparison and while most adaptations of the like are able to elevate the material above its source through careful execution Smartphone wasnt even your typical light novel. It was selfpublished online and didnt get picked up professionally until it got popular implying that a good chunk of the early material operated under less revision feedback and professional criticism than most other light novels. The writing in a typical light novel is bare bones at best... You get conversations things happening more conversations brief exposition and more conversations as the story quickly moves from moment to moment never really attempting to build up any sense of mood or emotion for any given scene. In a typical novel if a character faces their greatest fear the narrative would place you in their shoes and force you to feel the tension and terror theyre experiencing. In a light novel youre told what the situation is youre told its their greatest fear and you see the actions they take to get through it. Like I said not terribly complex. Im sure there are people out there who love light novels thats fine theyre just not for me. Unfortunately this is how Smartphone feels most of the time. Much like a light novel its all text and no technique. Character goes here. Character says this. Character wins fight. There are no quiet moments. Theres no time for character development. Major events go by at such a break neck speed that youre given no real reason to care about them. The perfect example of this is in episode two where Touya meets a duke and uses his magic to heal the dukes blind wife. Now that should be pretty impactful right? A woman who hasnt seen in five years finally opens her eyes to embrace her husband and child as they cry in joy. This could easily take up half an episode introducing the issue getting us invested setting up tension establishing some kind of doubt and then inflicting massive feels with the payoff right? Wrong. This entire sequence takes two minutes. I counted. The Duke mentions his blind wife. Touyas friends realize he can heal her. We see her for literally the first time. He heals her and I swear to God they try to make a tearjerking moment out of this. They try to make you cry over a woman you just met whose illness you immediately knew was going to be cured taking no time whatsoever to actually earn the emotional reaction they wanted. The entire series is like this. Theres no plot Touyas not trying to accomplish anything youre never given any reason to feel anything and every single threat or obstacle the main cast faces is overcome in the time it takes you to say Well that was fucking easy. A conflict arises Touya has a solution for it they move onto the next thing. There is no danger. There is no threat. There are no stakes. Nothing is ever allowed to have any weight or gravity. There was honestly only one moment in the entire show where I was able to feel anything other than bewilderment Touya is decisively the most powerful person in the world having more magical aptitude than anyone else aliveand a smartphone too I guess and he faces no real opposition so what does he do? He uses his magic and instructions from the internet to make guns. Because he really needs extra firepower. And then he turns around and gives two guns to two of his waifus both of whom are still children neither of whom have had any firearms safety training neither of whom have any idea what guns even are. The fact that they didnt wind up accidentally killing anybody is a true miracle. Yeah he uses rubber bullets but hes also shown using real bullets on a tree and theres no indication which one he gave his friends. The only thing I could see even resembling a plot thread was the question of who Touya would wind up with but even that means nothing. He has no preference whatsoever out of his harem he never shows any explicit signs of attraction to anybody and he only kisses a few of them because they ask him to. He approaches his harem with all the enthusiasm of Sousuke Sagura to the point that he might as well be choosing a soft drink instead of a romantic partner. This plot thread is resolved... Kind of... In what has to be the single dumbest way for a harem storyline to possibly be resolved. Im not going to say what happens but it didnt work in Cat Planet Cuties and it doesnt work here. So at the end of the day we have an isekai anime with a promising gimmick that it refuses to explore no sense of identity or personality no sense of stakes or suspense a clear sense of humor but with absolutely terrible comedic timing no real surprises no imagination no creativity and nothing interesting to set it apart from the absolute glut of anime about high schoolers being abruptly transported to another world. Yes I said transported not reincarnated because very few of these titles involve actual reincarnation and this is not one of them. I dont even think the uncensored version of To Love Ru was as disappointing as this crap. Ill give it credit that its a fairly inoffensive show and its not unpleasant to watch so I guess I could see it being someones comfy show and if thats what it is to you who am I to argue? My favorite part of the Kingdom Hearts franchise was the opening two hours of Kingdom Hearts 2 and thats a terrible opinion to have. But I get it. Boring stuff can be a source of uncomplicated comfort. If this series is your chicken soup when youre sick in bed I understand. Then again I caught covid when I tried to rewatch it for this review back in March and it sure as hell didnt do anything for me when I was delirious with fever so what do I know. For anyone else though this show has just as much substance to it as 12 episodes of uninterrupted static. In Another World with my Smartphone is available from Funimation and can be streamed on Crunchyroll. A second season has recently been announced and while the exact release date is unknown apparently Touyas gonna get a bunch of new robot waifus or something? Whatever. The Light Novel is available stateside from JNovel Club and a manga adaptation is available by Yen Press. So after years away from the anime reviewing scene why come out of retirement for this? Well simply put I sometimes watch an anime and have so many thoughts about it that I cant get it out of my head without writing it all down and making a thing out of it. Thats why I wrote my review of Serial Experiments Lane last year and now here we are. Im not sure why this was the title that lit a fire under me. Its by no means the worst anime Ive ever seen. It didnt piss me off or offend me. It wasnt painfully cringey or tasteless. Honestly on my first viewing it wasnt boring either. I actually found myself engaged not in the plot setting or characters but in seeing all of the fascinating ways that it failed at basic storytelling. Its probably the worst isekai anime Ive ever seen and its definitely the most nothing anime Ive ever seen which is why Im going to give In Another World With My Smartphone a 2/10.