English Dub Review: In Another World With My Smartphone “Panties, and an Aerial Garden”

This is the best worst episode of this anime and it includes a fully functional sex robot.

I’m not kidding with that opening line. In Another World With My Smartphone may have started with light-hearted fan service and devolved into beach clad tight bikinis, but now the bottom of the barrel has burrowed deeper as Touya meets up with Francesca. She is a robot girl who acts as the control unit for a flying garden called Babylon and as she puts it has a “factory fresh” lower region. This episode does not stop there when it comes to raunchiness. It gets much more off-putting.

OVERVIEW (Spoilers Below)

Following the last episode, Touya and the newest toy product character Kokuyou and Sango, who was previously another earth shatteringly strong beast but was swiftly whipped by Touya, as they arrive on the flying garden Baylon after going through a portal. There they meet up with a skirtless Francesca whose panties are on full display for Touya. But now with the odd sexual tension out of the way, the show can layer more on as when Touya brings the rest of the harem on the garden Francesca lays the sexual nature of her not birthing but fully functional robotic privates for all to know. Now Touya has to babble his way to prove he isn’t a creepy pervert and the girls have to decide what they want to do about their feelings now that another girl has shown up to the harem party.

Straight out of the gate, this episode does nothing extravagant to make it the saving grace of the series. While I did enjoy myself more this is 10 episodes way too late to start getting entertaining. Plus, the entertainment factor mainly comes from the complete whiplash in thematic tone from the last episode’s light-hearted fantasy and perversion. Although this episode finally demonstrates what has been crucially missing from this show. A personality for Touya.

It doesn’t need to be parroted again and again but Touya up until now has been a vanilla toast bland character. His overpowered nature hinders him from making any dynamic choice that can cause the audience to see his personality unfold before our eyes. In One Punch, we have world’s strongest superhero Saitama who approaches his problems with a sense of apathy and boredom over the ease of his fights but a drive to still be a hero. In Bleach, we have the fight crazy soul reaper Kenpachi Zaraki, who has unbelievable powers that completely dwarfs most of the others but his choices lead him to handicap himself to make fights more interesting for him. Touya… is a nice guy… who is a slight perv. I am oversimplifying for comedic effect but the fact still remains Touya’s reaction to his overwhelming abilities and the ramifications of what he can do with his power have been on the level of “oh neat.”

That isn’t good enough. A character needs more dynamic than just going through the motions of things. Even if a writer wrote a character who wanted to just let life take the wheel that is still more of a dynamic personality then Touya who just does the same nice guy saving the girl trope again and again and fails to evolve from that. Episode 11 though actually tosses Touya a curveball while clearly in combat he is a god among men when it comes to the on the nose sexual advances of his harem becomes evident he becomes a babbling doofus. He’s thrown off, he has to make choices, react in kind, hostile and unclear ways. Touya has to have a definition to him to allow for dynamics to form with him and the girls to have comedic timing, romantic tension and just an emotional connection to whatever motive is floating in his head that leads him on his journey.

It is sad though that this definition has come from an episode with a sex robot, boob jiggling sound effects and more in-depth discussion on how “data” is transferred. Like it’s already clear to me In Another World With My Smartphone has no idea at times what it wants to be. Starting off as a simple fantasy slice of life than adding more world building quests, and then deciding to flip-flop between them until we land here in a perverted romantic comedy. If it was one of those things this would be fine but by trying to be everything the show up until this point has been nothing but a boring chore. It wasn’t until today where it went totally out there with this episode’s tone that it felt like a show. A dynamic anime where characters can actually bounce dialogue off one another without needing to be reminded at how amazing Touya is.

Case in point our four main love interests of the harem, Linze, Elze, Yaw, and Yumina. Previously I ripped these girls apart for being shown to be strong and such but was dismayed to see how the show treats them as eye candy and Touya’s drooling cheerleading squad. Today’s episode found a way to finally define their relationships with Touya. The details of it are best saved for your own feeling but a totem pole is decided among the group and its Yumina and Linze that come out the most dynamic of the bunch. Yumina with her open-minded and caring nature and Linze showing a side that can stand up for her feelings. The girls were written with actual dynamics to their characters. That is all they needed to do.

OUR TAKE

I did enjoy the episode a fair bit but by this point, I am so invested to see where this nothing of a plot goes from here that I can overlook some of the negative aspects and openly mock them more than appreciating how “good” they are. Although this is the episode where Touya finally seemed like a more fleshed out character. Of course, he was fleshed out into a bumbling perv but I’ll take what I can get. At this point, I have no idea where this story is going or when it is going to end but in the case of this episode it is still bad like the others but the raunchy nature of the story makes it surreally enjoyable.

SCORE
6/10