English Dub Review: In Another World With My Smartphone “Shogi board, and Underground Ruins”

In Another World discovers the greatest treasure next to smartphones… Shogi… apparently.

Spoilers Below

In the last episode of In Another World with My Smartphone, Touya was showing off how incredibly perfect he was as he could fix any problem or ailment that arises in a matter of seconds. Now we are in episode 3, where Touya is showing off how incredibly perfect he is as he fixes any problem or ailment that arises in a matter of seconds BUT he’s slightly perverted about it. Oh, and he can make shogi boards with magic now. OOOooooooo… It is quite a marvel that this sort of show has become its own sub-genre of anime, namely the isekai anime. This is an anime genre-focused on a character going to a parallel world of some form which would include anime like Re: Zero, InuYasha, and Restaurant to Another World. In Another World with My Smartphone is quickly becoming quickly the stalest and dullest isekai show I have seen.

Let’s start with the dull plots, we open the episode with Touya and company helping a fox girl find her sister, then that plot is over and they move onto what they were actually doing. That being, going shopping for Touya’s new coat that enhances his already expert level magic with the purported side effect that he twice has vulnerable to magic attacks. Other than that, the story follows their forming guild party as Touya learns how to make a Shogi board for people and then the team fight a monster at some ruins. This is a fantasy anime, correct?

I’m reciting all these events that take place in this fantasy world and it just is completely dull. It is like a slice of life anime’s narrative style, where we are taking snippets out from our main characters’ day to combine it into a narrative. But In Another World With My Smartphone fails to endear its audience in with its world, it can exposit all it wants on the lore, mythos and political landscape of the world but if all our main characters’’ reaction to it is just dull acceptance what are we supposed to take from that? How can we be invested in stakes when they become immediately resolved with no struggle? The cliff hanger for this episode is that the Duke’s brother has been poisoned. Now this in a regular narrative would be a cliché yet sufficient cliffhanger to draw people in for next episode. Except for two things.

1. We have never heard of the duke’s brother before this point so there is literally no connection to make the audience care if they died. At best audience would feel sorry for the Duke and even then, with only two episodes of back and forth between Touya and the Duke do we even know enough to care for the duke that much?
2. Touya literally healed a character of blindness in the previous episode. A poisoning in comparison is small potatoes.

Dramatic tension has been snapped to oblivion, with all that is left is a pile of toothpicks that once was my interest. However, for the sake of fairness, Touya Sue showed slightly more character in this episode. Besides perfectly solving every situation that came his way and reacting with just calm acceptance he was slightly pervy wanting to take the girls on a slime fighting quest. Hooray for character progression? It is not a bad show per say but In Another World With My Smartphone just has not pushed past this bland first impression and just sinks deeper into being just another isekai anime.