English Dub Review: In Another World With My Smartphone “Oedo, and the Immortal Gem”

Literally, Touya has become unbeatable. I sure hope he doesn’t get hurt.

It’s astounding how such a dull and unremarkable show has found new ways to have me think less of it. Last time I was drained feeling that its forced slice of life quirkiness was so gag-inducing sacred it makes any attempt at building a bigger story for the show come off hollow. Today though, where before I railed the show for making Touya so over-powered that nothing could be a possible threat to him, now Touya is so over-powered he doesn’t even need to be in the same vicinity as the danger to beat it. Literally removing any stakes in any conflict, he finds himself in. Plus, the rest of the girls are just plain useless tagalongs. Doesn’t that sound just… “wonderful.”

OVERVIEW (Spoilers Below)

Following from the last episode, Touya has learned a new null spell that lets him and the girls travel to the samurai girl Yae’s home country Eashen. However, it isn’t 5 minutes until they find that Eashen has dire trouble as Yae’s brother and father are fighting an undead army and are slowly being overrun. Then Touya comes in with his magic and beats the army in literally 15 seconds. But still there is the leader of the army to handle, will Touya be able to use his magic spells that can target anybody anywhere and rain down destructive death on anyone’s head? My answer would be yes.

It’s not even a spoiler to say that Touya will win but what’s most insulting in this week’s episode is that it highlights how carefree the writing is. With no help from the other girls, Touya can literally GPS lock onto any enemy in a pretty sizable area around him with his smartphone then fire powerful magic spells to beat them. It’s as easy as that. You can’t talk as if there are some really dire circumstances in this situation for the characters when the main character can just waltz in and solve it in no time flat. That’s a hollow victory.

Not to mention the girls are completely useless here. We’re in Yae’s home country, having her return after she left on her quest to grow powerful to make her family proud of her efforts, and she does nothing. Touya is the only one who fights anything, Yae and the others are just sidelined. Making me ask the question, why did they even need to come if only Touya and Leen are the ones that do anything useful? But even Leen is shown to be redundant having her presence there as later when she uses a spell to help in a later mission to sneak into the enemy stronghold it kind of brings up the question why does Leen need to be there? With null magic, Touya can do her spell too. We already saw he learns magic insultingly fast. In fact, he can do that with such ease, even if he willingly wasted a ton of magic, like in episode 5 where he transferred a ton of magic into Linze, he could theoretically still pull off this mission with no outside help necessary without breaking a single sweat.

OUR TAKE

Touya is a Mary Sue. I will nail that into this series until the point is beaten because that is the show’s critical failure. Unlike power fantasy protagonists like Kirito from Sword Art Online and Ichigo Kurosaki from Bleach, who are both personally terribly bland main characters, Touya lacks any weight to his character to warrant this immense power. It’s just a cheat to make the series of events move along faster. Screw this hollow and soulless mess. Even a terribly written show like Seven Mortal Sins, a.k.a. the insipid demon booby show shows more dimension in its conflicts as it actually has stakes waged in its events. In Another World doesn’t have the backbone to even attempt that, which makes it the worst sort of viewing experience. An incredibly dull and hollow one. I say, don’t watch this anime. It is just too dull to even recommend viewing it ironically.