It is best by no means to go all-in on making disliking one thing a part of your persona, least of all when you have to come again to attempt to consider extra of it pretty. However what would you like from me right here? In Another World With My Smartphone was the worst anime I watched in 2017, and I used to be hardly alone in recognizing it as such. And so the gods weep, and their tears coalesce into our airplane of existence as In One other World With My Smartphone Season 2, a sequel whose solely actual escalation is that I am futilely shouting “Why?!” on the heavens even louder than I used to be over half a decade in the past.
The largest, maybe most disappointing trick of Smartphone 2 is that it would not instantly path off into its worst tendencies. The primary episode is the patented Patora Fuyuhara nothing-burger of Touya and his wives sitting round speaking about what they’ve or will quickly get. However beginning with the second episode of this season, it uncharacteristically feels prefer it may be making an attempt. The present clears the meager isekai hurdle of condemning slavery for one, which does really feel like praising a sandwich store for not providing you with meals poisoning. That factor feeds into the subsequent episode, simply changing into probably the most earnestly entertaining Smartphone has ever been. We cruise via a foolish little story of Touya stumbling into sourcing a bunch of boys-love novels for an adventurer’s guild seemingly staffed solely by fujoshi and interacting with a neighboring kingdom’s princess who moonlights as an overconfident BL writer. It correctly embraces Smartphone‘s languid, non-threatening method whereas providing cases of precise character rapport. Hooray for the naked minimums, positive, nevertheless it was sufficient to make me assume I may be entering into Smartphone!
Alas, it was to not be, as following that uncharacteristic flirtation with truly being entertaining, Smartphone settles again into its usual tedious tenor. The remainder of the present is the same old construction of merely watching Touya purchase issues. A brand new, driving factor of this one is We-Have-Kirito-At-Residence having access to the Workshop, facilitating broader building and fabrication of latest toys. That makes it type of just like the leap from Zelda: Breath of the Wild to Tears of the Kingdom, if as a substitute of video video games, these have been waking nightmares created to punish me for my hubris. In follow, that is all to make it simpler for Touya to supply issues like mecha, castles, and rec rooms after which barely do something with them whereas advancing via discovering nonetheless extra floating sky palaces. Roughly half the episodes of this season progress with kind of a “Babylon of the week” construction, punched up by Touya entering into weirdly sexualized escapades with a number of latest gynoids he stumbles into possession of.
It is infuriating as a result of that is nominally all constructing as much as Touya having assets prepared for the plot seeded by Ende, the intrigue-embodying character from the very finish of the primary season, who I appreciated. In fact, nothing comes of all of it. Ende pops up perhaps twice for some world-building vagaries (and to have extra chemistry in his dialogue with Touya than any of our boy’s wives do), however then Smartphone simply forgets about it and diverts power to discussing Touya’s future wedding ceremony plans as a substitute. However then that forgetful feeling manifests within the so-called romance factor by introducing an appropriately amnesiac new member of Touya’s harem. No sooner has Touya rescued and named this woman Sakura than the narrative forgets about her lower than half an episode later. Her mysterious previous might receives a commission off in later tales from the supply novels, however the economics of adaptation means you need not deliver her in right here if you realize there is not going to be any well timed follow-through. As a substitute, Sakura winds up as only one extra swiftly forgotten plaything shoveled into Touya’s impulsively stuffed toybox.
That is all the time going to be the basic drawback with Smartphone, that the author thinks the one measure of story progress is buying issues however would not wish to write in regards to the effort it takes to get these issues. So partway via one episode, Touya will go, “It could be neat if I might fly,” after which educate himself to fly. His summoned guardian beasts that he by no means makes use of will inform him, “Hey, there’s one other guardian beast you can summon,” and so he’ll. Even the slave-freeing stunt is barely there to supply him with the free workforce he must workers his preliminary location and eventual complete franchise of cafes, spreading out throughout the entire precise nation he turns into ruler of on this season. Did Touya have some background in civics that informs his governing expertise right here? Or did the writer get tremendous right into a Civilization run one weekend? Really, we might by no means know.
The philosophy extends to the characters, at the least those the present remembers exist. I fail to grasp how any alleged fan of this collection might decide the Finest Lady (other than the beforehand talked about yaoi writer) since Touya’s wives are much less distinct characters and extra a singularly shifting multicolored marriage hydra. Smartphone treats its harem romance-comedy features with the identical acquisitional method as every part else in its “story”, repeatedly including ladies to Touya’s stock sheet however bristling on the chore of getting to exit and work together with, or present primary affection in the direction of them. It seems like a fantasy from the attitude of an eleven-year-old boy who is aware of fairly girls are neat however is not solely positive what they wish to do with them. Which makes all of the sexcapades with the robots stick out much more unusually.
I might go on about every part Smartphone does flawed from episode to episode. A plot a couple of navy coup is launched and resolved as blithely as Touya buys a bunch of yaoi for his café. There’s an astonishingly poorly managed story throughout a few episodes the place the collection makes an attempt some severe court docket intrigue however winds up in a dissonant tonal conflict the place the first results of Touya taking down a pedophilic pretender to the throne is that our hero will get engaged to his prepubescent fiancée as a substitute. Complete fights and missions are disregarded in these odd mini-bumper transitions which have returned from the primary season. There is a scene the place a bunch of regally clad royalty shoot billiards, go bowling, and sit in therapeutic massage chairs in Touya’s man cave. Half the purpose of Smartphone lulling you to sleep is in order that it might probably inflict the banalist fever desires potential on you when you’re out.
All this, and it seems six years have but to enhance the present’s manufacturing values. Character fashions are extra of a suggestion than the rest, with faces continually contorting into misshapen geometry. It is simple to catch a number of cases of lacking lip-flaps throughout dialogue, and I swear there’s at the least one occasion of a personality talking another person’s line within the flawed voice. I nearly did not thoughts the present’s fixed delaying the much-hyped mecha’s debut since I knew there was no means they might make them look good. Seven episodes in, after these flat monuments to mechanical failure lastly shuffled on-screen, I begged them to both be put again within the hangar or out of their distress.
It is a pity I can not assist however really feel for Smartphone as an entire and the individuals who profess to show to it for enjoyment. It is a story that exists solely to think about solely probably the most surface-level risk of fabric happiness, one thing I might hope most of us might do with out the help of among the shoddiest anime ever put to display screen. It is sadder nonetheless how one can catch odd factors of potential on this second season. There’s that third episode, in fact, however there’s additionally a second within the tenth. It is only a quick scene after Touya has introduced Sakura into the fold, the place her propensity for singing prompts him to play a couple of tunes on the piano and mirror on it as a talent he practiced exhausting to achieve in his earlier life.
Think about the satisfaction of working to earn a capability and one that offers us simply the slightest perception into who Touya was earlier than he was thrust into this purgatory that grants him every part he might ever need however clearly can by no means fulfill him. On this oddly sentimental stretch, as he performs alongside Sakura’s voice, Touya appears to be like extra genuinely completely satisfied than he ever does heading off the affections of his brides or navigating royal diplomacy. And, in fact, it would not final, as Sakura will get shoved again in her locker, and Touya and the remainder of his harem head out to kill some magic cows for the remainder of the episode. Expression and interiority should be excised, and all that continues to be is an nearly stunning disinterest in something materials about this fantasy past checking off a shallow record of issues nerds may wish to have.
