In Another World With My Smartphone v01-21 [J-Novel Club]

why would anyone want to read this? asking out of curiosity I watched anime-only gave it 4/10 maybe the manga/light novel spectacular even then with this premise .......

@RiasatSenpai I didn't watch the anime—my only exposure to this series is the novel, and a couple chapters of the manga. And I'm glad I skipped on the anime, because one season often just isn't enough.

First off, In Another World With My Smartphone is NOT spectacular. Not in the least. It's a harem with an MC who isn't necessarily spineless, but doesn't get intimate with the girls for much of the series (albeit in some cases for good reason), and there's obviously a lot of trashy power fantasies happening. The smartphone part also takes a back seat really quickly, though I think it's for the better.

Without going into spoiler territory, it's surprisingly solid, and the writing itself is pretty enjoyable. The series is paced well, self-aware and internally consistent no matter how ridiculous it gets, with a lot of throwbacks instead of throwaways even after 20 volumes. There's no "villain of the day" or "harem member of the volume" feeling in this despite the fact that Touya gathers a sizable harem and plenty of enemies. Many named characters stick around and show up well after their debut, and individual character growth happens even without Touya getting directly involved, which is something I feel a lot of power fantasies are missing. The aforementioned lack of intimacy within the harem is brought up more than once too, and the girls themselves take jabs at Touya for it.

I'll refrain from going further into it, but to sum up, it's definitely not a 10/10. It's closer to a 7/10, actually. Just don't judge a book by its cover, and maybe give it a shot for a volume or three. It's probably more worth your time than the anime, at least.

Different tastes, I guess. The way I see it, it's a parody quite similar to KonoSuba, except instead of that one's comedy stemming from the utterly dysfunctional nature of the main cast, Smartphone goes for showing a similar move to another world with a gift from god, but with actually competent characters. And honestly, after a while it's actually much more enjoyable than Kazuma's constant misfortune.

Truly a difference in opinions. I'll readily agree with Saji and Ribeyerolls that this is not a 10/10, however at face value it lives up to its comical name giving an enjoyable and comical story complete with the stereotypical OP MC, goofy female characters that are after the MC for various reasons, and a largely open story line that has the potential to be truly entertaining. The setting and character development are solid and each new book to the series is enjoyable in their own aspect. Many people play down isekai but I frankly do enjoy the genre and I enjoyed this book.

Please Seed!!!!

@RiasatSenpai For me personally it's somewhere between stockholm syndrome and sunk cost fallacy. Unfortunately for me I read Gate just before this and it, contrary to my expectations, got better as it went along; Still think it wasted a lot of potential in the whole aspect of fantasy vs. modern(ish) military and it leaned in on quite a few tired tropes although it got there earlier than most being from 2006 but overall it stepped away from the one-sided massacres and the harem took a backseat while politics backed by "forceful" operations stepped in leading to a decent product overall. On the other hand, i made the mistake of expecting the same from this, and it baited me good a few times, like when i thought it might get interesting in another other world somewhere around v13 however: "we interrupt this mildly interesting plot to remind this is a harem LN". Anyway apparently i was mistaken this was parody all along, i mean, how could i have been so blind with a title that comical, how could i have been so dense. "In Another World With My Smartphone" damn it just cracks me up, since it's not at all just blunt and mater of fact, next thing you're gonna tell me the dictionary isn't a joke book. Scathing sarcasm aside i can see how poe's law might make a glorified list of tropes and clichés look like parody but i don't buy it. I can't speak for rest since i skipped all the afterwords after the first one but the author speaks of the lore as if it were to be taken seriously in that first one, so...