By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by HJ Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson.

I’d said before that I plan to read this series until the wedding/honeymoon and then drop it. Perhaps the author heard me, and also knows I was planning to do the same thing with Irregular at Magic High School and didn’t make it, because this volume seems to be filled with my least favorite things. Now, to be fair, Touya does not commit genocide, but that’s only as he’s starting to run out of countries, even with the addition of an entire new map thanks to the Reverse Universe and Touya’s own crashing together. No, instead we get a roundup of all the niggling little Smartphone things that get under my skin. Inappropriate sexual humor, gay rape as comedy, ‘henpecked guy’ as comedy., etc. The joy of seeing the J-Novel Heart line start, and other women-oriented light novels and isekais catch hold over here, is that it will mean fewer series like this. And it started so well, too…

Now that the Phrase and Evil God have been dealt with once and for all, it’s finally time to prepare for the wedding of Touya to his brides. Of course, nothing there is going to go smoothly. Touya is forced to intervene between two countries who are always at war, and essentially solves the problem by turning the two kings into The Defiant Ones. Back in “heaven”, there’s a war among the various gods as to who gets to attend Touya’s wedding, and he gains a “grandmother”, the God of Space and Time. Turns out Touya’s quite popular. Then he has a new crisis when a princess shows up asking to be another one of his brides… but she may be a fake. For this particular crisis, Touya is told to stay home and let his fiancees handle things. That said, the problem turns out to be more of the same: ancient tech gone wrong and a villain so evil it’s amazing you don;t see him kicking puppies.

If you were to ask me which character I least wanted to see become a regular, the unicorn from the last volume would likely be tops on the list. And yet, here he is, used as the “comedy” punishment for the villain, and it’s just as funny as it was last time, which is to say not at all. The start of the book also get very bad very fast, as Touya has to deal with the captured Luna, whose mind has been possessed so long that it’s hard to break her of her pain-loving ways. That said, Touya’s solution was fairly obvious, and I could ALMOST have accepted it as sort of fanservice comedy… if he didn’t then take her to a goddamn elementary school. Fuck. That. In between is the usual Smartphone stuff, but fortunately nothing else that stood out as monstrously awful like those two. It’s typical Smartphone. And it was nice seeing the fiancees show off how they’re now just as OP as Touya. (Could have done without the “ranking”, though, even if Touya insists it’s not him.

So next volume is the wedding and honeymoon, and barring a cliffhanger that is REALLY good, it will be the end of the line for me. This volume is recommended if, like me, you can’t seem to let go of this thing.