In Another World with My Smartphone, Vol. 10

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

Three-fourths of this volume is a fairly typical Smartphone volume, with the added bonus of actually resolving some long-standing plot developments and introducing a “new” character who, while I may not love her, certainly has the ability to put a lot of things in motion. Unfortunately, that leaves one-fourth of Smartphone which is absolute garbage, having all the worst tendencies of this series wrapped up in an awful bow. Touya’s sociopathy, villains who sneer and cackle but are also cowardly and ugly, barely disguised hatred of China. It’s all here, and it sucks. I’ve talked before about how I sometimes wonder if Touya is meant to occasionally be a deconstruction of some sort, but it just doesn’t hold up all that well. The author thinks that having the occasional character remind Touya that he’s in danger of becoming a monster, and Touya essentially going “Oh, OK”, will take the curse off of it. It does not.

The cover features Sakura, whose backstory is finally revealed as Touya, hilariously, realizes he could have cured her amnesia all along with a simple spell. The recovery of memories allows us to be introduced to yet another smothering father type, a running gag in this series (to the point where the girls all admit that Touya will certainly become one of those as well), and also allows Sakura to join the harem, which is now “complete” at nine wives, though some of them girls are a bit wary of accepting that it’s a closed circle now, given Touya is, well, Touya. They’re more concerned about succession than actually jealous, though. The cover also features a young girl who, I’m sad to say, is Professor Regina Babylon, now in the present day and also in the body of a child-sized gynoid because, I think, the author finds it amusing. She’s just as perverse as ever, and when she and Cesca team up it’s bad news for everyone. I could have easily done without the spanking, though.

Touya also finally admits to his wives that he’s not from this world, something which they accept fairly easily. He also starts to show them anime, which may be a mistake, especially with the Professor watching Gundam. We also get a short story developing Ende and the Phrase, and explaining what happened in the past and why the Phrase keep on attacking Touya’s world. It is, at heart, a love story, and I liked Touya admitting that, despite the hideous loss of life, if it were him he may have been the same. (This is not hard to imagine given how much Touya doesn’t care about Yulong or anyone in it, though admittedly he only seems to meet bad guys there due to the whims of the author.) I suspect the majority of the Phrase are still evil, though, which means expect to have more giant robot battles in the near future. Which now include Sue, who is getting into the swing of things very fast.

Despite wanting to punch Touya and the author in the face for the Daydream Believer chapter (which also ruins one of my favorite Monkees songs), I’m still somehow still reading Smartphone. It’s one of the rare series which is at its best when doing dumb harem slice-of-life, as Touya needs to be constantly belittled by near everyone or else he becomes a monstrosity. Oh yes, added points to the illustrator, as the first three black and white illustrations in the book each made me laugh out loud, combining the text and a picture perfectly.

The Promised Neverland, Vol. 6

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By Kaiu Shirai and Posuka Demizu. Released in Japan as “Yakusoku no Neverland” by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Satsuki Yamashita.

For all that Ray insists that he’s not going to sacrifice his life at the end of the last volume, he is a small child running at full speed against a number of demons who are essentially horses in this scene. Sure, he’s rescued, but it was an impetuous thing to do. And of course there’s also Emma, who is almost literally working herself to death to get this escape on the road. So I really enjoyed the scene in this volume where Dona, Gilda and the other kids tear into the two of them for taking everything on themselves. The Grace Field kids are ALL smart – sure, Ray, Norman and Emma were the tip of the top, but they’re all bright lads and lasses who can see what’s really going on here. If you’re going to escape with everyone, everyone has to work as a unit and decide things as a unit. Which is good, as when they get to the map coordinates it’s a big bunch of nothing.

We also get a lot of answers this volume as to how this world works, and while Emma tries to paint it in as optimistic terms as she can, it’s not good news. They’re on the wrong side of a great divide, this has been going o0n for a thousand years, and I suspect if they do make it back to humanity, they may have to watch out for being killed there as well. Despite that, Emma is right, there is some hope. And honestly, we learn that being at their own farm was possibly the best place to be, given that most demons seem to eat the equivalent of fast food – which is to ay humans kept in tanks and barely cognitive, there to be eaten and forgotten. It’s a chilling sight. There’s also the demons who rescued them at the start, who seem to be “religious converts” but may be a lot more sinister than that. I wonder about them…

In the meantime, there’s a new area to explore, and to no one’s surprise, it’s not quite as barren as expected. Now they’re in an underground shelter, and meeting an actual adult human who… seems to be one of those “I am a jerk on the outside, but wait till you see my soft core” types. Sadly, he’s the cliffhanger, so we’ll have to wait for next time to see what his deal is. Ray and Emma are pretty good about having a healthy level of suspicion about their “saviors”, but also being willing to trust people. When you don’t have much choice, that’s where you are. I suspect that the next volume of The Promised Neverland will begin a new “arc”, but I also suspect it will involve a lot of almost getting captured and escaping, because that’s why we read the series. Well, that and seeing the kids be cute.

JK Haru Is a Sex Worker in Another World

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By Ko Hiratori. Released in Japan by Hayakawa Shoten. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Emily Balistrieri.

Before I begin, let’s state the obvious: this book is for those over the age of eighteen. The review will not have strong language itself, but reader discretion is advised.

Wow. I didn’t know much about this going into it. When I first heard about the license, I thought it sounded absolutely dreadful, but I was assured that it was not actually meant to be a servicey title and that it would reward the patient and tolerant reader. The assurance was correct, as I am very grateful to have read this title, which I thought was excellent. That said, I know several people who started to read this and were unable to get past the first two sections or so, and I can understand why. The premise sounds like your standard isekai: two kids are run over by a truck and die, meet God, and the buy gets cheat powers because this is an adventuring isekai sort of world they’re going to be dropped in. Unfortunately, it’s also virulently misogynistic. The basic roles for adult women are slave, wife, or sex worker. Haru chooses the last.

What follows is Haru going about her daily life, which involves blunt descriptions of the sex work she does. Haru’s narration is one of the main reason to get the book, as she pulls no punches about the sort of life she has to lead. The boy she came from Japan with is an absolute creep, the sort of guy who thinks he would be doing Haru a favor by letting her become his maid. This is not, by the way, a book to read for those who want to be aroused by talk of sex. There IS a lot of talk of sex, but it’s not meant to arouse you in the slightest. There are several rape scenes throughout the book, and they are as horrible as you can imagine. Haru tends to “dull her emotions” a bit during them, but as a reader you’re still horrified. That said, you do also learn to enjoy the happier times in her life as well, such as tea with her colleagues and, in the most positive and fun chapter in the book, playing “Kick the Can” with a group of kids.

About 2/3 of the way through the book there is a spoiler, which I won’t disclose, but it does tie into the main plotline and also makes sense in terms of what’s come before. Aside from Haru and Chiba (the Japanese guy), the most interesting character to me was Kiyori, a pure Japanese priestess type who wants to go adventuring, but is not allowed to without a guy. Kiyori’s the only other one whose narrative perspective we get in the book (which is otherwise Haru’s), and you get the sense as you get to the end of the book that she’d much rather be in a relationship with Haru than with any of the horrible adventurer creeps who are trying to team up with her. Unfortunately, that is not a very likely option either because, as I said earlier, virulently misogynistic world.

There are a bunch of other things in the book I enjoyed, at times the writing is very subtle. (Discussion of a reincarnation made me smile a bit, especially given the plot that leads up to it.) It apparently was a polarizing book in Japan, though not so much for the explicit sex worker content as for being an isekai at all – this is a novel, not a light novel, and fans of the publisher were upset they sank to publishing one. It’s a novel that needs warnings before you read it, but I feel that overall it ends on a positive and forward-looking note. Indeed, it feels a bit open-ended, and the final short story implies the author has a lot more they’d like to write about. If you’re tired of the standard “hero goes to another world and gets superpowers and a harem of girls” stories, this is a grim yet well-told response to it.