(New season, new wives, but some things never change)
Tension is, supposedly anyway, the result of creating conflict in a story, and no story is complete without at least some of it. There are of course numerous ways to execute these ideas, and there is no singular “tried-and-true” method that applies to all stories. But In Another World with My Smartphone season two opts to try a daring experiment – create a show in which any sense of tension is thrown out the window almost entirely, where plots that have the capacity to shape the face of a nation are resolved within twenty-three minutes at a time, and the guy always gets the girl. Perhaps this could be thought of as the power fantasy’s final form, having ascended to a new plane of transcendent understanding after six years of dormancy that our “critically-minded brains” could never dream to comprehend.
Or, maybe it’s just woefully inept storytelling. Either or, really.
Truth be told, I’m not going to waste my time (nor yours, for that matter) trying to convince you to try watching this franchise if you haven’t already done so. If its sense of stupidity built into the premise is not for you, nothing the show offers will change that. Visually, the show does not dazzle, either in regards to its standard animation presentation or its effects. While it might have a good character design or two interjected somewhere, there’s not much to grab the eye, which is to say nothing of its lackluster music that doesn’t escape beyond the blasé.
(I cannot imagine the quality control for this show was high, nor that the show’s animation producer Fujishiro Atsushi assigned J.C. Staff’s best workers for second key animations or corrections. Every once in a great while, we get a face like this)
As such, this show—and this season especially—are a thing that one actively seeks out when you know precisely what it is you’re getting into, and do not care in the slightest about the faults within it that you acknowledge are right there in front of your eyes. In some realm of your anime-viewing mind, Touya inventing ice cream in this new fantasy world and breaking familiars by causing them to constantly trip and fall amused you. Yumina’s enthusiasm at Touya having his own harem of wives, the unusually-horny gynoid Francesca, and boob jokes ruled the roost and had you chuckling more than you’d ever care to publicly admit. The second season does not disappoint in this respect. Everything that made the first season tick or fall completely flat, depending on who you ask, is alive and well here. The series therefore offers no tension, and as a result, no illusions about offering surprises beyond dime store gags. When it seems like something will come along to provide a shock to the system or status quo by turning it upside-down, the anime snaps itself right-side up again lickety-split, all without breaking a sweat.
There’s something to be said for In Another World with My Smartphone delivering precisely what its audience wants, even if it results in a product that could be called “by-the-numbers” at-best and “creatively bankrupt” at-worst. There is indeed a function for anime’s indulgences in junk food, and much like the endless sea of snacks in a supermarket aisle, everyone has the flavor that they flock to in order to get their fix. So, when Touya spontaneously creates a public bathhouse in the span of about ten seconds, finds out that there’s a substantial request for yaoi fiction in-universe, or doesn’t need to worry about jealousy because his future wives are so excited to add another to their group, it’s a feature of the show rather than a bug. It is not aspiring to be anything more than an excuse to indulge in silliness for a half-hour every week. It will never enshrine itself in the annals of anime fantasy, but if a third season is on the horizon, I’ll do exactly what I did with my friends – happily answer any question about the show’s paper-thin lore like an eager fool, enjoying my own gluttonousness while I get bewildered looks.
Just remember one thing – In Another World with My Smartphone got a second TV season, while others like No Game No Life and Deadman Wonderland never got theirs. The industry has perhaps never pulled a funnier cosmic joke.
