Title: In Another World with My Smartphone Vol. 1
Author: Patora Fuyuhara (Story), Soto (Art)
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
Genre: Isekai, Fantasy
Publication Date: July 13, 2021
The Story
The second volume of In Another World with My Smartphone picks up with Touya delivering Zanec’s letter to Viscount Swordrick who recognizes Yae. Apparently, her father was Swordrick’s tutor in the art of… well… swordplay (which is, in itself, a play on words for his name!) Yae gets a free lesson and learns that Swordrick knows how to cast an illusion during the battle for a technique called Shadow Sword. While her skills were praised, they are still lower than where Swordrick feels they should be. He tells her to go practice and come back when she has leveled up.
With the deed done, Touya uses Gate and brings them all back home. There, they register Yae with the guild and help her complete her first slaying job. After a bit of time, Touya is informed that the King has been poisoned. He is summoned to help heal him and gets a bit of a history lesson. Mismede, a country to the south where the beastfolk live is suspected by the nobles of poisoning the King just purely based on xenophobia alone. Touya aims to get to the bottom of it and unravel the mystery which brings us to the end of the second volume!
Characters
We didn’t really get a lot of development with our main characters; however, we did get introduced to one new character named Arma. She got separated from her big sister so Touya helps her find her. While her big sister doesn’t seem all too important now, we later find out her name is Olga and she is the ambassador for Mismede and the one suspected by the nobles of poisoning the King.
Arma is your typical happy-go-lucky young girl while Olga seems more poised and straightforward with her words and attitude. Outside of these brief run-ins, we don’t know much about them but I would suspect that will change next volume as this mystery becomes more and more unraveled.
The only other development could be with Touya. While nothing has really changed with him from a strength or a personality standpoint, he is becoming more and more renowned amongst the places he is visiting. He already has the coin of a duke, the approval of a viscount, and now the favor of the King. He’s doing a pretty good job of establishing a high standing within the world. Outside of that, there’s really nothing different about him.
Yae has begun a quest to become a better swordsman so we’ll see where that ends up but that’s about it as far as character development is concerned.
Final Word
It was a pretty short read; however, an entertaining one. While the action was relegated to a single panel most of the time, it was interesting to see Touya introduce things from his world into this one. In the last volume, he introduced people to ice cream… this time, it was shougi as well as the taste of vanilla. By using their world’s version of vanilla, he made roll cakes which people seem to have enjoyed.
There was still the tease of wanting to visit Easen thanks to the dojo that Viscount Swordrick had. It was modeled off of Japanese architecture which piqued Touya’s interests even more. It seems as if this is one of the end goals for him and since Touya can’t get back to his original world, my guess is living a peaceful life in Easen will be his ultimate goal.
Even though it is painfully obvious who the culprit is, I’m still expecting some sort of swerve. If not, then I would probably argue that making the culprit obvious is a downfall of the series but I have a sneaky suspicion that we’re all being misdirected here. The only way to know for sure is to check out volume three!
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**This item was provided for review by Yen Press
