Title: Super Smartphone Vol. 2
Author: Hiroki Tomisawa (story), Kentaro Hidano (art)
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Digital
Pages: 195
Genre: Supernatural, Drama
Publication Date: February 26, 2024
The Story
Kyu knows that he needs to find a way to defeat Zenichirou. Seomizu is the key; however, Zenichirou pulling a trump card and revealing himself, makes things rather difficult. Kyu now has to find a roundabout way to get Seomizu on his side while avoiding being detected by Zenichirou. To do this, Kyu decides to perform searches on his lackeys so he has Kimi look up big winners in pachinko. Sure enough, the top winner’s information is blanked out so it means that this person is also a super phone user.
Through some roundabout searching, Kyu discovers his identity and tracks him down; however, Zenichirou is two steps ahead. The person Kyu finds, Moura, was bait the entire time. Even though Kyu is smart enough to figure it out, he decides to meet with Moura anyway. As he guessed, Zenichirou’s men show up and try to capture them both; however, thanks to some quick thinking and cleverness, they escape.
Through this entire experience and its aftermath, along with a pep talk from Yuika, Kyu learns what he must do to bring down Zenichirou; however, instead of Kyu formulating a plan to do just that, his plan comes to him instead!
Characters
The biggest focus here was on Moura. He’s just a big dumb kid in high school who takes advantage of his super phone to make as much money as possible. The reason behind it all is so that he can make friends since that’s the one thing he yearns for; however, he’s too dumb to realize that these so-called friends only care about the money he makes and how he’s quick to spend it on them. On top of that, despite his father being a medical director of high standing, he couldn’t care less about his own son. Even with Moura being 18 and openly drinking and having a party, his dad just brushed it off and walked away. It’s no wonder Moura wanted attention. Uncared for, used, and abused… and through it all, just a kid who wanted to feel accepted by anyone. It’s a sad story that made him the star of the volume. Understanding the reasoning behind the things he did doesn’t make what he did justified but it did allow you to connect with the character on a deeper level. Pretty solid character!
At the very end of the volume, Yuika’s little pep talk perked Kyu up and made him realize what a recluse he had been this entire time; however, the pep talk alone wasn’t fully responsible for Kyu waking up and realizing he needed to be a bit more outgoing. Solving these cases lit a fire inside of him and even his parents took notice that he was starting to act like the old Kyu back when Shu was still around. Both that fire and Yuika’s pep talk combined to get him to realize that things need to change with him personally and that became the foundation for his plan to fight back against Zenichirou! A little quick on the development but, then again, this is a three-volume series so if any development were to be had, it would have to be here. Given the length of the series, it was perfectly placed.
Also, in what I expected to happen with a series this short, we were introduced to all of the other super phone users one panel at a time. The typical “name and one-liner background info” treatment. Well, at least they are all out there in the open now.
Final Thoughts
As I feared, things are being rushed along; however, with only three volumes, they kind of need to be. With more time, this could have been a proper battle royal; however, it’s just a matter of one evil super phone user and a bunch of others who feel they need to band together. It reminds me of the movie Hackers where the hackers of the world united to take down The Plague. It has a very similar feel and, honestly, is the only direction this series can go.
It is what it is; however, Zenichirou is turning out to be a proper villain; however, I’ve seen this archetype before. A powerful and intelligent villain who seems unbeatable, yet, they will make one mistake and it will lead to their downfall. The only problem is that they made that mistake already in the first volume by revealing their identity. No matter how well thought out their plans are, typically doing something like that is just asking for defeat.
It’s a bit hard to predict the ending to this series, though. What is a given is that Zenichirou will go down but what is going to happen once all of that is said and done? Does the series just end? What of the other users? With eight chapters left, this is going to be super rushed or just left wide open for interpretation… in other words… a non-ending ending. We’ll find out soon enough, though. Either way, my curiosity is piqued.
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
