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2018-11-04, 03:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
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- Malaysia
Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
...and I was surprised by how empty I felt at the end of it. Now the anime we get on Netflix may not be the greatest, but I expected something more.
The problems I had with it:
SpoilerThe protagonist has no urgent goal. The protagonist has no urgent threat he needs to respond to. The protagonist's challenges have a marked lack of tension in them. The only things that came close were the battle against the Phrase construct and then the dragon that couldn't speak. But other than that, he just powers through things without even trying. He develops a bewildering array of new abilities, which he can then combine for greater effect, just by seeing them once. It's like watching someone play a video game on Very Easy mode.
Comedy? Tiny pieces here and there. Romantic tension or interpersonal drama? It's a cheap harem plot with annoying amounts of eye candy. Character development? The characters start uninspired and keep going in that direction. Action, art, and animation? Average at best.
I was hanging on, either for an opponent that could somehow match him, or a scenario where his capabilities would be pushed to the limit. But it never happened. Just easy wins and eye candy.
I hear it's based on a novel series, so maybe it's a bad adaptation or something, I'd like to hear from those who know more.Awesome OOTS-style Fallout New Vegas avatar by Ceika. Or it was, before Photobucket started charging money.
General nerd person. Mostly computer games and manga.
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2018-11-04, 04:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2013
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
What you describe is entirely normal for the current crop of isekai. They have no real plot, the MC gets OP abilities handed to him and struggles with nothing and has no real goal. So likely no, not a bad adaption that is just how most Isekai are.
If you are wondering why that crap gets turned into manga and sometimes anime, well there are some who like the concept enough that they consume all of that kind. I expect most will get tired of it at some point and a new trend will replace it.
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2018-11-05, 10:00 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2008
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- Germany
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Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
Oh, you sat through the whole story? I gave up after three episodes or so.
I mean, as you say, it's just very bland and I didn't feel it was worth my time. But I feel like if they had focused on the power of a magic smartphone in a fantasy world it could have been a really cool show.
Also, yes, it seems isekai is the big trend right now. Not that I mind in general, but it doesn't always go well..
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2018-11-05, 10:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2007
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- Switzerland
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2018-11-05, 11:19 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2009
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
Is it the boring slime one? Because it reminded me of a slice of life, where nothing matters and making jokes is the point, I guess?
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2018-11-05, 11:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2013
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
Last edited by Ibrinar; 2018-11-05 at 11:46 AM.
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2018-11-05, 12:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2009
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- In my library
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
I just had to google that word to check it meant what I thought it meant.
Weren't we getting some interesting takes on the genre a few years ago? Works that focused on the realities of people being transported into other worlds, used them as lenses to explore actual issues, threw actual challenges at their heroes, or intentionally made them unchallenging in order to focus on something else. I mean, my first manga was MAR, which wasn't the greatest take on this genre and introduced a plot point that meant we knew that the main character essentially couldn't lose, but at least managed to keep the stakes high enough before the tournament arc and for other characters during it.
Also, as has been said the genre itself is actually fairly old. As in the earliest examples I can think of are Narnia and John Carter of Mars, and I'm sure there's older stories. It's not like Western Portal Fantasy stories are dead and forgotten, I've heard good things about the Thomas Covenant books and I'm writing my own take during the days when I'm not too tired from work.
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2018-11-05, 02:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2012
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- Across the spiraling sea.
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
I believe that the first (to my knowledge) example would be Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but I would argue that Gulliver's Travels is an even earlier example (honestly you could probably trace it even further back to the Orpheus myth, but I won't). Both novels used the format as a means of examining and satirizing then current social and political issues, so that aspect has basically been a central element since the genre's inception.
To the OP: I made a post on the anime discussion thread about a week ago briefly going over why i think it's so prevalent these days, which you may find helpful.
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2018-11-05, 03:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2009
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- In my library
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
Good points, not read Gulliver's Travels but I forgot Alice just because there's no explicit 'going through the portal' moment, although there is in 'Through the Looking Glass' (sort of). I actually feel like playing with the 'dream fantasy' formula a lot more now, but I don't think I can really work it into the narrative I have going. But yes, although I'll note that almost every genre has been used to examinesocial and political issues, occasionally because the authorities decided a book set in the future couldn't possibly be doing that (also The Mikado is about Japan, not Victorian Britain).
To the OP: I made a post on the anime discussion thread about a week ago briefly going over why i think it's so prevalent these days, which you may find helpful.
Yep, that's pretty much exactly what's happening. Now I fully suspect we'll be looking back on them in ten years and going 'hey, we missed these good shows beneath the endless bad ones', but that's the case with every trend. I suspect we'll have to wait for the next trend to see this one leave.
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2018-11-05, 08:03 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2015
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
One thing about anime production that's important to recognize is that, generally, it is much cheaper to make a bad show than a good one, especially if you have any action involved. Cutting corners on the action saves money in a very literal way, and this is one reason why endless terrible slice-of-life shows get greenlit because they can be made on the super cheap with low production values (it's also why there's been an increasing move to use 3DCG animation in action heavy series because that's cheaper to produce). As a result, an isekai show where the protagonist blatantly steamrolls everything means you don't have to animate any complex fight choreography and therefore it can be made on a literal shoestring.
In a sense, the anime production companies are spamming the market in an attempt to maximize expose and win the character lottery by finding a character with a design and personality that everyone likes so they can sell hordes of figures and accessories for the sweet, sweet merchandising dollars. This makes sense, because there's relatively minimal profits to be made from the actual show itself - ads on Japanese TV don't make a lot and the DVD market has been dead for a decade. In fact, it's quite reasonable to view many anime, especially single-cour 12-13 episode shows that present only a fraction of their source material, simply as rather lengthy advertisements.
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2018-11-05, 08:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2012
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
I actually like the first little bit of Smartphone, because it had this lack of pretension to it and reminded me of Hayate no Gotoku in its art style and certain choices in its production are similar -- though I don't believe it's the same studio. That maybe it would just be a gormless, breezy comedy where dramatic tension wasn't necessary.
Then it just sort of phased out even rudimentary cohesive story-telling or developing much potential humour and became about the harem fantasy aspect of it. Even if you're into that kind of fanservice-heavy anime - and there's certainly a market for it - it doesn't really work with the limitations of the art style and cheap looking animation.
I think the most disappointing part is that the smartphone is pretty superfluous. Like, even if you go into it with the expectation that the protagonist isn't going to be meaningfully challenged and will become essentially omnipotent at a certain point anyways, you can make getting there kind of interesting with a new tact on how they become powerful. Like, they have a seemingly weak power that can be creatively exploited to break the system or something. With this, developing a magic system based around smartphone apps could have been fun even if it's in an overall dull narrative. In stead, he's just given whatever superpower he could want or needs with no drawbacks or even effort on his part, and the phone is just an occasional convenience to make his life even easier.
Anyways, I'm curious if the contemporary Isekai bubble will burst in the near future at least in anime, The only ones which seem to persist are Overlord, Konosuba, and SAO. Granted there are still many out there to adapt, so that's whatever.Last edited by Kitten Champion; 2018-11-05 at 08:11 PM.
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2018-11-05, 08:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2008
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- Malaysia
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
KonoSuba at least was funny, and despite the main character being surrounded by anime-cute girls they mostly annoyed the crap out of him with their bizarre antics. It was clearly a partial subversion of game-world expectations, and did so fairly well I think. Sometimes to the point of bathos, but hey you can't win them all.
Even Overlord had us kind of following the protagonist as he tries to understand the world he's in. As much as I resented the clear OP-ness of the MC and his minions, at least they looked cool while being OP.
Smartphone had countless opportunities to transcend bland wish fulfillment and simply...didn't.
I suppose trend-chasing is a universal phenomenon after all, huh.
Re:the genre itself. When you talk to me about "in another world" fantasies the first one I remember is the Narnia books. Though I only read the first two. The genre is effective, in my opinion, because you get to combine a real-world POV with a fantasy world. That makes the delivery of information to the audience a bit more organic.
I also toyed with the idea of writing my own, though it's in all likelihood just a pipe dream.Awesome OOTS-style Fallout New Vegas avatar by Ceika. Or it was, before Photobucket started charging money.
General nerd person. Mostly computer games and manga.
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2018-11-05, 08:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2009
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- In my library
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
That's the thing, Hayate no Gotoku might technically be a harem series, but it has great writing and it's funny. It manages to be a harem series that doesn't rely on fanservice,
Yeah, it's a tricky genre to write. How much time do you spend establishing the real world (my answer is actually that I begin as a fantasy story and the portal aspects are revealed later, but that's subject to change), how well do you have them fit in, how powerful do you make real worlders, and so on. On top of all the high versus low fantasy stuff (low fantasy for me, because I'm playing with some tropes I dislike).
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2018-11-05, 09:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2012
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
Sure, but Smartphone could've gone in that direction or at least attempted to. The dull elements of an OP protagonist or a thinly developed universe can be greatly offset if the work itself is self-aware and clever in its execution -- like One Punch Man or Konosuba.
Smartphone's somewhat more comedic and lighter than other contemporaries and with its art and animation I could easily see it aiming more for a younger audience, but it didn't commit to anything really. It just did everything halfway and poorly, including the harem fluff.
I'm not really mad at it, because it's kind of nothing at the end of day. I have more annoyance with stuff like that Death March one, where with its level of polished animation and voice acting that it had it's deeply unfortunate it has to follow a such a thin, underdeveloped story with a dull invincible protagonist. Like, it's a lot of man-hours and sleepless nights for people working on something that could only aspire to be passable if you're very forgiving.Last edited by Kitten Champion; 2018-11-05 at 09:49 PM.
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2018-11-06, 03:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2007
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- Switzerland
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Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
Oh, absolutely. If we take Portal Fantasy as the more general "person from this world stranded in fantasy world" instead of just the newer brand of Isekai anime, I've read dozens and dozens of those as a teenager. (Our library had two shelves of Wolfgang Hohlbein. I assume the Germans on this board know him.)
Last edited by Eldan; 2018-11-06 at 03:53 AM.
Resident Vancian Apologist
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2018-11-06, 09:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2012
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- Across the spiraling sea.
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2018-11-06, 11:36 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2013
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- The Chi
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Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
These are not terribly difficult decisions or any different from a regular fantasy tale. You add the question of designing the “real world” but that comes pre-built if you use our actual world. It’s usually not developed anyway because it’s not the setting, the fantasy world is.
Moreover, you are not obligated to start by developing a setting. Most authors describing their process from beginning with a premise. Take the basic concept, think up a thin description your main character, start writing and fill things in as you go along.
Most isekai appear like they’re doing this.The laws of physics are not crying in a corner, they are bawling in the forums.
Thanks to half-halfling for the avatar
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2018-11-06, 01:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2014
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Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
This reminds me of the mid-2000s childrens/YA series The Keys to the Kingdom. With a story based around a boy becoming the heir of the missing God and his struggles with the seven angels ruling in Her name, a lot of readers missed that his native world is a near-future version of Earth that's had a history with biological weapons.
Spoiler: Pixel avatar and Raincloud Durkoala were made by me. The others are the work of Cuthalion.
Cuteness and Magic and Phone Moogles, oh my! Let's Watch Card Captor Sakura!Sadly on asmallhiatus.
Durkoala reads a book! It's about VR and the nineties!
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2018-11-06, 04:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2013
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
The neverending story is an interesting case because it spends forever with him just reading about the other world, though I guess despite him being technically in our world for a long time it doesn't get much actual page time.
Ah Hohlbein I read much of his as kid/teen. Though after a few books you notice some repeating patterns.
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2018-11-06, 04:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2009
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- In my library
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
Eh, not really.
You need to decide 1) how your character(s) fit into the real world, 2) how much time you want to spend in the real world before going to the fantasy world ('none' is acceptable). That's before getting into time periods (are we going for modern day? Mine has people leaving the world in the early-2010s, because that's when I was 18ish).
Sure it's not always developed, but it can be. Imagine a portal fantasy where a homeless ex-soldier suffering from PTSD gets transported to another world where they have to fight again. We've just had to establish some of the 'real world' to determine our character, and our story will vary wildly if we have our character go to Fantasyland on page one or page 150 (out of 734). Now in general we don't want to spend too much time in the real world, because as you've said Fantasyland is the real setting, but that's not to say that we can't have important events happenging there or establishing the MC's life there.
Moreover, you are not obligated to start by developing a setting. Most authors describing their process from beginning with a premise. Take the basic concept, think up a thin description your main character, start writing and fill things in as you go along.
Most isekai appear like they’re doing this.
Never actually read it, I'd already moved on to 'adult' books by the time it was coming out, although I do think his Old Kingdom trilogy (haven't read the latest ones) were a good example of Portal Fantasy with no 'real' world (going from one imaginary world to another).
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2018-11-06, 04:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2010
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Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
It would be fun to write a reverse isekai. The character appears in the video game world and is constantly beset by horrors they can't deal with, bonding with NPCs and then watching them die to quick time events. Maybe even have the main character be an NPC instead of a PC, and struggling to figure out how to survive and protect their new friends in a world where they are weaker then goblins and can't level. They build increasingly elaborate traps and fortifications to hold off bad guys, invest heavily in gunpowder, demon summoning and undead to protect themselves and are finally killed by the heroes because they are clearly the "villain."
Edit Expansion: So to go full reverse, the main character is a jock type (those still exist right?) who has a younger brother who is a classic shut in. The younger brother Robert is a gaming fanatic who rarely leaves his room and gets bullied at school, while main character Jordan has a girlfriend, is in drama and some B rank sport like lacross (no need to be totally cliche.)
Robert purchases a new game system at the start of the summer break and tells everyone to not disturb him for the summer. Jordan becomes worried after not seeing Robert come out even to use the restroom for weeks. He goes into his brother's room and finds a swirling vortex where the screen on the TV should be. He falls in/goes in/whatever and is dumped into the RPG.
Robert is no where to be seen, and Jordan wakes up in a small village full of normal village folks. He walks around in a daze, trying to figure out what is going on until the village is destroyed by a goblin attack. His last sight before he is killed by a goblin riding a giant spider is his brother in a hero costume (probably a wizard type?) killing goblins.
After dying Jordan wakes up in his bed in the same village. All of the villagers are aware of what happened, it happens every night without fail. Jordan then groundhogs days his way through a large number of attempts to stop the attacks, during which other heroes show up but his brother does not return. The groundhogs day effects the villagers but not the heroes.
Even if Jordan leaves the village he is teleported back to his bed the next morning. He discovers the location of the portal home but cannot get to it before the day resets, and when he talks to the heroes a box of writing appears over his head and they cannot hear his voice. He finds out from reading hero text conversations that the beta ends at the end of summer, and he has only a month left to escape or he will be deleted when they reset the servers.
The big trick Jordan discovers is that player characters can't injure good NPCs, and if the villains win there is an escalating series of raids towards the capital where the spawn/portal is. So he convinces the NPCs to assist the goblins by pinning down heroes thst the goblins finish off. He forges an army to take the capital, telling villains and NPCs that if they seize the spawn point it will break the cycle and they can live normal lives.
He discovers the server is also a hardcore PVP server so every battle is to his advantage.
Everywhere the combination of indestructible good NPCs and villains succeed and players become pissed a the "glitch." The programmers remove the restriction and make all NPCs villains as well as turning off their spawns, and resurrects all PCs with PVP turned off. Jordan launches the combined army of undead, goblins and demon worshippers at the capital where all of the heroes are. During the battle he hides in a cellar until the fighting ends, then walks past the corpses of heroes and villains and uses the portal to leave.Last edited by Tvtyrant; 2018-11-07 at 02:29 AM.
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2018-11-06, 08:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
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- Canada
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Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
First Isekai that sticks to my mind other than what has already been mentioned, like Alice in wonderland, would be The Odyssey. It was a live action Canadian produced tv show from 1992. A kid trying to climb a tree to retrieve something stolen by a bully falls and ends up in a coma. He ends up in an alternate world populated solely by children under 16 who have devolved to tribal gangs. He has memory loss from the brain injury so knows he's meant to go home but can't remember what home was. Cuts back and forth between the real and alternate world occasionally to show how his family and friends are dealing with things.
Sparxs Plays: My friend's Youtube gaming channel where you can watch us.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbj...9MQHA/featured
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2018-11-07, 02:53 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2015
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
Well call me very forgiving, because while the pace was sedate, or a sedative, there were some good comedy moments with the names of skills and calls back to those skills at choice moments, and the hint of something deeper whenever it delved into the mechanics of different abilities (like the difference between the in-universe item box and his video game inventory) or the suggestion that there's more going on behind the world with his memories and how he doesn't fit into the usual explanations for his situation. There's some unfortunate moments where it goes from 0 to harem (or worse) in 2 seconds, but he usually derails those in short order as well. All he wants is a nice woman his own (actual) age, of whom he is not the legal owner. It's a weird show. I wouldn't recommend anyone watch it.
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2018-11-07, 03:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2012
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
It had a number of moments where it went into pedantic detail about the world, but none of its couched in any kind of tension where the conclusions he reaches are narratively interesting. They're mostly there because the author wants to talk about them through him - and it fills up chapters space - but they come off as someone trying to break the system in a video game rather than ya'know, mattering. It's like reading a Superman comic where he exploits his ice breath to make his refrigerator more environmentally efficient, and then finding out that it's part of an intense three comic arc.
Which is vexing especially because his extended cast get little to no characterization whatsoever while spending time muddling through his vast arrays of powers which he's arbitrarily deciding to use at that moment.
It was the same with Knight's and Magic - which the anime is notably better than than the web novel because of how much it edits out - you get pages upon pages upon pages about the protagonist learning the world's magic system and how he casually redefines it to serve his purposes, but the supporting characters are left cardboard cutouts that circle around him because I guess they have to exists too.Last edited by Kitten Champion; 2018-11-07 at 03:28 AM.
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2018-11-07, 08:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2014
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- Death realm
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2018-11-07, 10:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2012
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
The web novel is, I don't know about the manga adaptation.
If the anime was a straight adaptation of the WN, half of it would be nothing but exposition. Just, wall-to-wall "and that's how this works" and "this is how I, the protagonist, will improve upon it with my out-of-universe knowledge and raw genius".
The anime isn't great really - insofar as it has the same prevalent flaws of the genre - but its adaptation does the work to identify the elements of the story that are potentially interesting to anyone who doesn't care for pedantic magic system fluff and that could be conveyed through visuals rather than lengthy exposition dumps, and its plot in general has been restructured to work within the 13 episodes they were given. It doesn't feel like swimming through molasses to watch, basically.
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2018-11-07, 11:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2012
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- Across the spiraling sea.
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2018-11-08, 03:11 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2015
Re: Just saw In Another World With My Smartphone...
If you guys want a good laugh....
https://myanimelist.net/anime/35203/...omo_ni/reviews
There are some real gems in there if you look