You know when the main Japanese demographic your anime markets towards ends up hating your anime then you know it blows chunks. Not even pretty girls can remedy that fact. I shouldve listened to OtaKing. Well rationality is incomprehensible to anyone involved with this shows existence. If you dont want to see a rant on this crappy piece of work that is the cheap bootleg equivalent to Konosuba and an insult to harems isekai and entertainment leave immediately. The gloves come off and the spell of death is cast. Creative bankruptcy. Its something that any artist of any medium worth his or her salt should dread when creating a work. Its when the art has no soul of any kind no artistic purpose behind it meant only for the money. That brings us to our target: Isekai wa Smartphone. This pile of insufferable bland incompetent dreck can fuck off for giving harem and isekai shows a bad name more so than they already have and for not caring about being a show for people to watch. It has no soul no drive and is just an example of corporate greed and a lack of care by literally everyone involved in every aspect of production outside of the voice actors. It is the antithesis of spellbinding as it halfheartedly casts the spell of boredom and hatred. This anime cant establish anything properly. It cant establish magic until way after it was used and even then the system especially concerning null is stupid. It doesnt establish the idea of guilds properly at all. The gauntlets the currency none of it Part of it is because its worldbuilding is beyond atrocious and there are gigantic leaps and lies so yeah. Oh heres an example When a butler got hit with an arrow offscreen how? Apparently he and the guys he was with were surrounded by lizards with swords and shields so that cant work and apparently part of it broke off and... yeah. Also inconsistent magic since they say the only way to use magic except maybe null was with special designated crystals yet they violate that multiple times. Oh and the protagonist knows literally every magic ever including the personal null ones which are already a bad system due to being contradictory since theyre supposed to be unique but theyre recorded in ways that imply more people can use these null spells but theyre each limited to a few people at a time and heck the magic system as a while had its own tuned violated constantly with people constantly using elemental magic without a magical fragment catalyst so fuck this animes own rules amirite? Oh and they just randomly and haphazardly insert us into a bunch of scenarios for the characters to quickly solve and have no remote emotional effect on the audience or even have any meaningful things for the characters aside from them interacting and constantly blushing. God this piece. Do I even need to mention that this is a generic piece of work with so many of the worst clichs of a typical LN and that it has some of the worst variations on them I have ever seen? Do I need to mention that this is basically an offbrand of Konosuba that actually went beyond an expiration date before airing? No? Well too bad What about the setting and story beats? Well heres something interesting: we dont know how MCkun died Think back to any Isekai youve seen. Re:Zero? Subaru blinked and somehow fake into a fantasy world unsure how it happened but he was summoned by Satela. Knights Magic? Kurata who we know as Ernesti in the fantasy world got ran over though we dont know how he got to his fantasy world. Konosuba? Kazuma died of shock and tricked a stupid cunt goddess into coming with him into a fantasy world. Here well God tells him that he was stuck by a bolt and then is willing to send him somewhere we dont actually see what happened to him. It wouldnt have taken long to do something so basic but look at what Im reviewing. It cant have a good sweet moment either since it ruins those even though they dont even work in the first place but way to ruin your theoretical chance anime Oh and pacing is fucked with this one especially in the first half. I know Im just sort of ranting and raving but damn my brain is trying to scrape this show off of it and none of my friends want to kill this anime so I have to now. This show has no effort put into anything at all why should I bother? I would say because I care and because I try to put effort by honestly my brain is committing genocide against any specifics I can bring up about this nightmare of a show. I dont think this anime had heard of this term Im about to say: its called characterization No character has a real defined personality especially not the main character who at best can be defined as the stereotypical boring and weak yet OP AF protagonist like Ayato from The Asterisk War. By far this shows most disturbing and avantgarde offense is that I actually believe that all of the main women in the show are largely the exact same character with the most minor of different traits. No show to my knowledge has ever done that before. Obviously these bitches are all trash especially the tsundere one for being a typical tsundere. I cant remember any real traits from anyone else for this show has staged a coup on my brain The other characters are bland and without personality and do stuff you expect so that leaves us with MCkun. Oh wait I said everything about him other than the fact they he gets so OP without any actual progression that it constantly feels like hes pulling powers out of his ass and yes he does get a harem to the point where all of the members can even travel with him its their crowded a harem and for next to no reason beyond Dude is nice enough to help and can do crazy things and not due to anything about his personality or even looks... ugh. His name is Touya and I learned that over time but its obviously not worth remembering. Actually why should you remember a single characters name? Aside from weakling OP MCkun I certainly dont There is nothing standout or remotely interesting about any of them. They also constantly blush and get embarrassed for no adequate reason. Theyre also all idiots as displayed by the crimesolving scene in episode 4. I only remember something about the blonde 12 year old princess and its that she acts like a 6 year old half the time. Just...wow. I could go on and on about the character and especially the narrative problems but honestly this anime tries so little in any department that its honestly not worth it. Veteran studio Production Reed took the reigns for this and boy did they not do a good job to put it lightly. The character art and overall animation are both so unbelievably flat and so is the magic. Its not a pleasant view at any point it all looks insanely plain lifedraining in fact The character designs are pretty terrible overall to add insult to injury. They can even get walking right as it looks like theyre often moving both forward and backward in some walking scenes like the beginning of episode 3. In fact they always mess it up somehow and its just walking How? Why? Oh and when you see debris in a fight scene it looks so poorly drawn and it doesnt fit well with any of the rest of the art at all. Dont expect much animation in the fight scenes either especially in the episode 7 duel with the awful looking wooden swords and I thought Akashic Records was bad in that department. You can also see some rather noticeable errors here like faces being off the fact that one of the characters who has a sword suddenly had two swords with hilts on her sleeve and not her waist and yeah its pretty bad and lazy. They also use a lot of visual gag shortcuts that I thought only longrunning shounens were allowed to get away with since no other kind of show uses them and those shows have an insane amount of episodes to have to spread their budget and staff and time etc. on. Its a visual bore with blunders though thankfully there really isnt any CGI to speak of since Im sure that probably wouldve been handled poorly just like every there aspect of this show. You know except it contains some atrocious CGI stairs that have a gigantic frame rate drop and get repeated verbatim later on with a different color and some abysmal fire effects that last for a while in episode 5 You know because this anime also has to compete for the worst visuals of 2017 too The main uniform the girls wear looks awful especially with those lines in the white part. One of the character designs is blatantly ripped from the princess from Knights Magic whose anime adaptation just so happens to be airing at the same time as this only she has been aged down by comparison to a 12yearold. Why are we sexualizing 12yearolds again? Also expect some shitty digital closeups. Lastly for God knows what reason they have it so that the eyebrows and eyelashes always overlap with the hair rather than being obstructed by it. This is basic anime shit and they constantly mess that up. Then again they didnt really try here either did they? Oh and theres a fair amount of reused animation so thats a sin especially since unlike Knights Magic this isnt a mecha show not that I really excuse that show for it either. Cmon its 2017 This shit shouldnt be happening anymore And.. .thats everything for this one. Sadly this is somehow the shows best or rather its least worst aspect it only barely. For what its worth the OST on its own isnt actually that abysmal though some tracks are especially bad and wrong. Sure none of it works or can even be considered memorable but whats worse is the fact that almost none of it ever fits with the scenes at all. Oh and while Ill talk about those cancerous scene transitions a bit later and how pointless and aggravating they are in every way possible lets just say that the music makes matters worse in those moments. The OP is the most obnoxious and generic JPop song I have ever heard in my life especially the techno aspects. Fuck this song its not worth naming since its one of the worst OP songs I have ever heard. Same applies to the ED to a slightly lesser extent its also awful and I dont care which of the characters sings it. There is nothing of merit to the music in this show whatsoever and that almost never happens. If that isnt sad I dont know what is. You know I have to ask: for those out there who actually enjoyed this anime how? What is the appeal of this? Is it the fact that the main character is OP? Is it the fact that this is a world with magic? Is it the admittedly out there premise? Because... I dont see this as a show that really wants to entertain like at all. I see no semblance of soul from this anime no spirit or any enthusiasm from it or anything. Its not even just super bland to the point of feeling like it was meant for passive entertainment like some other perfunctory works out there. Its not like it even really attempts to have interesting consistent or involved fight scenes either. At best it tries to pander with the whole slime nonsense in ways that should probably be seen as an insult to the intelligence or at the very least ways that should be met with shrugs and groans. And as for the OP MC part why? Isnt it boring to see some guy plow through anything especially if he doesnt really do anything fancy or especially crazy and flashy or have any personality to latch into while doing it? Wouldnt you want that kind of MC to have some actual personality or actually show off some crazy epic shit to cheese fights instead of cheering fights without any effort? Wouldnt you want someone like Izayoi from Problem Children over this main character? So it has come to this: the transitions Fuck these things They are nothing but obnoxious timewasters with blaring and equally obnoxious music either showing the results of a scene for 5 seconds or what happened already with these stupid and obnoxious characters and voices doing stupid and aggravating things You see anywhere from 68 of these an episode too You can no doubt tell this got irritating fast Why was this included? Why? For comedy? I doubt it succeeded with many viewers. So yeah this show was boring and vexing as all hell. Not a single moment to enjoy. It doesnt even try so of course I feel unamused to the nth degree. Not to mention that there were a few specific moments boob grab scene in episode 9 being chief among them that were especially maddening so that didnt help one bit. Some of you might say Why not just turn your brain off and enjoy the ride? Because its so fucking boring and stupid thats why If I didnt keep my brain permanently on thinking mode when watching anime Id have dropped so many more by now since I wouldve quit the moment I got really angry bored from watching hence more of my time wouldve been wasted I actually heard people say this was a parody of these kinds of shows: it is not. It image then completely straight and pretends to be mildly selfaware so that blows. So yeah this show fails on both levels Fuck this show I hate it I hate it so much This might prime some of you to ask: Why did you watch this obviously bad show in the first place? Well some people probably watched it out of interest of the admittedly out there premise. Maybe some wanted a trashy anime to chill to and likely found themselves still disappointed. And of course some of us came here just to join hands with a chunk of the community always ready to see a truly and obviously terrible burn and revel in the flames together I mean usually the anime suffering that fate deserves it often coming one by one to see if it is as bad as the reputation hypes it up to be. Not gonna lie that was part of it for me. The other part was that for all intents and purposes this did catch my eye as something I thought would just be a belowaverage at best isekai title for me to watch and feel little towards at least after I was initially put off by the cover picture. However I can definitely say that it did deserve the fate I mentioned in the third reason because as I have been saying over and over again this anime is the very definition of laziness when it comes to this medium. Anime is a very intensive and passionfilled medium. There are so many titles out there good and bad that obviously show a ton of passion and effort in at least some regard. So when I see an anime as lazy as this get a sizeable viewership while better and more passionate if not always good shows like Knights Magic ACCA 13 and so on and so forth get at best a much lower viewership and at worst the absolute shaft I get royally angry. People had to slave over this and no passion feels like its coming out no care put into anything regarding this show. I am so thankful that this show is getting quite a thrashing and honestly it needs all the hate it can get. Honestly unless you really want to watch something without a soul you should avoid this anime entirely as this anime is an affront to the medium as a whole. Is it the absolute worst anime out there? No there are some worse ones out there for their own reasons but this anime really has no right to exist and honestly it is still very very high up there both in an alltime perspective and in the perspective of this season alone. It manages to be an affront to the concept of entertainment on top of the concepts of a harem and isekai show.