Title: Super Smartphone Vol. 1
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, or Q as he has come to be known, has been a genius his entire life. When he was eight, his 5-year-old brother Shu went missing. After searching high and low for him, the case went unsolved. In the present day, Kyu opens his bag and notices something that looks like a toy smartphone in there. It comes loaded with an A.I. assistant and it can search the world for any information; however, there are limitations. It can only search for things that have been created by humans and have information/documentation attached to it. For example, he wouldn’t be able to search for a person based on the clothes they are wearing because that same piece of clothing is manufactured, has no serial number, and is worn by too many people.
Kyu uses the super smartphone and learns that by performing certain tasks, he can accumulate points. There is a daily quota for points and once you reach 1,296 points, you will own the super smartphone forever. Failing to meet the daily quota, and telling people about the phone or its abilities will revoke the user’s right to use it. Kyu wants to use the phone to find his missing brother; however, he quickly discovers that any search on Shu turns up with a 403 or 404 error. Using his superior intelligence, Kyu realizes that he’s not the only super smartphone user and that his brother must have been abducted by one!
The battle to earn points and face off against other super smartphone users has begun!
Characters
While there are a couple of other characters, the manga mainly focuses on Kyu. Being a genius on top of losing his brother, Kyu has lost interest in most things. In fact, he’s the kind of person who will purposely get as close to a 60 on a test as possible because calculating the weight of each question, answering his selected questions correctly, and discovering which ones he can intentionally leave blank make taking tests more interesting to him. In other words, he’s a super nerd.
Since he has brilliant deduction skills, he combines them with his super smartphone to start solving cases in the local area. Things such as finding the kidnapper of a young girl, exposing wire transfer scammers, and protecting his childhood friend from a high-rise mass robbery are things he does to earn points with his phone. Kyu’s personality combines high intelligence and a sloth-like lifestyle; yet, a strong sense of justice… especially when it comes to protecting someone who is like family to him, which brings us to our next character.
Yuika is his childhood friend and the cutest girl in school. Despite this, she’s pretty average. She’s there to scold Kyu whenever he doesn’t take his tests seriously, admonishes him for being lazy, and tries to motivate him to go back to the way things were between them as kids. She understands the impact that Shu’s kidnapping had on him so while she is coming off as an overbearing parent rather than as a childhood friend, she does so because deep down, she misses the way Kyu used to be and yearns to have that version of him back. It shows how deeply she cares for him. That also makes her a good friend, too.
Next up we have Seomizu… the ace detective of the cybercrime division. Kyu was sending tips to the police as “The Informant” and, of course, Seomizu catches on and notices a connection between the tips being received and the person sending them; however, she has very little to go on. As for her personality… well… rough around the edges doesn’t even begin to do her personality justice. She sugarcoats nothing, cares not about what people think about her, and has a terrible attitude; however, has the respect of her peers because of her go-getter attitude and uncanny intelligence. Plus, she has a chip on her shoulder for what the force did to her father… someone who held the same position she holds now. Despite being loud and obnoxious, she’s pretty interesting.
Final Thoughts
The overall premise of the series is really solid. We have a super smartphone user who wants to find his missing brother, needs to collect points so that his phone won’t get revoked, and uses those accumulated points to unlock levels on the phone so he can gain access to more features to help him in his search. At the same time, other super smartphone users are doing the same thing and if someone reaches the maximum number of points first, the worst-case scenario could come true… which is that person would use their phone for world domination and/or have the other users killed so that there could only be one true user.
This is where the series also suffers. All of these conclusions come from Kyu himself. He only assumes all of this is going to happen; however, he has no proof. In fact, a lot of the instances in this first volume come from “out-of-left-field” deductions on Kyu’s part rather than carefully analyzing these facts and/or creating a web of information to support them. It’s almost as if he thinks of a possible scenario, and deems it to be true, and we, the reader, must accept it as fact with the only excuse we have to work with being that Kyu is a genius. In other words, the writing is a bit lazy and sloppy and filled with a few deus ex machina statements to add, what feels like, artificial tension into a story that doesn’t need any.
This, of course, hurts the pacing a bit. There are only three volumes in this series so the story does need to wrap up quickly. For such a short series, I don’t see the point in adding other super smartphone users. Had they just left it at “gather points, unlock new abilities, find your brother,” then I think it wouldn’t have felt as rushed. This volume did too much and that tells me that the creators felt the series would have gone longer and got canceled or they overshot things a little when trying to plan out a three-volume series.
Despite this, I didn’t dislike this first volume at all. I still enjoyed the story being told even if the name of the phone is a bit bizarre… I mean Googugu… surely there could have been a better name, right? I also can’t see there being more than one other super smartphone user. There just isn’t enough time to introduce more than one… and with the first volume revealing another user, the pacing doesn’t line up to warrant many more users being out there.
We’ll see where this heads but I will say, gripes aside, it’s off to a decent start!
You can also check out other The Outerhaven reviews on your favorite social media networks:
Subscribe to us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theouterhaven
Subscribe to us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheOuterHaven
Subscribe to us on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/theouterhavennet
This item was provided for review by Viz Media
