Welcome to This Week in Shonen Jump, our weekly check in on Viz’s various Shonen Jump series. Viz has recently changed their release format, but our format will mostly remain the same. We will still review the newest chapters of one title a week, now with even more options at our disposal. The big change for our readers is that, even without a Shonen Jump subscription, you can read these most recent chapters for free at Viz.com or using their app.
This week, Robbie checks in with “Super Smartphone.” If you have thoughts on this or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Super Smartphone Chapter 21: Entanglement
Written by Hiroki Tomisawa
Illustrated by Kentaro Hidano
Reviewed by Robbie Pleasant
Often, when reading a series in “Shonen Jump,” a series has a chapter where everything starts accelerating at such a sudden and unexpected pace that you have to wonder if it’s struggling against cancellation. For “Super Smartphone,” this is that chapter.
For a series that’s focused on a cat-and-mouse strategy of mind games and piecing clues together, it’s suddenly dropped a lot at once, in terms of characters, story, and twists. So much so that I had to go back and make sure I didn’t miss a chapter. After all, when one chapter ends with characters forming a new team, and the next one begins with the existence of super smartphones being revealed to the world, it definitely feels like it skipped a step.
In this chapter, we have:
– The prime minister telling Japan that super smartphones exist
– Zenichiro learns Kyu’s identity
– Kyu learns that Zenichiro is somehow connected to his brother’s disappearance
– Zenichiro uses his media connections to sic a mob on Kyu’s family
– A strange pair of people type symbols in the air and drop important-sounding phrases like “the turning point of destiny,” “death entanglement,” and “the trial,” which is somehow connected to Zenichiro and Shu
Yes, all that in one chapter. Revelations that could normally take up an entire chapter come at us so quickly that we barely have time to absorb them, and often to the point of making no sense (the connection between Zenichiro and Shu comes completely out of nowhere). It’s likely that Hiroki Tomisawa has to bring in all the planned plot points now to wrap them all up quickly, but in doing so completely drops the current threads, and shifts the pacing to a jarring degree.
But frankly, that’s not too surprising for “Super Smartphone” overall. While the series has a decent concept, its execution has been iffy. A battle of minds series can be great if it’s paced properly and really does feel like a match of intellects (“Death Note” being the best example of this, but that’s no surprise), but “Super Smartphone” hasn’t managed to hit that level. It does have some amusing character concepts and nice character designs going for it, but it simply hasn’t managed to hit that level of engagement that it needs to really thrive.
Meanwhile, Kentaro Hidano’s artwork is… fine. It is perfectly good “Jump” manga artwork, utilizing bold linework, large and exaggerated features, and some decent moments of good shading and big expressions to get the tone and emotions across. In fact, this chapter gives Hidano’s artwork a real chance to come through, with big reaction shots and emotional moments from both protagonists and antagonists, as well as plenty of amusing side-characters with designs that are honestly more unique than our protagonist Kyu. There may not be anything exceptionally outstanding about it, so I can’t gush about it like I would for an artist like Boichi or Yusuke Murata, but it’s still above average manga art.
Sadly, it doesn’t seem like that’ll be enough to save the series, if this sudden rush is any indication. It feels like the manga is heading towards an abrupt end, so the best we can do is hope it sticks the landing.
Final Verdict: 5.0 – An abrupt shift and several revelations suggest that “Super Smartphone” has to rush to an ending, but in doing so takes all the impact out of any of the twists it drops.
