Super Smartphone: Unedited Audio and Recording Notes

Manga Details

• Author:
  • Hiroki Tomisawa (Writer)
    • Senka no Kanojo (2015, 5 volumes, 47 chapters, Young Magazine) - Boy asks girl out, world promptly ends as missiles destroy the city they’re in.
    • WHO I AM (2018, 2 volumes, 12 chapters, Weekly Young Jump) non-fiction work made as part of Shueisha’s deal with the Paralympics Check out Maxybees notes on patreon for more info
  • Kentaro Hidano
    • ZIGA (2018, 2 volumes, 14 chapters + volume-only epilogue, Weekly Shonen Jump) - made with writer Rokurou Sano. Grim dark mediocre kaiju bullshit. Not translated which is a shame as we wanted to cover it with Zander canon
    • A bunch of one-shots with writers, including 2010’s Chrono Mansion, a Golden Future Cup entry that did not win.
    • Assistant for Hiroshi Shiibashi (Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, Yui Kamio Lets Loose)
    • Was classmates with Gen Oosuka
  • Series it replaced: I GUESS ‘Ayakashi Triangle’ by Kentaro Yabuki? Almost lines up.
  • Series that replaced it: 'Ichinose-ke no Taizai' by Taizan5 (of Takopi’s Original Sin fame)
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• Author’s other works:
• Run dates: May 9, 2022 to Oct 17, 2022
• Chapters/Volumes: 3/23

About the Manga

• Plot
  • Kyu Sagurada AKA Q as in the English letter Q, is a really smart kid. He's just a slacker, you know? We know this cuz his childhood not-girlfriend Yuika tells him that he’s been wasting that great brain of his since his little brother Shu disappeared seven years ago after running off to poop. Meanwhile a little girl went missing and everyone’s talking about it. That night Q finds a tiny smartphone equipped with a sentient AI and Googugu which is like super ultra Google: able to find any information created by people. Q uses it to figure out who kidnapped the little girl and calls the cops on the guy. Unfortunately his super smartphone (title drop) returns errors whenever he looks for info on Shu’s disappearance or info on who made the smartphone. Q names the phone Kimi. Q starts solving minor crimes, and every time he does he gains googugu points, unlocking new abilities. Meanwhile a messy goth girl police investigator named Nagi Seomizu is wracking her brain trying to figure out who their new informant is. That night tho, Yuika and her friends are having a sleepover in a high rise but some dude sent a ton of thugs info on where all the valuables in the high rise are, getting them to storm the place. Q calls the cops and bikes over, mingling with the thugs and saving Yuika’s life by breaking a dude’s arms with a baseball bat when he tries to strangle her. The bad guy is then shown to be a rich fuck named Zenichiro Kangan with his own superphone. Zenichiro is the head of Zen Inc where he’s a weird controlling boss who, according to the writer, is just so charismatic and hot.
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  • Q hacks into Nagi’s email and starts having a convo with Zenichiro in her own inbox, and Q picks the stupid pseudonym of pseudonym, while Zenichiro thinks about how he wants to BDSM dominate his new enemy. There’s a police meeting where Nagi says they should do nothing and finally notices that the conversation is happening in her gmail, joining in as Zenichiro drinks from a big evil wine glass. Zen tries to hide that he did the high rise robbery but Q uses anime detective bullshit to prove that he did it, and both Zen and Nagi are shocked that Q was able to overcome Zen’s immense charisma, so Zen reveals who he is which doesn’t matter. Zen has two superphone users working for him, a dumb guy and a smart guy. Q immediately finds the dumb guy and gets him to help by having the police arrest him. He tells them about the superphone but is poisoned to death by Zen later that night in his prison cell, making Q sad. Then the author shows us all the other superphone owners who got the fucking push notification about the dumb guy’s death. Q is approached by Boken, a scrappy poor guy, and Rei, a great singer who just doesn’t know how great she is, two other owners that found him because he sucks at hiding. Boken tells him to figure out his identity in 3 days so Q tries to rip his ID out of his pocket (like an absolute chad) leading to them getting a Karaoke room to hash things out. Q uses both logic and reason to deduce their names and that all three of them have dead family members with connections to the bad guy Zen. But Rei doesn’t trust him until she hears him sing like shit. She has music telepathy and can tell that he’s a good person. Then she sings and is just the best singer, you guys. Like damn what a gorgeous voice. A regular Xtina.
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  • A short old guy and a tall woman with huge boobs are standing in the rain because they’re the aliens who made the superphones. Zen then bullies his smart superphone lackey into finding out who Q is which doesn’t seem that hard but whatever. Zen is just so charismatic and hot. You’re probably thinking Zen is unsympathetic but NUH UH he actually has a dead sister and daddy issues. Now don’t YOU feel like an asshole! The prime minister goes on tv and tells everyone in Japan about the super cool alien phone, while the gossip website that Zen owns tells everyone that Q did the high rise robbery, remember that? His house gets swamped by an angry mob but the cops show up, don’t worry everything’s ok. Q meets up with Zen, who reveals that he wants to be Japan’s first president and the aliens are there for some reason. Q then threatens to expose Zen and dramatically decides to give up his own phone for some reason until someone tells him that his dead brother IS the phone so he says Jk and takes it back. To be continued you should purchase the final volume of Super Smartphone, on sale soon!
• Characters
  • Kyu Sagurada (Q Sah-guh-la-dah)
    • Nicknamed Q
    • Biggly smartman
    • Missing brother
    • 
      
  • Yuika Nomaru (Noh-maru, Yuh-ee-ka)
    • Childhood friend
    • Apparently completely fine almost being strangled to ☠️
    • Gives the just gana keep running away speech to MC
  • Nagi seomuzi (Seh-oh-mee, Nah-ghee)
    • Police
    • Hates effective leads?
    • Total goblin mode
  • Zenchiro Kangan (Con-gon, Zen-toe-ku)
    • Smartphone user
    • Bad guy
    • Anime Elon musk
    • Siscon
    • Daddy issues
    • Actual Light Yagami
  • Broken
    • Ally because plot required it
    • Smart phone user
    • Rival friend idk
    • Must be ultra mega smart because Zenichiro and his super smart lackey can’t find Q but he figures it out instantly

Why it failed

• NICKNAME Q ARE YOU SERIOUS
• So much text
• I get his brother’s missing but it feels so forced that’s why he gave up on science
• Why does he not try and find his brother with the phone as soon as he proves it?
• Every limitation is clearly plot reliant, like the lack of explanations, inability to do things without points it just feels lazy
• Why are some of the losing phone conditions hidden?
• Chapter 3 is one of the worst written chapters I've ever read
• Why do they follow the boss when they don't have one
• Why would a kidnapping 10 years ago be related to a riot?
• There's weird continuity in the panels like you don't really see people going from place to place like how the detective went from the toilet to talking to someone in a different room
• God this author really thinks he's the smartest person ever
• How does having multiple smartphone owners actually help?
• Why are there so many action scenes it’s all so forced
• This series truly doesn’t make me care about anything about it
• The author takes every opportunity to deescalate the tension using the cops which is incredibly ironic
• The smartphone rules are so complicated and confusing.
• Why would Q revealing he has a superphone do anything? THE COPS ALREADY KNOW HE HAS ONE!
• Damn dude no one has dead family members that’s crazy that we all do except that dumb guy.
• TELLING NOT SHOWING TELLING NOT SHOWING

What it did well

• The art is fine if not bland
• The idea is kinda…unique?
• I liked the do nothing twist of chapter 2 but it felt too soon for something like tha
• I'm impressed they actually had people die due to the riot

Where it could have gone

• I’d really have liked an architecture and limits to this idea
• Blessed Chihuaahua man must protect
• Have the MC have to connect the dots don’t have the fcking machine do all the working
• This could actually be a cool series about how to apply machine learning E D U C A T I O N A L
• I'd have liked this to be multiplayer death note with multiple g devices
• Have an actual ramp of concepts don't just jump into something big chapter 3 ffs
• Chapter 5 I have no idea what the competition means
• The author actually has some interesting ideas but doesn't show enough deductive reasoning from the MC like why didn't we see how he noticed a target was listed with more money than he had?
• Fuck it why not establish some sort of actual contest? Sure it rips off future diary but at least it has scaffolding as a series
• What if Q COULDNT call the cops?
• Boken should’ve been the main character instead of this knockoff nice Light Yagami

Misc Thoughts

• The designs kinda feel like dangen ronpa
• Elon musk says 10 of people are stupid and a rare 10 percent are wise that's the same amount
• Maxy Bee thoughts:
  • Nothing as they thought it was so bad they refused to read it. I made them read chapter 3 and was yes that was quite terrible and then drank tea or something I figure cause they are british
• From Tucker: A play on the Japanese pronunciation of Google (“guuguru”). It just changes the last syllable (ru) to be another short “gu”

Final Verdict

• Six Word summary
  • Community
    • Tucker: Death Note? … *reverberating fart sound effect*
    • ZZDigital: Here's how Q can still win
    • duderocks the earthchild stan: My little sister can't have 5g
    • Loser: Unfortunately, Q is no longer anonymous
    • Andy's Islands: It's a super phoned-in ending.
    • The Laughing Fool: Siri, what is a Plot Contrivance?
    • Bigg: Modern Death Note: L Get iPhone
    • Thores aka Daniel: Have You Heard About Fucking Google
    • RileyOfPi: Author should Googugu "writing an ending"
    • Xylon: Hey Google: Write an unsatisfying ending.
    • Kity06: And then Google made a podcast
    • ChemyChems: Makes me miss Ohba's terrible opinions.
    • Lennie: It just was not super enough
    • Agpuh: If Eagle Eye was your brother
    • Blahmoomoo: Many Kyus will never be A'd.
    • King Q: I’m the real Q here phony!
  • David: as
    • Who’d thought SS would be bad
    • Future diary of a wimpy manga
    • THEN WHO WAS SUPER SMART PHONE
  • Jordan:
    • goo gu gu ga ga ga
    • My Death Note calls the cops
  • Guest:
• Flop or not
  • If flop, what they could read instead
  • If not, how it compares to Chainsaw Man
• Is this the best/worst series we’ve talked about