It’s always a pity when a quality manga, or at least one with a very promising premise, gets cancelled after a few chapters while utter dreck runs indefinitely. Cheating My Way through a Different World with My Tablet to Live a Comfortable Life wasn’t anything ground-breaking or unprecedented, but it was relaxing and inoffensive with a hero you wanted to root for, so I was sad that it got cancelled after only 24 chapters.
Summary: Kento Yamazaki, an ordinary boy who isn’t particularly special, realizes after a while that he is reincarnated into a different world holding a tablet?! He acquires housework skills as he makes delicious food and cleans up in a short time by using apps on his tablet. He finds himself in the adventurer’s party, called “Daybreak”, in which unique characters, such as a beautiful elf and a cute boy with glasses, who does not talk much, get together. Time to start his carefree life in a different world, tablet in hand!
So that’s the story in a nutshell. The adventurer’s party actually comes later in the story, after Kento has spent time working for another party which ends up kicking up out for costing it later. In typical “kicked out by the hero’s party” manga style, the reader expects them to regret it later. However he later meets members of that party and it turns out they split up over the issue and that many of the members had no problem with him and even liked him, so that was a bit of a surprise.
Apart from that slight twist, Cheating My Way follows the typical “wimpy Japanese isekai protagonist” trope almost exactly. Kento starts out at the lowest rank in the guild, takes on odd jobs to make ends meet, makes powerful friends who train him little by little and eventually gets strong enough to beat monsters with a little help from others.
The titular tablet is helpful but not as overpowered and almighty as in In Another World with My Smartphone. It contains functions like a camera, which helps him with identifying things, and a shop where he can buy items from Earth. Oddly enough, anything from Earth is much more efficient and powerful than what is already available in the world.
Kento uses this to provide cleaning and mending services, become a great cook by using ingredients and spices from Japan, and even become an apothecary by substituting Earth ingredients for local ones. This later allows him to save the life of Aggis’ wife, Aggis being the guy who helped him out when he suddenly arrived in another world with only the tablet and the clothes on his back. And so on, and so forth.
There isn’t much more to Cheating My Way through a Different World with My Tablet to Live a Comfortable Life than that. It’s the story of a guy slowly gaining confidence and finding his way in the world. Honestly I enjoyed reading it, and Kento and all his companions were really nice. He also somehow becames a tamer and gets some cute pets. His progress wasn’t too fast, but it wasn’t slow either, so he was on his way to being really strong eventually but not so soon that it’s not believeable. Best of all there was no harem, or even romance! Just pure(ish) cozy cooking, crafting, taming and leveling up.
Unfortunately I think that lack of speed was what sealed its fate. It just wasn’t exciting enough. It doesn’t do anything that other isekai manga haven’t done before (the tablet is just another cheat item or skill). There was also no deeper story behind his migration to the other world, his purpose there, no greater worldview, no crisis, no other. Additionally, like it or not, romantic options in an isekai manga draws readers in, so I’m sure lacking those made the series less compelling to many. And so one thing led to another and Cheating My Way through a Different World with My Tablet to Live a Comfortable Life got cancelled after a mere 24 chapters.
Still it was 24 chapters of cozy fun, it gives enough of a taste of the series so you can imagine what happens next or read the novel if it exists. If you try it and like it, also try The Great Cleric by Broccoli Lion. It has a lot of similarities in art style, with a similarly wimpy hero who is protected and trained by more powerful characters, but it is much better because it has a much stronger world view. Give it a try.
