Log Horizon

[MFauli]

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The story begins when 30,000 Japanese gamers are trapped in the fantasy online game world Elder Tale. What was once a sword-and-sorcery world is now the real world. The main lead Shiroe attempts to survive with his old friend Naotsugu and the beautiful assassin Akatsuki.

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Horrible Subs - Episode 01

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no idea why there is no thread for this already. its basically an anime in the vein of Sword Art Online. Worse animation, but still nice art. Interesting choice for lead character: Instead of a being your typical sword fighter, he´s a support class/strategist.

First three episodes were interesting and fun enough, though I hope we´ll get a plot of real importance soon. Right now it´s like a rather shallow fantasy-story with the usual quirks of virtual reality.

Will keep watching.

[David75]

It's your average adventure anime, with average art and story... But absolutely no suspense/intensity or anything that gives a sense of insecurity.
It's been clear from ep 1 they were no risks in PKs, bar losing some stuff and come back to Akiba.
At least SAO PKs were followed by IRL deaths.
But maybe they'll do something about that weakness soon.

Now that I wrote all of that, it was still pleasant to watch and spend some time. Some kind of MMORPG slice of life.

[MFauli]

there HAS to be some sort of significant downside to being trapped inside this game. So it´s only a matter of time before the real plot begins. Though they kinda touch upon it when they talked about the lack of taste in food, and how there´s not much to do besides fighting.

Also, while it seems that you return to the city when youre killed ... I have a feeling that that´s not entirely true. Until one of the main characters "dies" and is revived without repercussions, Im gonna assume that it´s not a 100% revival.

And still, the main goal could be to escape the game.

[Kraco]

I wouldn't be watching this show if Akatsuki wasn't there. Honestly. I have never seen a more adorable assassin.

It's been clear from ep 1 they were no risks in PKs, bar losing some stuff and come back to Akiba.
At least SAO PKs were followed by IRL deaths.

Maybe that difference is what made them animate this. There was so much hype around SAO, despite it ending up being a lousy show, that even the Japanese might have wanted to avoid something totally similar, even if the story wasn't written by a 13 years old like SAO's.

[David75]

Yes returning to real life could be enough of a drive, yet they are all at max level in their class and among the top of the crop with instinctive team strategy. I would not be surprised they are in the shut-in category. So except for food taste, they seem to be happy enough to live the game they like. At least for now.
One of the pressing matter would be their real body needs, water being the main problem. 3 to 4 days without water starts being a real problem, even in a dream-like state. A week and more, and then serious problems should arise.
I know they can always use the time distortion plot device, like 1 second IRL is an hour in game, but that only gives like a year or so...

Fighting boredom and finding a way out could do the trick if well exploited.

[MasterOfMoogles]

This show is just weird.
Nobody really expresses concern about their situation. There are no goals, no tension, not really any conflicts aside from super cliche villains who are easily dispatched by our heroes.
At the same time, there are some interesting ideas. Travel is the biggest annoyance in their world. What are people going to do without any goals or anything to live for?
Hopefully this is going somewhere...

Nakata Jouji (Alucard, Kotomine Kirei, and Nyanta in this) ending his sentences with Nya is pretty hilarious.

[shinta|hikari]

I wouldn't be watching this show if Akatsuki wasn't there. Honestly. I have never seen a more adorable assassin.

This. Loli assassins (of legal age) must be some kind of miracle.

[Archangel]

The show is still great but this "sweatshop exp pot" plot device is fucking terrible

[shinta|hikari]

Shiroe finally gets serious.

I don't mind the exp pot idea. It makes sense because of the game mechanic they explained, and fits the overall game reality hybrid world of the show.

[Ryllharu]

I'm with Arch. The mechanics of it make sense, a game with that high of a level cap would obviously allow newbies to boost xp, a badly designed game would allow them to be tradable.

It's the fact that they literally have them doing the oliver twist sweatshop cliché that makes it terrible. They mentioned earlier that the sister sews all day, so her tailoring sub-class is probably leveling as quickly as Serara's maid skills. The problem is that so long as they're below Level 30, they just get a potion once per day. If they have all these newbies working at day with production sub-classes, shouldn't they be showing the fruits of their labor to use the sweatshop theme? When they showed them handing over the potions a couple episode ago, before we knew what they were, I figured they were forcing them to brew them with a job skill.

There's no need for the whole sweatshop BS when they could accomplish the same simply having the newbies lie around all day bored out of their minds, or hell, locked up in cages.

Furthermore...why are they all kids? Newbies would be adult size/age too.

The second problem I had with this episode is Maryell getting all weepy when he revealed he had created his own guild. Talk about misplaced emotional impact. Maybe there is some super serious trauma that she knows about that the audience doesn't, but it just seemed silly.

[MFauli]

at least we have arrived at the first major plot point: Shiroe founding his own guild, the title-giving Log Horizon.

To me, the most important thing now is what he´s going to do. If all he plans on doing is to save those low level-players, then, well. That´s nice, I guess, but it doesnt really mean anything for the overarching problem: Them being trapped inside a virtual world!

Also, I agree that it is odd to have almost no adult players in this game. Guess that´s the old "anybody over 20 is an old man"-syndrome so many anime and jrpgs suffer from.

gotta say, this show has one of the coolest openings, though, both music and visuals.

[shinta|hikari]

I think they have shown plenty of adult looking players so far. Heck, the cat sounds 60 years old.

Ryll was referring to players under level 30.

[Kraco]

To me, the most important thing now is what he´s going to do. If all he plans on doing is to save those low level-players, then, well. That´s nice, I guess, but it doesnt really mean anything for the overarching problem: Them being trapped inside a virtual world!

What's that? I thought the big thing Shiroe's going to do now is to get rich by opening his own restaurant empire since nobody else has apparently invested in the cooking skills (I guess no surprise considering it's an adventure/action game) and thus doesn't know there's tasty food to be had instead of the tasteless auto-created. I reckon he needs the newbies to man the kitchens and serving staff. It's all out of the frying pan, into the fire for the kids. Although I bet Shiroe will play his cards wiser and appear all benevolent.

Seriously, though, while I also thought the xp potion sweatshop plot is kind of goofy, I think it's not so bad considering this story has certainly chosen the difficult path with no death. The replacement theme seems to be melancholy and slowly building depression since they don't even know how to theoretically end it all, like in SAO. We have a bunch of high level players racing for the rest of the new 10 levels, not having anything better to do. The very low level players are getting bullied and have even less hope for anything immediate. Unless they are blessed with a very nice guild.

[MFauli]

im kinda waiting for whatever cruel revelation. something like "you will die for real if you die in-game 10 times" or something like that. So suddenly, being pk-ed matters.

Melancholy replacing death as the big downside here is something I though about, too. But really, it doesn´t come close to death. It´s bad for those who are trapped, but for me, the audience, I see some lucky kids "trapped" inside an awesome medieval fantasy-world, fighting with swords and magic, not having to fear death, and now even getting to taste good food. If we can get some confirmation that PvP-sex is possible, too, then ... what´s not to like?

No, clearly, death needs to be introduced as a real danger. It only remains to be seen how that will happen.

[Ryllharu]

It is a much braver and challenging choice to stick with no death. They can explore the consequences of having no consequences.

It's one thing to have a scenario where people get so depressed they eventually start killing themselves (SAO). In Log Horizon, there's no escape. You can't quit, you can't die, you just take mental and emotional damage over and over and over and over.

They also get to look a few deeper phenomenon like harassment, social dynamics, and hopelessness. It just goes to show how shallow and cheap SAO was.

[David75]

I think I get your point. The new rules of that world can have it turn to a slow and painful depressing Hell. Or someone like Shiroe can start building an utopia with what's available. And it seems that with friendship, hard work, lots of good feelings, you might be able to build some kind of Paradise. And my guess is that it's the root of the story, how you can build that paradise when you obviously have parties that will try to prevent you from doing that, or with objectives that are not compatible.

[MFauli]

but without death and an escape-plot, this would turn into a very generic fantasy-anime, with magic being rooted in computer-stuff instead of, well duh, a mana tree or whatevs. with the added bore-bringer of no-death.

i can see it being a challenge for Shiroe and co to turn it into something good, but i cant imagine it to be exiting to watch it happen.

[Kraco]

Episode 7 - HS



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I'm slightly confused. A couple of eps ago Shiroe seemed to stress how necessary the exact, vast amount of money is, but now he indicated it's not the goal of the restaurant business. He's now apparently interested in real estate. How is that going to make him money, or was he just, somewhat greedily, dreaming of grand headquarters? I guess if he bought the whole town, he could become a king and set fair laws, but where's the money going to come from? Apparently four months is too long a time for becoming a millionaire... Though all the other smart people in town would need to be idiots not to figure out the "secret" behind their food, so competition shouldn't be out of question, provided anybody would be willing to sacrifice more aggressive skills to level up cooking skills.

In any case, these past eps have had too little Akatsuki.

[Ryllharu]

I believe he wants 5 million because it is the price of a particular building. All of the buildings are for sale, but all are extremely expensive, but 5 million seems excessive even for that. It is worth noting that he was looking at the guild hall itself in the last shot.

I think he is after that. If he owns the guildhouse, he can throw out the guilds he doesn't like, and charge a modest rent to the others (and will likely use that to pay back Crescent Moon Alliance and the other guilds that help him raise the capital, with interest).

4 months is too long because he needs to save those kids now, and drive out any other malcontents from Shinjuku before the malicious momentum of abusing others for your own benefits turns Shinjuku into the northern city.

I'll take Marielle and Henrietta/Umeko interaction heavy episodes with a bit of Akatsuki in a waitress outfit quivering in fear, trapped in a guildhouse, in exchange for a solid Akatsuki episode.

[Kraco]

Right. Even though they said all are for sale, the guild hall being for sale is so ridiculous (due to its fundamental and complicated functions in the game world), to be honest, that it escaped my notice entirely, despite the fact he indeed was staring at it meaningfully. Still, it'll be interesting to see how he plans to increase the money flow now with the initial funds the first days of food vending brought. I hope Akatsuki will play some role, and her entire job isn't just to passively spy on the xp bottle guilds for no profitable reason.