Review for Log Horizon: Season 2 - Part 2

Introduction

Once more unto the database, dear friends, once more. To date, this is the final release of Log Horizon, pending someone in Japan actually making some more. I mentioned in my last review how unlikely that is at this point, but we can always hope. Log Horizon certainly impressed me with its first series, a rare online RPG anime that made a modicum of sense, and managed to entertain. The first season felt slow and methodical when I watched it, but with the advent of season 2, it turned out to be fast-paced and flashy in comparison. It was almost like a proof of concept, with Season 2 actually the ‘real thing’, where the story could begin to be told in earnest. Alas, I found the slower pace a tad detrimental in the first half of season 2. Hopefully the second half will either pick the pace up, or find a way to make its story more compelling.


Elder Tales was a popular RPG, one that had grown and prospered online, attracting hundreds of thousands of fans and gamers worldwide. One of them is an Enchanter named Shiroe, who has levelled up to the max, but has done so by eschewing the usual guild system, and going it relatively alone, opting for loose and brief alliances rather than being tied down to a guild. Then one day, the newest expansion pack is added, the Novasphere Pioneers update, and suddenly Apocalypse occurs. Now all of the gamers that were online are ‘trapped’ in the game. They can’t log out, and dying simply resurrects them. Now they are full time residents in a fantasy, alternate Japan, still in the game, but now no longer playing, but actually living their lives according the gameplay rules. But as time passes, this online community starts developing in unexpected and unsavoury ways, certainly not the Elder Tales gameworld that Shiroe and his friends initially wanted to escape into. If he wants to make a positive change in this world, Shiroe might have to do the unthinkable, start a guild of his own...


Previously on Log Horizon, Shiroe and his friends had faced their toughest challenge yet in dealing with their community’s economy, but as this second half of Season 2 begins, it’s the turn of the younger adventurers to get some experience under their belts, as they have their first real Quest to accomplish without veteran oversight. It’s supposed to a chance to put their training and acquired skills into effect, but as usual the ever changing world of Elder Tales insists on throwing unexpected roadblocks up. Meanwhile, one of Shiroe’s old companions is heading east, towards Akihabara.


Log Horizon Season 2 Part 2 offers 12 episodes across three discs thus.

Disc 1
14. Kanami, Go East!
15. Set Off
16. Vampire in Daylight
17. Odyssey Nights

Disc 2
18. After the Show
19. Red Night
20. Birthday Song
21. The Flutter of Skylarks

Disc 3
22. Alien
23. Isaac and Itherus
24. Slumber of the Moth Monster
25. Pioneers

Picture

Log Horizon comes to the UK from MVM after going through the localisation mill of Sentai for the dub and subs, although this time Madman just stick their logo on Sentai’s discs and strip out the trailers. What we get is an NTSC 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer, progressively encoded for those with compatible equipment. It’s clear and sharp throughout, with well defined characters and adequate animation, perking up for the action sequences, but doing little more than the minimum for the character interactions. The colour palette is somewhat subdued, although not for the game interface design. The fantasy world design is both effective and unimaginative, if that is at all possible. The world of Elder Tales is presented as a mirror of the ‘real world’ albeit one reclaimed by nature. No traffic in the streets, buildings covered in vines, cities co-existing with jungles. As a post-apocalyptic world it’s striking and effective a look, but it didn’t take a lot in the way of imagination from the animators and world designers to come up with. The show scales-up adequately to an HD panel, but if you’re watching it on an HD set, you might as well go for the Blu-ray release.

Sound

You have the choice between DD 2.0 English and Japanese, this time with the translated subtitles and a songs and signs track locked to the appropriate audio stream. Given the plethora of stat displays for the Elder Tales interface, you might be pressing pause quite often in the show to take in what people’s special skills and level attainments are. I was happy with the original language track, stereotypical characters notwithstanding, and everything came through with clarity and the right degree of presence. Speaking of stereotypical characters, they’ve combined the effeminate male with the cat-person stereotype for a new level of annoying, not just the voice, but the subtitles too, delivering cat-puns ad-nauseam (or should that be ad nyauseam?). I gave the dub a quick try, and unlike the usual Sentai efforts, I wasn’t immediately driven to pressing the off button. However the English dub did sound a little hollow to my ears.

Extras

The discs present their content with static menus, jacket pictures, and each episode is followed by translated English credits.

Disc 1’s sole extras are the textless credit sequences. I guess the localisation by Madman amounts to the Sentai trailers being stripped, and that’s it.

Conclusion

Infuriating, thy name is Log Horizon! This show might just be the one that converted me to the ‘trapped in an online RPG’ genre of anime. It’s got a great story, it really explores its world in a way that makes sense, and it makes good use of its characters, once you get past the usual anime stereotypes and tropes. It’s got a nice level of action to it, some colourful magical fighting sequences, and it loads its story with sufficient mystery and ongoing plot threads to keep you invested in finding out what happens next. But in execution, it really does make you gnash your teeth, frustrated at its inability to supply enough of a conclusion to its plot threads to truly satisfy. It may be in the nature of good entertainment to leave you wanting more, but 50 episodes of anime should offer some degree of closure, you should have some answers to the long running questions in the show. Log Horizon is deliberately coy about its secrets, and it would push me to give up on the whole thing, if only it weren’t so interesting.


Season 2 has actually been more infuriating than the first when it comes to this, as its narrative has been comparatively more aimless, story arcs that seem more ephemeral and open ended. This collection initially promises to overturn that, with a return to the relatively concise arcs of the first season, as we get a seven episode arc that sees the younger adventures in Log Horizon graduate from their training and go on a quest on their own. They need to find some Wyvern skin to obtain a ‘magic bag’ and that means travelling West to where the beasts dwell. It’s fun seeing the younger characters, initially rescued by Shiroe and his friends and apt to be the worshipful comic relief (Serara’s crush on Nyanta is cute, as is Minori’s crush on Shiroe), break out on their own and do some adventuring without the oversight of the seasoned members of Log Horizon. There’s an interesting character dynamic between them, and some nice stories to be told, especially Isuzu’s search for confidence with her music.


Just as in the first season, the bigger picture unfolds in the background of this comparatively smaller story, and their tale keeps you engaged emotionally, while the intellectual interest is piqued by the larger picture. Unfortunately this is the exception to the rule of Season 2, as the first episode in this collection, and those after episode 22 are just as aimless and unfulfilling as the rest of the season. Not that there isn’t enjoyment to be had. Certainly the first episode catching up with Shiroe’s ‘ex’ Kanami is entertaining, as she’s heading East with a purpose, destined to be reunited with Shiroe. She’s a great character, and has surrounded herself with a motley band of adventurers. But after that great introduction, we go straight into the young adventurer arc, and we don’t actually see her again until the final episode. It’s not the reunion with Shiroe, it’s just a communication, but the final throwaway revelation of the series is that we discover just what happened to Krusty (remember, he’s the guy who mysteriously vanished in the middle of the last collection), and with that revelation, Log Horizon adds yet one more unanswered question.


Speaking of background revelations, we meet a vampire named Roe2 during the young adventurer story, who looks like the female version of Shiroe, and that does get a fascinating explanation. But it introduces a whole new aspect to Log Horizon, that of people from another world altogether also trapped in the game. Suddenly there’s a whole new faction effecting how the world works, and the latter half of this collection, sees these players harvesting ‘Empathika’ to devastating effect, all in an attempt to return to their home. This opens up the prospect of a way home for the Adventurers trapped in the game, but it seems the only way to do that is to communicate with this other faction, which is on the moon.


Another issue might be the sheer character overload. There are so many guilds, so many factions among the Adventurers alone, let alone the People of the Land that it becomes difficult to keep track of who is who, where their allegiances lie. It’s also hard to pick out villains and heroes in this show, as those allegiances tend to shift, as Nyanta learns when he finds a couple of former Tea Party members assisting a Person of the Land who has war and mayhem on her mind. There are times where you might feel that you need to take notes, and perhaps have the light novels at hand to just keep track of the ins and outs of the story. Log Horizon may be inconclusive and meandering, but it’s never less than interesting, and it’s always watchable. It’s also begging for a continuation, and hopefully a conclusion. Alas, as I mentioned in the review for part 1 of Season 2, such a continuation seems unlikely at this point.