A demographic of people love to dabble in the virtual world of Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMO) to achieve escapism from stress and other struggles that plague their nature. Recently, there has been somewhat of a resurgence of interest for anime fans to watch shows that detail the life of gamers who play these sorts of games, with Sword Art Online being at the forefront of it. These shows detail whether the virtual world could become more real to us than what we initially thought of as real from when we were born should be the central theme for these shows to explore and bring a fresh new take on it. It’s just too bad that none of these shows in question ever bothered to in the first place and become generic as a result.

A year later, we have Log Horizon, an MMO-inspired anime with the same scenario as Sword Art Online above, with only a few minor iterations here and there. Before I begin, this won’t be a piece where I start to compare or contrast Sword Art Online and Log Horizon, as many people, unfortunately, seem to be inclined to do so. Whether I think Sword Art Online was good or bad should not be a factor in how I feel about Log Horizon. Judging a show by its own merits without any outside influence of another show should be the number one key in critiquing any work. With that said, does Log Horizon hold out on its own?

One thing to realize about the plot is the tone of the setting and how it feels very lighthearted despite the dire situation that all of the characters are in. As far as the characters know, they have no way of getting out of the game. Many have criticized this aspect as being somewhat unrealistic in how real people would react to something of this magnitude. It might be an understandable critique to offer at first. However, as the show goes on, it feels fitting based on how the characters think about how they live and survive in the virtual environment. For however long they’ve been trapped in the game for years, at least based on their confusing logic, that virtual world becomes their world, and they get used to it by then. It also helps the show’s credit that they don’t ever show us the real world at all and keep it a mystery as to how things will make the situation from the characters’ perspective feel more apparent to the audience.

While this might be one of the more significant points of the show, the story itself, in how it is paced and told, isn’t nail-bitingly intuitive or well thought out. The premise isn’t that complicated, to begin with, as we’ve been shown before, but Log Horizon seems to think that if they throw in multiple subplots into the mix to make it sound complex, it’ll succeed. Unfortunately, those sub-plots I’d mentioned don’t amount to anything special in the long run and aren’t even that memorable because of it. Not only that, but that lack of memorability stems from the fact that all of these political and social constructs that Log Horizon’s world possesses aren’t written clear enough, other than the fact that they’re there to establish some basis for our protagonists to go somewhere. These aspects come into perspective with how many characters there are to follow in Log Horizon, but I’ll get to that later. The problems with world-building might be more apparent after knowing that the original creator, Mamare Touno, was responsible for creating Maoyuu Maou Yuusha, which also had the same problems in its adaptation. These sorts of issues are prevalent in adaptations on this type of scale, but that can’t be an excuse.

Though the massive cast of characters might seem like a huge negative, the way I put it, that shouldn’t mean that all of them are mediocre. The main cast of prominent characters throughout the show is exceptionally likable and hilarious to watch due to their numerous escapades with each other. It helps tremendously how they all have unique characteristics that improve the nature of every one of them, rather than making them all generic and uninteresting. The same thing can’t be said for the side characters. With our main cast being Shiroe, Nyanta-nyan, Akatsuki, and Naotsugu, there’s this decent sense of chemistry between these four characters that are ultimately lacking for our side/supporting cast. Their archetypes mainly consist of a trait that tries to make them distinct, such as Henrietta having an obsession with cute things like Akatsuki, and Serara, who has a habit of wanting to clean things to calm down. At first, it’s humorous, but after a while, it becomes redundant, and it doesn’t make them any more meaningful.

In an action anime centered around the MMO systems, it would make sense to make the anime feel like you’re really in an MMO game from the gritty details of cool-downs, being a tank, healing your party members equally, and conjuring status effects at the right time. I, myself, am one of these people who enjoy these types of games, and, to me, Log Horizon is probably the only one that gets it right. Usually, something like this would steer off into brainless shounen show cliches, and there are a few here and there. Amazingly, Log Horizon gets the idea of taking its time for the characters to strategize their movements and actions rather than just blindly fighting off monsters without any thought in the world. That might make it seem too slow or methodical to enjoy watching, but in reality, they do an excellent job of pacing these fight scenes and keeping the action flowing seamlessly to give us a clear picture of what’s going on.

The art style can be construed as good, just not excellent in quality. The character designs themselves are plain and ordinary enough for me to consider them a triumphant success in artistic merit. Still, we expect that, and for what it’s worth, it handles it decently to where they don’t seem to cut any visible corners in the later episodes. As I’ve mentioned about the action being fast and flawlessly executed, the animation is a big part of why those are the case. The fluid character movements feel nice and kinetic to the cast spells and look pretty good as a result.

Voice talents range from relatively unknown voice actors to the familiar ones we’ve grown fans of, giving their artistic liberties to full effect with Log Horizon. Emiri Kato as Akatsuki is devilishly cute, and her being a fellow MMO fan sort of gives her performance an exciting spin. Even though Henrietta wasn’t that special as a character, Ayahi Takabaki manages to pull off the mature woman voice well and gives her voice some new territory for her to explore for her vocal talents rather than a more boyish female character. Takuma Terashima proves himself worthy of being the main protagonist of a show, and I hope to see him do more shortly. Not to mention, I could listen to Jouji Nakata say anything with the word “nyaa” at the end of his sentences and never get tired of it.

For some of us fans of the MMO genre, Log Horizon should be the one show to be doing it right, and while it handles the actual MMO aspects brilliantly, the real narrative and storytelling sets itself down from being great. I appreciate the amount of depth it tries to convey that wants us to feel attached to the world, yet I can’t help but wonder if that could’ve been done to better effect had it made the narrative more tightly constructive and less cluttered. The saying, “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” sums up Log Horizon perfectly. Only when the eventual sequel comes out will we know if the journey will be worthwhile enough to experience its next climax.

Grade: B-