Log Horizon
a review by TK8878
a review by TK8878
Season 1 of Log Horizon presents a truly faithful rendition of the "trapped in an MMO" setting and provides an interesting story to go with it but suffers from slow progression and predictability. Your enjoyment will hinge on how well you stay immersed in the world of Elder Tale and while this anime does a good job of getting you to enter there's no guarantee that it will hold you in.
When it comes to engagement, Log Horizon places heavy focus on just one aspect: immersion. It wants you to enter its world, explore both its realms and game-like mechanics, experience the cultures of the pre-existing NPCs and the newly trapped gamers, and ultimately feel like you're on an adventure in the world of Elder Tale yourself. This is accomplished quite well. Right from the get-go the characters realize that they must use the mechanics of the game (including classes, cool-down abilities, and now-telepathic voice chat) to thrive, but they are all still gamers at heart and also start developing new strategies to handle everything from cooking to spell-casting.
While this is going on there are bigger implications that are explored in a game world made real. What happens when NPCs are no longer just walking dialogue boxes but living, breathing beings? Or when magic is no longer just game code and becomes a real form of energy? Even politics and the economy become major issues as time goes on. Being trapped in a video game isn't just a gimmick or plot device in Log Horizon, it's the very essence of everything it is and does. Together with the well-established setting (which is continuously being fleshed out) it creates the captivating sense that the story is much bigger than just what we see the characters going though. Even when Log Horizon wasn’t enjoyable for me, this sense gave me reason to believe that something more was just an episode away.
As far as production values go, the animation does a great job of displaying both the world and the video game elements without either looking out of place. This is including the CG, as even though it stands out compared to the animation at times it still feels like it belongs in the context of how it’s being used. The familiar yet fantastical designs of the environments and the characters also do a remarkable job of making it all feel like its own world as well as its own game, cultivating strong visual immersion to complement its narrative immersion. Meanwhile the music, sound effects, and voice-work (I watched in Japanese) is good (but not great) all around. It does its job and there isn't anything to complain about but not much of it is memorable either (aside from the oddly catchy OP).
Sadly, beyond that Log Horizon's presentation transforms the story from an intricate exercise in how a world can be built from the mechanics that drive it into a lazy shounen adventure adaptation where the premise is only used as a hook to get you to watch the next episode each week. It's as though the story is being held hostage by the producers, demanding that you watch more than what's necessary to continue. This is largely due to the show’s slow progression. It's not much of an issue early on since there's initially quite a bit that the anime has to and does explain, but after the first third of the season it finds itself with too little to explain to justify the pace and starts spacing itself out instead.
After the world is established each subsequent arc features a barrage of recaps, which not only include the typical beginning-of-the-episode refreshers but also many mid-episode reminders, cues, and hints; so many in fact that by the time each arc comes to a head so many hints have been dropped that you know how the arc ends before it even reaches a climax, destroying the dramatic build-up of tension the intricate story naturally contains. It's like reading a good book next to an acquaintance who is constantly asking if you've reached the next big spoilery event, with no attempt to mask the spoiler itself. These are then interlaced with so much shallow comedy (especially with the pervert jokes and ship-teases that you'd have to be blind to not see coming) and boring filler (such as pointless side plots and clearly one-sided battles) that it all takes up more time than the serious moments that progress the plot. Everything that actually matters could have been covered in 13 episodes with room to spare, but Log Horizon doesn't trust its viewers to understand or remember anything that takes more than two sentences to explain.
In addition, while Log Horizon's characters are utilized well by the story, the characters themselves are mostly nothing special. The majority of them fill a role, perform that role, and nothing more, while most of the rest don’t even manage that. Development and backstories beyond a few bullet-points (predictable clichés included) are for but a select few characters. You'll likely find two or three of them to be particularly interesting, but many of them are easily forgettable. There is even a plot development tied to the game's XP system that offers a great opportunity to take a closer look at the characters in that moment before things change for them, but nothing substantial was done with it and it passed with just a brief mention. It also doesn't help that there's very little that is able to challenge them. The fact that the trapped gamers are overpowered even becomes a plot point, though again it’s merely stated rather than addressed. Regardless it doesn’t help that few characters have any real reason to develop when all they have to do is listen to Shiroe for everything to turn out okay (or if they’re one of the handful of cookie-cutter villains, wait for Shiroe to defeat them because they had no chance to win in the first place).
Log Horizon’s first season could have easily been great, in fact it definitely was for the first third, but its faults severely damage the majority of the show. Even then I could almost still say it’s good because underneath all of the mindless filler & overused tropes lies an interesting concept, quality production values, and the beginnings of an amazing plot. Unfortunately, the product as a whole just isn’t entertaining or intricate enough to cope with its faults. I can’t recommend Log Horizon to a general audience, though if you’re a big fan of isekai or anime about video games you may find enough to enjoy here to make it all worthwhile.
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