Creative Staff
Story: Mamare Touno
Art: Kazuhiro Hara
Translation/Adaptation: Taylor Engel
What They Say
When the Catastrophe hit, American Elder Tales player Leonardo was one of the many people trapped. Stuck on the Chinese server with none of his friends and surrounded by thousands of monsters, his situation is hopeless…until a headstrong girl comes to his rescue! Kanami, the former Debauchery Tea Party leader, recruits him for her party. Along with the hero Elias, the blank-faced healer Coppélia, and a strange white horse that can talk, the group resolves to travel to the Japanese server, the only place where the new expansion pack unlocked before the Catastrophe struck. The long trek eastward begins!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
After many volumes following what’s happening in Japan, Log Horizon turns its eyes outward to the puzzle at large and a growing threat.
By far the most interesting thing this volume has to offer is a look at what is happening to the rest of the world. It was not only the Japanese server which was hit with teleporting its players to another world. It happened simultaneously to anyone online at that moment, which is some places was a day before the expansion pack was supposed to be released on their server. We learn how the other player cities ended up coping with the situation, and the answer is ‘not well.’ The analog to New York ends up turning into something closer to 1970’s NYC and the European cities revert to almost feudal states. The state of Leonardo’s home turf was so disturbing to him it was his key reason for jumping into a fairy gate, which dumped him out on the other side of the world.
Leonardo has, obviously and hilariously, modeled himself after the Ninja Turtle with the serial number filed off. (Anyone who plays MMO’s can regale you with tales of seeing any number of cosplaying players.) This isn’t what’s silly, what’s silly is how he can’t seem to come to terms with the idea that the NPCs are more than that now. Or how he doesn’t want to. The author often is at odds with how realistic he wants his protagonists to be. Leonardo is generically American which betrays the fact a foreigner is writing this (yikes at some of the stuff he thinks), which makes him far more cartoony than his costume. It is his redemption tale of becoming the hero he’s modeled himself after and taking responsibility to help others, but it’s written more as if Leonardo is a teenager and not the working adult he is.
Leonardo ends up the protagonist for this volume, but he is by far the least interesting member of the group. Kanami, which is the character this volume is named after, remains a complete cipher. She was built up to be this amazing player, but she acts like an impulsive goofball and we never get a single paragraph from her perspective. When this volume is over we still know very little about her. In contrast, KR, Elias, and even Coppélia are further developed than her. All three of whom are fascinating either by their abilities or by the fact that two shouldn’t even have personalities by their very nature.
Speaking of KR, he came away as the most likable and interesting of the group, which is a surprise because in the previous volume he was being set up as a villain. It turns out that not everyone in the 10-seat Council of Plant Hwyaden is an enemy. KR is genuine and clever and takes a liking to Leonardo that I can’t really share but it’s cute nonetheless.
This volume does a lot to push forward the overall story of Elder Tales and the player transported to that world. It answers a long-standing question of what happened to the hero NPCs and introduces a new class of monster which appears to have a goal in mind which spans the world and breaks the known laws of the game. It also offers the promise that Kanami and her party will reach Japan in a future novel, setting the stage for a grand reunion of the remaining members of the Tea Party.
My nemesis, the repetitive descriptions and paragraphs, return with a vengeance towards the end of this volume. At this point, we don’t need to be reminded constantly how blue the sky is or that Elias can’t deal finishing blows. The execution is so flawed that when it appears Elias does finally land one it falls completely flat and isn’t even clear if that’s what happens. Occasionally I’ll hit a paragraph that just reads like word salad and compared to some of the other light novels on the market this series feels so rough. I don’t know how much of this is the fault of Touno, the editors, or the translator.
There are a ton of extras in this volume. This is where Touno started to really branch out and had to crowdsource his reader base to fill out region-specific classes for his fictional MMO. The opening spread of color pages illustrates some of these classes, some of which border on cultural appropriation. The back includes a description of each class right before the usual glossary and author’s note. There’s also a complete rundown of the Debauchery Tea Party ‘guild’ and the status of all its former members, as well as a relationship chart of the more important members. It’s a bit disappointing to see that we’ve now met all the members who are stuck in the new world and won’t be meeting the rest.
In Summary
Log Horizon continues to be a strong story with flawed execution. For every new idea and reveal it puts out there about its world and every crumb of what’s yet to come, it’s reluctant to build out in other ways. While internal monologs have worked well in previous volumes they don’t work as well here. Kanami’s drive is a conundrum with no answer, and the external conflict should take on major importance but it’s the internal conflict of Leonardo’s which ends up becoming the focus. For all of its clumsiness, there’s still a worthwhile story in here. For those that watched the anime, this fleshes out a storyline which was regulated to just a single episode and that’s exciting. The new ideas and concepts introduced here, from the fate of hero NPCs to gold farming bots, is brilliant and fascinating. Ultimately, they’re all just teases and setup for when this newest enemy reaches Akiba and the Log Horizon guild, which is when we’ll hopefully get some answers about Empathion and what that’s all about.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B +
Packaging Grade: A –
Text/Translation Grade: C +
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: October 21st, 2017
MSRP:$14.00
