Things can change in the blink of an eye.
What They Say:
One day, while playing the online game Elder Tales, 30,000 players suddenly find themselves trapped in another world. There, eight-year veteran gamer Shiroe also gets left behind. The trapped players are still alive, but they remain in combat with the monsters. The players don’t understand what has happened to them, and they flee to Akiba, the largest city in Tokyo, where they are thrown into chaos. Once proud of his loner lifestyle, Shiroe forms a guild called Log Horizon with his old friend Naotsugu, female assassin Akatsuki and others.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
This episode serves as more of a transitional point in the series than anything else. The Round Table is a success, with all the present guilds agreeing to participate and do their part to help shape and revitalize Akihabara. They decide on simple laws to govern player behavior, and also all come to a realization that Shiroe had been onto for quite some time.
With the discovery that food can be cooked by an individual, without using the in-game commands, it is reasonable to assume that other things, not part of the Elder Tale world, could be built as well. This proves true when the merchant guilds reveal they’ve created a crude, but operational steam engine.
This is pretty huge, because it means that players can create things that may not have been possible in the original video game that everyone played, which creates a lot of exciting “what if” questions that I’m sure will be answered later down the line.
Shiroe elects to ensure fair and even treatment of the People of the Land – the NPCs that populated Elder Tale next to the players, realizing that they’re not just acting how they would have in the game, but instead of adapting and changing to the new world that everyone inhabits now. The fact that there are agents from a foreign kingdom spying on the guilds of Akihabara only reinforces that the People of the Land are not just programs, but are so near to human that they must be dealt with in the same way. Which, is, uh, kinda scary if you think about it.
In Summary:
A whole lot of setup happens in this episode, but the episode itself doesn’t really have a lot going on, as is the nature of these sort of “end of a chapter” episodes. Log Horizon is still going on strong, but we’ve restored Akihabara to a positive, thriving city, we’ve created the guild that Shiro and his friends will begin to recruit members into, and we’ve brought all the guilds into working with each other (and expelled the ones that were a plague upon the city). But there are spies keeping tabs on the city, something that many of the guild leaders become aware of quickly. They’re from a foreign kingdom, and while we assume that the king is one of the People of the Land, there is much wrapped in mystery about who these people are, why they are spying on Akihabara, and what they ultimately will seek from Shiro and the other guild masters. It feels very much like we’ve closed the book on the “Origins” chapter of our heroes, and we’re going to start getting into the real meat and bones of an ongoing plot involving more of the world and recurring characters. It’s exciting and shows that Log Horizon is running full steam ahead, and it’s popularity seems to be holding strong as we near the end of the season, which is good for fans of the show.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Intel Alienware laptop, Windows 7, 25” HP2509m screen at 1920×1080 resolution