What do you do when a game stops being a game and takes over your life, literally?
Creative Staff
Story: Mamare Touno
Art: Kazuhiro Hara
Translation/Adaptation: Taylor Engel
What They Say
When thirty thousand Japanese gamers are suddenly trapped in the online game world of “Elder Tale,” a realm of swords and sorcery–that was, up until yesterday, very much a fantasy–is now their cold, hard reality. Severed from their everyday lives, they’re faced with fighting monsters, eating food with no flavor, and being unable to die?! Amid the chaos in “Elder Tale” Akihabara, veteran gamer Shiroe locates his old friend Naotsugu and teams up with the beautiful female assassin Akatsuki. Together they embark on an adventure to change the world as they know it!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Log Horizon began its life online, as a self published novel by an author who goes by the pen name Mamare Touno. It became popular enough to get picked up by Enterbrain and after a revision or two published officially as a light novel. From that point on the story has only gained traction, becoming an animated series and reaching out to international territories until Yen Press chose it as part of their expanding Yen On light novel line. I can’t think of a more appropriate beginning for a story about becoming trapped in a fictional MMO world than that.
The ’getting trapped in an online world’ narrative has its roots in late cyberpunk fiction, becoming the crux of novels such as Tad Williams’ The Otherland in this country. In Japan the topic has reached a fever pitch, with numerous stories taking the idea and running with it. Starting perhaps with the .hack franchise things quickly spiraled out of control, leading to the popular Sword Art Online and others. Now it’s hard to find many manga and anime where the ‘kids stuck in another world’ is an actual other world and not a game made manifest.
What sets Log Horizon apart from the others in the genre is that Touno clearly actually played MMO’s at some point in his life. The Everquest is strong in Log Horizon, with many of the game systems harkening back to MMO’s of old. The slightly less forgiving and user unfriendly systems mentioned in the fictional Elder Tales match its fictional origins as a game which has been countlessly expanded on over years of its existence. In the world of Log Horizon Elder Tales is both Everquest and WoW, the most popular online game world wide. At the launch of its newest expansion pack is where the story begins.
One of the main complaints I heard about the anime adaptation of Log Horizon dealt with the lack of panic at the start from the leads. Most of this first volume is Shiroe and his friend Naotsugu coming to terms with their new reality. They don’t panic but the inner thoughts of both betray their concerns, something which the anime pushed past more quickly to get to the action. Shiroe’s practical pessimism get him through the day-to-day while Naotsugu goes over various scifi scenarios of what might have happened in his head. They quickly realize they don’t know how to get home and start dealing with the problems of how to live in a world that melded game rules with physical ones. That means dealing with a lot of antisocial behavior and monsters both beastly and human.
The anime was created and aired on NHK, the Japanese PBS. That means they toned down some of the more adult concerns that the players in the novel have to deal with, such as the problems Akatsuki and other women would face in a skewed 70-30 male to female population. Sexual harassment and assault are very real concerns for the female cast, and are the real driving reasoning behind the rescue attempt of Serara at the end of the volume. The problems with a world without laws coming in to stark relief when confronting harassment which was previously handled by now missing moderators.
There’s also a level of violence and fear associated with the combat in their new reality. Monsters don’t just disappear in to a showery of coins, they bleed and die beforehand. The adventurers have to face off against foes in person, and even if the pain isn’t great and death nonexistent, the fear is real. Things get down right uncomfortable when Shiroe and Akatsuki fight other players and contemplate (and sometimes carry out) cutting off their heads. The psychological ramifications are staggering.
The text does a good job of alternating between explaining game systems for the non-gamer and then going on to explain how those systems have changed. Although I’m well versed in the terminology Touno doesn’t take his audience for granted and is careful to do a thorough job with his world building and rule set. He paints a well realized world for his adventurers to explore. There are some minor issues with the text. Some lines seem to repeat just explained concepts unnecessarily, and the ending confrontation feels brief and surprisingly lacking in internal monologue compared to the previous encounters. As for the translation it is very well done, reading smoothly and each character’s voice comes through quite well. I did catch a typographical error at one point which will hopefully be caught for future reprints.
Yen continues to do a nice job with the presentation of its light novel line, with a fold out color illustration leading off the volume. Along with that are various black and white illustrations throughout. As is typical in light novels sometimes the illustrations don’t quite match the descriptions in the text, although I think Log Horizon pulls it off better than most. In the chapter breaks are fun profiles of various characters and the volume closes out with an author comment which could be a short story in its own right.
In Summary
Log Horizon is off to a fine start as an adventure story which also serves as a primer for readers unfamiliar with massively multiplayer online games. It’s accessible to the non-gamer while not insulting those who are. The beginner’s basics are quickly turned on their head as Shiroe and his friends have to relearn life in a world which isn’t quite a game and not quite the reality they knew. Shiroe isn’t your typical protagonist, being an serious college student who mostly gamed solo, being tossed in to a role where he’s reluctantly forced to be a leader. Akatsuki and Naotsugu come off as more cartoony and not as well realized yet, though I expect that will change going forward as we’re given more time with them. The front loading of so much world building is necessary but slows down the pace, and just when things begin to heat up the first volume reaches its sudden conclusion. We don’t even know why the series is called Log Horizon yet! Luckily we won’t have to wait too long to continue the story, volume two will be out in a matter of months. Until then, consider this the tutorial.
Content Grade: B +
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: A –
Text/Translation Grade: A –
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: April 21st, 2015
MSRP: $14.00
Kind of annoying that they don’t have a kindle version. I try not buying physical version if possible.
A lot of the digital edition rights for these sort of things are hung up with the Japanese publishers. I’m sure Yen would release it that way if they could, as they’ve done so with other series. Maybe someday Japan will take the hint.
(Working in print I personally prefer physical copies, I also like to touch and hoard things.)
I bought the first 2 volumes of Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in A Dungeon on digital format. Was hoping for the same with this as well.
Two different Japanese publishers. SB Creative is probably a lot chiller with licensing out digital deals. I hear ya though.