Log Horizon 2nd Season

After being trapped in the world of Elder Tale for six months, Shiroe and the other Adventurers have begun to get the hang of things in their new environment. The Adventurers are starting to gain the trust of the People of the Land, and Akiba has flourished thanks to the law and order established by Shiroe's Round Table Alliance, regaining its everyday liveliness. Despite this success, however, the Alliance faces a new crisis: they are running out of funds to govern Akiba, and spies from the Minami district have infiltrated the city.

As formidable forces rise in other districts, there is also a need to discover more about the vast new world they are trapped in—leading Shiroe to decide that the time has come to venture outside the city. Accompanied by his friend Naotsugu and the Sage of Mirror Lake Regan, the calculative Shiroe makes his move, hoping to unravel new possibilities and eventually find a way home.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Shiroe Main

Terashima, Takuma Japanese

Akatsuki Main

Katou, Emiri Japanese

Naotsugu Main

Maeno, Tomoaki Japanese

Nyanta Supporting

Nakata, Jouji Japanese

Krusty Supporting

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Kode, Rundellhous Supporting

Kakihara, Tetsuya Japanese

Tetora Supporting

Fujii, Yukiyo Japanese

Corwen, Rayneshia El-Arte Supporting

Ise, Mariya Japanese

Kanami Supporting

Inoue, Marina Japanese

Serara Supporting

Kuno, Misaki Japanese

Naeshiro, Kenichirou Producer

Wada, Kaoru Producer

Ishihira, Shinji Director, Storyboard

Hata, Shouji Sound Director

Reviews

Mar 28, 2015

mhoho88

Recommended

Having finished the entire second season here are some of my opinions on how this season turned out. I have assumed anyone reading this has watched the first season.

Story: 6 (Fair)

The first half of this season focused in a lot more on the element of MMORPG raiding and immediately the pace of the show slowed down. With each episode covering usually two different scenarios within the world for our beloved characters to face. Overall I would say that if you're a big MMORPG player you'll connect with the characters more but if you're not then it will just leave you confused. By the second ... half we were given with a valentines day filler episode and an enjoyable Kanami episode to give an idea of what's going elsewhere in the world. Then the kids' arc... similar to the last season there was an arc to develop the younger members of Log Horizon and that was done pretty well. But here it just felt like they didn't grow much but rather helped reinforce their own ideals and morals in addition to giving very little back story to their lives in the real world. Overall it didn't add much to the story, however the inclusion of a certain character and introduction of another certainly helped but left me clueless as to their purpose of being there. However after that arc the story seemed to pick up but then felt drawn out with the addition of what felt like filler episodes. And then the final two episodes..... Oddly these felt like some of the more enjoyable and entertaining episodes of the entire season with elements left over that pointed towards a direction the story would take. This was what annoyed me the most since I enjoyed them so much I wanted a third season.

Looking back the same plot threads which were started were left unfinished (mainly because the anime has caught up to the source material therefore a third season is a long way off). The story followed a very heavily focused ''raid'' element and a few filler episodes. Overall enjoyable but with the filler episodes and poor pacing I give it a 6.

Art: 7 (Good)

I would give the art style a 7 because obviously there was a change in studio and possibly budget was an issue. In the end I got used to the changes. Animation was again not great but better in some places than others, the finale seemed to be where they did a better job at least.

Sound: 7.5 (Very Good/Good)

The OST for Log Horizon didn't change and since I enjoyed the first season OST as well, I didn't really have any gripes with it for the second season. Voice actors didn't change and the new seiyuu I felt fit their roles.

Character: 7 (Good)

There were quite a few introductions to new characters we had never really met aside from cameos and then some from the weird jungle of the anime rainforest. I enjoyed the new characters and they were extremely entertaining but the development of the characters were rather disappointing compared to last season. We're still left with a question of, 'What are they trying to do within the world.' We also got a little taste as to who the ''villains'' of Elder Tale are but their inclusion to the story was very minor.

Enjoyment: 9 (Great)

Even with the flaws of this season I still enjoyed it and being an MMOPG gamer I think it helped. I know many who would find this season to be a huge disappointment compared to the first season but considering what I suspect as being budget changes and a new studio I can see why. Comedic elements were still entertaining for me and the action and characters were still enjoyable.

Overall: 8 (Very Good)

With the inclusion of my own enjoyment I gave it an 8. A third season doesn't look likely to be soon because the LNs have now been caught up. I felt that maybe there wasn't enough material from the LNs to make a second season. Let's just hope they receive a better budget and have more material to work with for a third season.

This is my first review I have done and any constructive criticism on how to better write my reviews would be welcomed.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Mar 28, 2015

Lancehot

Mixed Feelings

TL;DR: A disappointing second season that feels like the director & script writers had no idea where Mamare Touno is planning to go with the story of Log Horizon, so just adapted enough to pad out the 25 episode run time & hope that the audience figures out how it all connects together themselves.There are some good episodes & it explores interesting ideas (or brings them up, at least), but ultimately they don't add up to 25 episodes worth of content. Don't bother unless they announce a third season, & even then you'll probably be better off looking for an abridged version on youtube than ... watching all of this.

There are times when one wonders if the scriptwriters for a show & the author of the source material being adapted ever talk to each other. When series, particularly longer series, feel like they're becoming increasingly unfocused as the source material begins to run out, you'd think that the script writer & author would work together to at least come up with a framework for where the story is going so the adaptation knows what to focus on without deviating too much from where the author plans to go with their story. Sadly, it seems in Log Horizon 2's case, either nobody knows where things are going, or nobody is communicating it. (note this review assumes you've seen LH1)

Remember how LH1 ended with a climactic battle against the goblin king's forces whilst also revealing a new, human threat in the form of Nureha, guild leader of Plant Hwyaden who seems as powerful a mage as Shiroe? Well it seems the author or script writers forgot, because none of that really matters in LH2. Instead, LH2 focuses on three events that all feel like they're setting the ground for something big, but they don't know what. First is a mysterious player killer in Akihabara, somehow able to get around the zone's rules against combat between players. Following on from that (although both events occur at the same time) Shiroe seeks to deal with the financial problems the round table are facing by leading an epic raid on an El Dorado mine where all the world's gold is alleged to come from. These things concluded, the characters finally get around preparing for the prospect of war by...sending the younger guild members on a fetch quest so they can make magic bags.

All these stories continue Log Horizons rather enjoyable combining of a fantasy adventure setting with MMO rules, & the interesting ways they come together. The first story arc occurs against a backdrop the sudden & destabalising event of all the flavour text for the games many items suddenly becoming real, resulting in, among other things, Crusty being sucked into apparent oblivion by his weapon. Other issues not raised in LH1 are explored, including the idea of mortality & what it's actually like for the adventurers to die & how different people are responding to their being trapped in this new world. We meet characters that we wouldn't expect, such as a Chinese farmbot & Shiroe's alt character Roe2, who also seem to have come to life. Friction between the People of the Land & adventurers continues & we also, finally, start getting a hint at why the players of Elder Tale were sucked into the game in the first place.

Unfortunately, LH2 tends to skip over the more interesting parts while doing very little to try & tie everything together. In LH1 you had a real sense of progression between the different story arcs. Things started with everyone just getting used to functioning in this new world, which led to the Akihabara adventurers trying to better organise themselves, which led to their becoming diplomatically involved with the nearby PotL kingdoms & so on. There's no such sense of one thing building into another in LH2. Each story just kind of happens & ends with no real apparent impact. We're told it's impactful, sure. But the point is we don't see it in the same way you could in LH1.

It doesn't help that LH2 is full of what can only be thought of as filler episodes. LH2 is adapting two less novels than LH1 did (3 & 5 respectively), & it really feels like they're trying to spread less content over the same number of episodes. One particularly egregious example comes in the El Dorado raid, which involves returning Silver Sword guild leader William giving an episode long speech that boils down to "I'm a sad loser irl, but in Elder Tale I feel important." The raid itself is actually quite enjoyable, as it's fun watching Shiroe & the adventurers reacting to a raid zone that has been designed specifically to be unbeatable. The ending is a massive anticlimax, though.

LH2 also has an annoying tendency to introduce interesting ideas only to ignore them. The aforementioned Chinese bot character just sorta shows up for a bit before wandering off. Kanami, the tits & fists former leader of the mythical Tea Party shows up completely at random, first in a story one of Plant Hwyaden's leaders is telling another which gets cut off with a convenient "I don't know what happened after this" just as his story (which is the most interesting thing to happen in LH2 up to this point) was in danger of running into two episodes.

Adventurer mortality, & how adventurers see images of their real life in the time between dying & resurrecting, is touched on on a couple of occasions, most notably in the form of the Odyssey Knights; adventurers who seek out death so they can briefly glimpse their past lives before returning. Unfortunately, all the Odyssey knights are really used for is to let Touya give a boyscout speech about the importance of living. What the characters actually have to say about the subject is equally disappointing, the writing not being nearly up to expressing the complexities of the ideas being discussed.

Conversely, LH2 is happy to waste a lot of time on things I have no interest in. The magic bag fetch quest takes up something like eight episodes, almost all of which is spent just watching the kids of Log Horizon wander about being happy as Izuma learns to be more confident in her musicianship. We apparently only have five minutes for the round table to discuss ideas like how to deal with adventurers who can't cope with being trapped in Elder Tale, but there's time for an entire valentine's day episode. Considering the apparent impending war that was teased at the end of LH1, everything in LH2 just feels like it's trying to fill time & hopes you don't notice that for most of the season nothing really happens to progress the story.

Speaking of romance, LH continues having some of the most awful relationship writing in anime. Nyanta, everyone's favourite middle aged furvert, continues to groom little red moeblob Serara, which the other characters seem to find hilarious & sweet but I find disturbing & painful to watch. That oh so funny not-love triangle between a NEET (Shiroe) a shutin (Atatsuki) & an under-aged girl (Minori) continues to rear its ugly head as well. Oh & in case you thought the flirting between Naotsugu & Marie was too normal, worry not; for now there is Tetora, an idol who takes a liking to Naotsugu. This is apparently hilarious because Tetora is actually a guy but Naotsugu is the only character who doesn't realise. I guess it had to be made weirder because the relationship between Rudy & Isuzu has greater prominence in LH2 & there can only be room for one "normal" relationship.

Planet Hwyaden is a group that LH2 also completely fails to integrate into the story. Remember how Nureha seemed like she was going to become the antagonist of LH2? Well somewhere between that & the start of LH2 it seems something important got lost, because she is now the boot-licking bitch of some elf member of the guild, literally eating dirt off the floor. It strikes me that it would be quite an important piece of information to let us know how she went from one state to the other, but LH2 doesn't seem to think so.

Indeed quite what Planet Hwyaden are supposed to be doing in LH2 isn't clear. At first they seem to be built up as an example of how adventurers have responded to the challenge of organising themselves in different ways, taking a more authoritarian approach to governing than the more mercantile oligarchy, round table of guilds in Akihabara. But as the season continues & the supposed showdown between the two recedes into memory, it feels like they just become a stand in for whenever the show needs a bad guy. That is until the final arc pretty much completely abandons the idea of war between adventurers in favour of a new enemy, at which point one wonders why Plant Hwyaden were introduced at all.

Beyond that, I feel compelled to voice one personal gripe I have with LH, that being the continued degradation of Atatsuki as a character. It seems so long ago now that she started out in LH as a shy but pretty badass ninja. One of the things I didn't like about LH1 was how her development through the season felt like she was more & more being pushed into the role of the longing lover watching from the shadows. LH2 continues this with gusto, to the point that Shiroe can unironically say "you're starting to become quite the ninja" like it's not a massive insult. Between her & Nureha it's almost like the writers find the idea of powerful women as important characters too hard to comprehend.

It was perhaps a bit of a surprise to see LH2 come only a year after LH1 with the same number of episodes, given the comparative lack of source material to draw from. In addition to this, it kind of feels like LH2 either lacked the time & resources of LH1's production, or at least it doesn't seem to have been as well managed. Studio Deen don't have a Stirling reputation among anime fans, & while I can't say LH2 looks bad, it does feel a bit lackluster compared to LH1 (at least as I remember it), particularly towards the end where it feels they hadn't accounted for the action scenes that the story called for. Occasionally characters do go noticeably off model during combat or when viewed from an odd angle, which is always fun to spot. But given that LH is not as action focused as a lot of fantasy shows of it's ilk, one can forgive it for the the most part.

LH2, then, is another example of a second season that struggles to maintain the momentum of the first. Stuck trying to stretch less material over the same episode count as LH1, it feels like the writers just grabbed whatever they could out of the books with no real idea of how it all fits together in the grand scheme things. Had they been able to wait another year for more books to be written, or gone with a 13 episode length instead of 25, I think they could have told a more focused, concise story that felt like it was worth picking up after LH1. As it is, unless & until they announce a third season I see no reason for anyone to watch LH2. Even then, you'd be better off just reading the cliffnotes or watching an abridged version than sitting through all 25 episodes.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Mar 28, 2015

dertswa687o

Not Recommended

Story:

Is Log Horizon 2 filler? Now, let's stop right there. The very fact that I even considered leading off a review with this question doesn't bode well. But, to answer that question: No, Log Horizon 2 is not filler, but it feels like filler. Everything in the show is canon, covering 4 light novels and even going into some material that hasn't been officially released yet. Season 1 adapted 5 LNs, so we're already looking at slightly less source material. Within these 4 LNs + extras of material, Log Horizon 2 decides to adapt 1 of them to only 1 episode, so we're left with ... 3 LNs + extras for 24 episodes.

So it should come to no surprise that the first point of contention is the dreadful pacing of the show. The plot moves extremely slow; there were multiple times that I got bored because I wanted the show to move a bit faster and get to the point. Log Horizon was never a fast paced show to begin with, but there were several episodes (especially in the 3rd arc) where it felt like virtually nothing happened. In fact, I might go so far as to say the first 21.5 episodes of Log Horizon 2 were a waste of time. We get 3 entire arcs during those episodes but we never actually see the results of those arcs. The plot feels contrived to the point of searching for something for the characters to do rather than them actually moving toward an obtainable goal. The last couple episodes sort of introduce an interesting goal, but by then it's too late. However, these episodes are actually good. Had we gotten a whole season of this it would have been much better.

But why don't we get any results? Because those arcs existed for the sake of character development. Log Horizon 2 develops Shiroe, Akatsuki, and the kids a little bit, but it takes way too long to do so. Log Horizon's strong suit was never its characters; it was the world and its MMO aspects that made the show interesting. So the fact that we spend so much time on one of the less interesting parts of Log Horizon hurts the show immensely.

While it spends so much time developing the cast, it also introduces a bunch of interesting ideas to the world. But Log Horizon 2 never goes anywhere with these cool ideas. They're shrugged off in favor of character development. Any expansion of these ideas would have been great.

Now I want to talk about the 3rd arc in particular. We follow the Log Horizon kids (colloquially called the Noob Squad) as they go on a quest. It's so boring and unrelatable that I wanted to drop the show, and I almost never drop shows. The Noob Squad is far and away the worst characters in the cast, and getting a second arc (they had a short one in S1) devoted to them is just too much. The slice of life "comedy" parts of this arc in particular are more cringe worthy than anything else.

Characters:

Again, Log Horizon 2 tries its best to develop its characters. We learn about them a little more and maybe change a little bit, but it doesn't really add anything to the show. Again, Log Horizon's strength was never its characters. Perhaps the biggest fault in terms of the cast is its sheer size. With 41 characters listed on MAL, it's unsurprising that the viewer might forget about some of the minor ones, especially when it comes to stuff like guild affiliation. Now, a large cast is not necessarily a bad thing. Legend of the Galactic Heroes doesn't get bashed for its huge cast. But Log Horizon doesn't always know what to do with all its characters, so many of them fall by the wayside.

Shiroe is still the best character in the show, but his screen time is limited compared to the first season. It's really disappointing because Shiroe was the one who most drove the plot forward in the first season. Plus we only get a fraction of the glasses pushes.

Oh, remember Nyanta? Everyone's favorite cat swashbuckler chef shows up for an episode or two just to remind us he exists. Instead we get Tetra, who serves almost no purpose besides comic relief.

Sound:

Log Horizon 2's OST uses many of the same tracks from the first season, and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that. The songs are good; they usually fit the mood fine and there's nothing really to complain about there. Log Horizon's OP, Database, also returns for another go. Database is a good song, but I don't think we needed 50 episodes of it. Log Horizon 2's OP also shamelessly spoils some stuff from the series again. The ED isn't bad, but the transition into the ED is awful. There are a few episodes that end on a somber or intense note, and then the super happy ED pops in just before the episode actually ends and destroys the mood. The voice acting is fine. The kids' voices can get annoying though.

Art/Animation:

Log Horizon switches animation studios for its second season, going to the infamous Studio Deen. The first thing you'll notice is that characters look slightly different. It's most noticeable on characters with long hair such as Marielle. The designs are more faithful to the original source material, but I personally found the slight redesigns in the first season to be aesthetically pleasing.

The animation itself is bad to the point of distraction. Characters' faces never quite look right. Tons of shortcuts were taken and it's completely noticeable and frustrating.

Enjoyment:

Now, I could throw all this aside if the show manages to be fun to watch. For me, it wasn't. When my first thought week by week is "Let's get this over with" then that's a terrible sign. The show has a bunch of slice of life moments that are supposed to be funny or heartwarming or something, but they're tiresome and cringe worthy. The action scenes are all right, but they're few and far between and also take a few animation shortcuts that don't make them as fun as they could be. The plot isn't particularly engaging until the very end, but those last few episodes aren't enough to redeem the boredom that's before it. There are a few moments I genuinely enjoyed, but by and large it felt like a drag.

2/10

Yes, this is a harsh score. But if I can't take much of any enjoyment from the show and it doesn't really succeed in any area, it's tough to give it points at all.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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