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It's a simplified and illustrated version of Karl Marx's work. Barely any story, no humor, the most compelling love story (that's irony just there). This can barely be called a manga to be honest. But it's well done and simple to understand. There really is a lot thought. So yeah, after reading this, you can try to make people believe You read the real thing. It's so well explained you shouldn't have problems explaining the content to others afterwards. I always feel dumb when I try to explain complicate concepts and realize halfway through I'm going to fail miserably. But worry not, this work here ... shall make you an expert at spreading the ideas of our dear and beloved Karl. Now go read and learn.

Making a review on a 17 chapters manga is kind of a challenge, for with the slightest spoil, you end up revealing a significant part of the show. And to me, this manga is best appreciated when knowing nothing of it and discovering its content page by page. A point of view not shared by other reviewers of “All you need is kill” at the moment. As such, if you are satisfied what you will have read in this review, I would like to advise you not to read the other reviews before reading the manga. This may sound terribly arrogant, but ... I believe I made myself clear enough on why I’m saying this. In fact, you shouldn’t even read this review. Go read the first chapters, it will take the same amount of time as reading this review.

But if you still need more motivation, what can I tell about it? Well, I think that just by stating that this manga shouldn’t be spoiled, it already tells you something. Combine that with the genre tags, and I believe you already have a gist of what’s going on. An action sci-fi military, depicted in a real seinen way, and that cannot suffer from being spoiled. I say real seinen, because it is fairly loose term, is often to describe a shounen content with boobs (more or less). This is not what you will get here.

The other thing you also know is the manga length and its inherent constraints. You know it cannot stray too far from its objectives, and also that with 17 chapters, you won’t have the same depth as a 100 chapters manga. And that’s a fact. You can’t blame the manga for that, the same way you can’t blame a pony for not winning a race against a horse. It’s a bloody pony, what do you expect? That said, I don’t think that “all you need is kill”, which is a pretty terrible title I must say, has much in common with a pony. The annoying thing is that you’re left with the “I want more” feeling, and that’s amplified by the pace choice. But it has its weaknesses too. The story setup and the characters are pretty generic. Could the author have done a better job in that aspect in such a shot amount of time? Maybe.

I believe you now have all the elements to make an informed decision. I’m giving it a 9, which is fairly high, but I find that this manga deserves it, for it does what its design for very well.

Log horizon happens in a mmorpg-based world where people are trapped and have to live in, and where the mmorpg-concept is brought forward through mechanics, social interactions, and world design. The story focuses on the hero, shiroe, his interaction with the player-controlled city of Akihabara, the impact on the world around it, and on the emotions felt by people around him. It is done in a way that hasn’t been done elsewhere, but is it capable of binding together all its element in an well-paced story? It certainly has a lot of time to do it, with 2 times 25 episodes, and a universe choice ... complex enough to fill hundreds. In short, welcome to an attempt to have a global view of log horizon.

After an update of a world played mmorpg, many players worldwide have been trapped in the game, and have to learn to survive in this environment that will be their new home. The back bone of the world is a post-apocalyptic earth where nature would invade abandoned cities, combined with a medieval-fantasy world, and the attention is directed solely on japan, with a focus on the city of akihabara (Tokyo). As it is a rpg world, it is of course monsters and PNJ. And since the world is sometimes working as a game, and sometimes working as a real world, strange things happen with them. But while it's interesting to discover, I often had the feeling of being cheated by how things works. It's used more by convenience to make a background and plot twists, rather than following a real logic. It burns the eyes and the ears sometimes.

A big part of the story involves how the mechanics of the world works, how they changed from before, and how they are changed. "Will they respawn if they die?" will be one of first question brought forward of course, but many others will follow. Sadly, it will open more questions that aren't, or can't be, answered. Only a faint light will be brought on how the world works, narrowing the sight of the viewer only on the chosen focus. And this kills the immersion. You simply can't dive into the world with the few explanations given to you, and how blurry they are. It would take many books to explore the possibilities their world open, yet they only give you a glance at it, and force you to eat the things they come up with. It is not done well, and the story suffers significantly from it. In a world where your limitation isn't what the game allows you to do, but the laws of physics and magic, you open yourself to limitless possibilities, and can't just limit it to what is convenient to you, especially it's given such importance.

The story, as said before, is centered on 3 aspects: the discovery of the world and its laws, the mmo side of completing and building things, and the emotions of the characters involved and their personal development. This said, all the story is built around the emotions and the people, while the rest is used to bring those moments, in a very pronounced way. While feelings give an interesting dimension to the anime, they are most of the time poorly exploited. In an attempt to make the viewer laugh, you will be fed with uninteresting unraveled love stories. In addition, to give a dramatic side, a huge part of the show will focus on the distress of characters you won't care about, or care enough. There isn't a single interesting character with a (realistic) personality. When you story is emotion driven, it just kills it. At some point, I choose to skip parts that were too annoying. When skip a 5 minutes part of a 20 minutes episode, I believe you can say it is pretty tasteless filling. The dialogues are also pretty bad, being often cheesy and way too long. Globally, this makes for a very slow story, with not much happening.

Social interaction as you might have guessed is big part of log horizon, since it's a mmorpg. Again, a lot of potential brought up here, as you have people with very different social status and background that meet, plus the interaction with a medievalesque culture. So much potential, yet such an appealing result. The anime makes a really good job at bringing those ideas forward, but always use them so poorly. It is quiet sad. Even the men-women relations are shortened to some kind broken love stories and harem bullshit, to the point where I started to call it harem horizon. But wait, there is more, as every story needs it baddies, that are bad because reasons. Every mmo has its PK, who kills because they want to, but can suddenly become good people because they are not needed as bad people anymore. The magic of imaginary personalities who have no depth.

To summarize, I must say log horizon is doing an amazing job at bringing you an interesting world, with interesting concepts, but fails miserably at using them, and that’s pretty sad. All it does is shoving you with some bullshit feelings you don't care. No cookies for you, harem horizon.

Main plot: Interesting
I didn’t know much about the warring states period, and find it really great to have a manga talking about the subject. Of course, don’t take what you read for taken, but the manga seems to follow the historical story fairly well. (If you are curious about it, try “kingdom manga history” in your favorite search engine. There is some nice work out there.) Regardless of its fidelity, it’s a nice way to be introduced to the topic.

Story telling: Redundant and cheesy
At first, I quiet liked how the story telling was done. It’s well paced, I ... quiet like the humor, and so much stuff is going that you may wish to shorten your night to read more of it. “Just one more chapter… Oh, the sun is rising.”
But the problem is that the story is always told the same way. The worst being battles. Normal soldiers are useless, Generals kill everything, and tactics are there to maintain the show, but have no influence on the course of battle.
Another problem is how things are told. Everything has to be put in a way it’s amazing to read, making dialogues are unbearably cheesy.

Characters: Bad
You follow Xin, a very simple minded boy, who gets stronger and stronger. He meets other people, who are either as simple minded as him, or so smart everybody is amazed when they talk, even if it’s to say hello. They all kill tons of people and you should find it very cool. The end.
Art: Good drawings, bad designs
I really like the art because, you know, drawings and stuff. Looks nice, there are some details, you see what I mean. Maybe =l. Actually, it gets better the further you read. Faces are a bit weird at the beginning. But I do have a problem with the character design. Strong people are usually twice the size of a normal person, because why not. Many weird faces too. In short, many humans, but many aliens too.

Conclusion: Very strong start, disappointing continuation
I do believe you should give it a try, for regardless of its many faults, it’s still enjoyable to read. But if you don’t like it from the start, you should just give up on it.


Ps: I’m not a native English speaker. If you find mistakes, please tell me so I can correct them.