Review Log Horizon

Our hero, the villain in glasses

Elder Tale was just another MMORPG until one day when a new update to the game was supposed to take place the players of the game were placed inside the game for real and unable to escape it. Among the thousands of people stranded by this  event is Shiroe, a brilliant but reserved person and his companions Naotsugu and Akatsuki. As time wears on the situation slowly degrades as living in an MMORPG all the time isn't conductive having a civil society. Could Shiroe be the person who can figure out how to make a working society out of the chaos of a giant game gone haywire?

It wouldn't be a political show without bickering politicians

Log Horizon is a twenty five episode anime show with a second season coming in the fall of 2014. Even though this show has the well worn premise of being trapped in a video game I would warn you that this is a show that manages to take said premise and go in a direction not covered by it’s predecessors. Instead Log Horizon is a show that has a strong theme of society running through it. It also manages to pull off it’s philosophizing while remaining a mostly lighthearted (although it can be serious as well, usually around action segments of the show) and generally fun show.

This show contains nation building and ninja dressing

While this show is fairly unique and has good characters I would be remiss if it I didn’t mention that Log Horizon suffers from some really odd pacing problems. While this show is thoughtful in building conflicts for itself, there is a trade off in that much of the show is devoted to set up of said conflicts leaving it looking like it’s spinning it’s wheels for many episodes. 

Overall I found that Log Horizon is a good and unique show but it is a bit it requires some patience to really get the full effect of the show. 

Rating The silver Parn (Record of Lodoss War) for being one of the better and more thoughtful fantasy anime shows in recent years.