3ET: Log Horizon

"No, we still haven't found a plot."

Studio: Satelight

Director: Ishihara Shinji (Fairy Tail, Tokyo Maijin Gakuen Kenpuchou Tou)

Writer: Nemoto Toshizou (Inu to Boku SS, Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou)

Main Cast:

Terashima Takuma as Shiroe

Maeno Tomoaki as Naotsugu

Katou Emiri as Akatsuki

Character Design: Itou Mariko

Music: Takanashi Yasuharu (Fairy Tail, Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge)

It is inevitable that Log Horizon will be compared to the 2012 hit Sword Art Online, which is completely understandable. Both shows have a bunch of players stuck in their respective game worlds with no easy way out. Also, since it's only been a year since Sword Art Online finished its run, it's still fresh in the minds of many anime fans, including mine. So, I'm going to roll with that, and as someone who watched all of SAO after being inexorably drawn in by the first few episodes, I want to see if Log Horizon can do the same thing.

As I said, the basic plot elements are the same, with a couple of main differences. First, the game in Log Horizon has been out for several years, while SAO had just released when the anime started, which means there are more experienced players in Log Horizon. And, unlike in SAO, there is no major penalty for dying. As in, if you die in the game, you just respawn. As opposed to dying in real life if you die in the game. Which takes a lot of the dramatic tension out of pretty much anything that happens in the show. I mean, yeah, a lot of people are being jerks and player-killing, but with no real consequences, I really lose my ability to care about what is going on.

FEED ME SEYMOUR! FEED ME ALL NIGHT LONG!

The characters themselves aren't bad. Or good. Or memorable, really. The main character, Shiroe, is a loner gamer who plays a support mage and used to be part of a really good party that did a lot of high level quests. Immediately after finding out he was trapped in the game, he found his old friend Naogutsu who is a friendly fighter and whose main personality trait is that he's a pervert. Rounding out the party is Akatsuki, a female assassin who enjoys beating Naogutsu up when he says something dirty. There's a joke that gets old quickly. In fact, most of the jokes in Log Horizon get old quickly. The jokes feel dated, especially for being based off of a work that was only published in 2010.

The biggest problem with Log Horizon is its lack of a plot. Instead of taking the logical route and focusing on finding a way out of the game, the show has focused on retrieving a guild member in a far away city. And on how horrible people get when there are no consequences to doing horrible things. The show has no focus, no general goal for the characters to work towards. And if I only gave it one episode, I could understand that. But, three episodes should be more than enough time to get some sort of movement towards something. 

Here, we see the party in their natural states of being. The Shiroe is confused,
the Naogutsu is perverted, and the Akatsuki is boring.

It should be no surprise that Log Horizon gets a fail. I never felt anything when I was watching it. It's not that it's terrible, it's just solidly mediocre. The last thing I'll say is that this is not a good looking show. The character models look cheap, and there are moments that are supposed to fill the audience with wonder at the great fantasy world that the characters are exploring, only it falls flat due to the subpar art. The sad thing is that I wasn't even expecting that much from this show. And it still somehow disappointed me.