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REVIEW: Log Horizon Episodes 1 - 6 Streaming


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Fencedude5609



Joined: 09 Nov 2006
Posts: 5088
PostPosted: Sun Nov 17, 2013 11:37 pm Reply with quote
Sven Viking wrote:
"Girlfriend" was hyperbole, but in 90% of magical girlfriend/sudden girlfriend appearance anime, the female lead is not officially the lead's girlfriend until the end of the series if that. Making characters overpowered is not the same thing as good writing.


Ok...?

Kirito's entire character was based around him being the most powerful person for no reason other than that he is.

Shiroe, Akatsuki and the others are all level 90 yes, but so are TONS of other players. Elder Tale is a game thats been around for YEARS. Its basically the WoW of its universe. There are tons of players who have hit the level cap and are absolute masters of how their characters play.

Shiroe happens to have chose a class thats very hard to play and master, true. But that is part of what makes him an interesting character. He chose a class that is dependent on working with others, yet never permanently tied himself to a group. He mostly worked ad-hoc and only ever was associated with one somewhat permanent grouping, the "Debauchery Tea Party".

Christ man, if I'm defending a male lead, he's probably pretty good.

I HATE MALE LEADS
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Fencedude5609



Joined: 09 Nov 2006
Posts: 5088
PostPosted: Sun Nov 17, 2013 11:43 pm Reply with quote
sonic720 wrote:


I think having a clear goal driving the characters' actions is more appealing than them going on without a goal in mind in a situation where they cannot log out of the "game" world. It provides a motive behind what they are doing rather than them just going with the flow and allowing their situation to define them. This is my personal preference though, and it goes back to my entire point in that post which was what I see as "bad" others may see as "good." I'm not saying having everything about their situation spelled out in black and white is necessary for me to be hooked, but having almost nothing to go on is less appealing for me.


Do you not have any desire for mystery? To learn, along with the characters, what is happening and what the truth of the world is?

Not everything or everyone immediately has a driving goal. The first six episodes (which I'm guessing cover about the first novel) are about establishing Shiroe's driving motivation. So it didn't happen FIRST EPISODE, so what? Not all stories should or need to be paced the same way.

Hell, I honestly have no real problem with what happened in the first episode of SAO. In fact, its a really good episode! I think the show as a whole is utter stinking shit, but that episode was quite good on its own merits.

That being said, Log Horizon is not Sword Art Online, just like its not .hack or any other given show you could name. If it wants to take its time to establish where its going and what its going to do, and along the way provide some world building and character development, well, great!

There is a tendency (demonstrated very much in the ANN season previews) for some people to complain when the first episode of a show leaves them not entirely clear on what is happening. To be fair, sometimes that is bad; but frequently it seems that if the show doesn't immediately explain EVERYTHING about its world, people are going to whine incessantly. Frequently the complaints end up being moot by the time the series is over, though some people who only watched one episode will continue to act like they know everything about the show. *cough*Horizon*cough*

So in short, no neither is better, but I find complaints about how Log Horizon (or Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon for that matter) structure their stories to be highly tedious, and generally demonstrate a lack of patience and willingness to let a story be told at its own pace.
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Sven Viking



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 1035
PostPosted: Sun Nov 17, 2013 11:48 pm Reply with quote
Fencedude5609 wrote:
Christ man, if I'm defending a male lead, he's probably pretty good.

I HATE MALE LEADS

Evidence of your bias or deviation from the mainstream is more likely to mean that anything you like from the hated subset appeals specifically to your tastes, rather than being an indicator of intrinsic quality. They just replaced 'physical' strength with strategic brilliance in Log Horizon's lead -- and since they introduce the world rules as they go along, the viewer needs to take the writer's word for it that his decisions are actually brilliant.
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sonic720



Joined: 29 Aug 2013
Posts: 66
PostPosted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 12:18 am Reply with quote
Fencedude5609 wrote:
sonic720 wrote:


I think having a clear goal driving the characters' actions is more appealing than them going on without a goal in mind in a situation where they cannot log out of the "game" world. It provides a motive behind what they are doing rather than them just going with the flow and allowing their situation to define them. This is my personal preference though, and it goes back to my entire point in that post which was what I see as "bad" others may see as "good." I'm not saying having everything about their situation spelled out in black and white is necessary for me to be hooked, but having almost nothing to go on is less appealing for me.


Do you not have any desire for mystery? To learn, along with the characters, what is happening and what the truth of the world is?


No, I like mystery and suspense and I'm dying to learn with them, but as I noted earlier, and others also pointed out, there's a huge disconnect with the characters and seeking a way out of their situation. The characters do not seem to be actively seeking answers to why they are trapped and what could have made them turn into their game characters in a way that feels very real to them. That's what I want to watch, them looking for the answers and a way out of their predicament. Instead we get guild wars and the characters show no signs of wanting to find answers anytime soon. Perhaps they will later on, but until then I'm having a hard time relating to them fighting with others as the reality of them being trapped should trump any petty squabbles they have; it's a key to survival to cooperate and work together, but it was not obvious to Shiroe until episode six.

Fencedude5609 wrote:
That being said, Log Horizon is not Sword Art Online, just like its not .hack or any other given show you could name. If it wants to take its time to establish where its going and what its going to do, and along the way provide some world building and character development, well, great!


That was precisely my point in previous posts. I never once said I expected LH to be SAO in terms of pacing or anything else. In fact I said they both have their own merits. That said, I do have some issues with the pacing in LH related directly to its own setup and how we have no more to go on by episode 7 than we did in episode 1.

Fencedude5609 wrote:
So in short, no neither is better, but I find complaints about how Log Horizon (or Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon for that matter) structure their stories to be highly tedious, and generally demonstrate a lack of patience and willingness to let a story be told at its own pace.


And I find people bashing SAO in a thread about LH highly tedious, so what's your point? We have opinions and, gasp, share them, but, gasp, not everyone agrees with them. Last time I checked not everyone shared the same opinions as others, and you know what that's more than fine by me.
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Tuor_of_Gondolin



Joined: 20 Apr 2009
Posts: 3524
Location: Bellevue, WA
PostPosted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 1:29 am Reply with quote
Sven Viking wrote:
Fencedude5609 wrote:
Christ man, if I'm defending a male lead, he's probably pretty good.

I HATE MALE LEADS

Evidence of your bias or deviation from the mainstream is more likely to mean that anything you like from the hated subset appeals specifically to your tastes, rather than being an indicator of intrinsic quality. They just replaced 'physical' strength with strategic brilliance in Log Horizon's lead -- and since they introduce the world rules as they go along, the viewer needs to take the writer's word for it that his decisions are actually brilliant.

Wrong.

They are currently *showing* Shiroe's strategic brilliance. And they already established his tactical brilliance when he went up against the Monk guy (and his guild) in that city up north. In fact, in the very first episode they show that Shrioe is pretty good at what he does.

LH is superior to SAO because it establishes its rules and then enforces them uniformly and consistantly. There aren't any "special" skills for a "special" player (at least, not so far). Shiroe does what he does within the established rules of the world he is in. Kirito did not. In fact, *breaking* the established rules of the game was a major plot point in SAO on more than one occasion.

I do agree that the lack of mental/emotional trauma in LH seems odd. I mean, maybe some people experienced it off camera, but the almost matter-of-fact way the characters are shown to handle it isn't normal. However, I'm not convinced that this is an oversight by the author: there may turn out to be a reason for this being the case. I'll withhold judgement on that part because the rest seems to have been handled pretty adroitly.

I should add that I did not uniformly hate SAO, especially in the beginning. I think it would be more accurate to say that I was extremely disappointed with where it went after such a promising start.
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Sven Viking



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 1035
PostPosted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 2:15 am Reply with quote
Even in the monk fight I don't feel that they'd established the rules well enough to 'show' that his plans were brilliant (since they were explaining new rules mid-battle they could do whatever they liked), but I don't have any major complaint about that. It had improved by the monk fight and will likely improve as the story progresses. SAO didn't really break it's own rules early in the series either, so any difference there remains to be seen.

I was disappointed by various things later in SAO also, and I'm not saying Log Horizon is a bad show. It just has most of the things I didn't like about SAO and few of the things I enjoyed (mostly the high-stakes tension and tragedy), which makes it hard for me to sustain my interest.
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meiam



Joined: 23 Jun 2013
Posts: 3442
PostPosted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 2:16 pm Reply with quote
Couldn't the lack of people freaking out over there situation simply be because there's no perma death, if I'm reading this correctly?

I mean all the character are presumedly players, who all enjoyed the game. Now there trapped in the game that they are enjoying, with very little consequence. I'm not saying that's a good things, but it does have many advantage. I mean some people probably went from working at a wal-mart to slaying dragon, and there immortal to boot. Heck if I was in that situation I'd probably half-jokingly say stuff like "my biggest regret is missing out on all the other video game that'll come out".

I would guess a certain amount of the player population is either completely fine, or partially fine with there situation and this establish the new normal, and everyone who isn't fine with it try to fit in and so they don't openly freak out about it.

Anyway seems like most of my worries aren't in this series, so I'll try watching it.
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4nBlue





PostPosted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 8:15 pm Reply with quote
Nayu wrote:
http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2013/01/24/maoyu-authors-log-horizon-slated-for-anime-adaptation
http://www.moetron.com/2013/01/24/log-horizon-ln-to-tv-anime-announced/
http://www.fandompost.com/2013/11/06/log-horizon-episode-05-anime-review/
http://lndb.info/light_novel/view/Log_Horizon

Also, this is printed exactly like every other light novel in the bunkoban format and include the illustrations prevalent in the majority of light novels and missing from the vast majority of "regular" novels. (See also: http://anime.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=5584)


Log Horizon's books are paperback sized. I should also note that there is a slight size difference between the books in the bunko section and the light novel section of book stores.


Also, what format it was released in is kind of irrelevant, because unlike SAO which was written for light novel contest, Log Horizon was planned from the beginning to be posted on a website. Of the series that were released on the same website, some have been released as light novels, others as paperbacks, what decides the format they are released is the publisher.


Size comparison between paperback sized book (not sure what the Japanese term for this size is), bunko and light novel:
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Tuor_of_Gondolin



Joined: 20 Apr 2009
Posts: 3524
Location: Bellevue, WA
PostPosted: Mon Nov 18, 2013 9:12 pm Reply with quote
Is that Lafiel from Banner of the Stars I see there? Gosh darn it, now I am wanting to see more of that series animated. Sad
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Tomibiki



Joined: 08 Jul 2007
Posts: 834
PostPosted: Fri Nov 22, 2013 11:32 am Reply with quote
I spoiled myself on this show by reading novel translations..and yet I continue to watch, must be good.
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Michael Nathanael T.





PostPosted: Tue May 13, 2014 4:00 am Reply with quote
Stark700 wrote:
I also find Akatsuki to be adorable and pretty in this series. As far as Log Horizon goes so far, I'm enjoying it fairly more than I had thought as a fantasy adventure that explains its mechanics well. The pacing so far feels a little slow but I don't mind it. The show itself might not be earth shattering so far but definitely has my attention.

The latest episode also made me a bit hungry...


Yes, if we're in extremely rich guild, we can buy tons of that hamburgers...
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