Wiki.

It's quickly becoming my favorite game anime and it's very different from .hack and SAO, but in a good way. My only problem with it is how easily everyone accepted that they are trapped in the game, but I get why the author did it. He wanted to focus on MMO aspects as they would work in a "real" world, not on a possible psychological drama. For the same reason nobody have any problem with accepting the People of the Land as people, not just programs.

That said I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of it, it will be revealed that they weren't in a game, but rather the game was a window into the real world of Elder Tale and the expansion pack transported them there.

 

My take from the LNs, though it's never stated explicitly or even hinted at, is that they might be copies of the original personalities simulated in the game world... anything else would need too big a Deus Ex Machina to pull off, I feel.

Unless, of course, A Wizard Did It.

 

Isn't this the anime with towns populated by monsters that farm respawning players for levels? I kind of assumed this was meant to be a psychological horror deconstruction of if reality was a video game.

 

That could work if not for the fact that they have memories of things outside of the game that they most likely never mentioned inside the game. There is not much difference to me in creating a copy like that or simply trapping the real people in the game because both would need a "magical science" in the world where as far as we know they don't have things like the Nerve Gear from SAO, but play these games like we do.

 

I was just about to come here and create a thread about this anime if one didn't exist before. A friend made me watch it last Saturday and I've been cursing him since then because I couldn't wait for another episode. It makes you wonder if there are any good fanfics. Of course, the series is quite new so that's not very likely. How about it, DLP?

 

No, that's something else. Log Horizon has politics, thinking NPCs, and game mechanics galore. Plus people screwing up the world with magic shenanigans.

 

Yeah, but I was thinking that the game is managed by a very advanced AI (like in the Korean series, Legendary Moonlight Sculptor) that has virtually stalked the original players and constructed reasonable fascimiles, presumably to simulate how "real people" who remember a world outside will react to this kind of a world. Maybe the LH world is the beta testing of a VR simulation where earth's population can be gradually shunted off to, thereby solving problems such as population explosion and most crimes.

EDIT: I don't think the two choices you point out are of equivalent complexity. If the game is complex enough to generate people of the land, it's complex enough to generate people with real world memories. Trapping real people though, will indicate a need for specialized hardware and presumably the adventurers would remember using such a thing and not be so confused when they arrived at Akiba. Also, in the latter LNs we find there are penalties with being revived - I won't spoil further - that reinforce my belief.

A cynical view here would be that the People of the Land are necessary so that 'adventurer's have a way to have complete power over others and a free hand to exercise it. (I think I remember from the LNs that there were cases where adventurers even raped the natives. And hey, it's not like they're "real people".) Or it might just be to keep the adventurers from getting bored and clashing with each other instead, giving them a common enemy.

 

It's not just about complexity though, but details too. Unless most of these memories are fake there is no way that any stalker bot would discover even ten percent of the real world facts (like Akatsuki's gender and height since she kept it a secret in the game) that it would need to create decent facsimiles of adventures that include their out of game experience.

That said, if they indeed have fake memories created to fill what little information was discovered about them then it's more possible option that players being trapped. Though in that case there is a question if the selection of the characters was as random as it appears to be right now.

 

Kinda reminds me of the FoZ/SAO fic Halkegenia Online - where a lot of the focus is seeing how the transported characters go about setting up a new society in the new world.

I'm enjoying it, but don't think I have nearly as much love for it as other people do.

As people have pointed out, it lacks any focus on how people deal with suddenly waking up in a video game - something that attracts me most about this concept. I hated how SAO the anime skipped over a lot of that, and I hate it how Log Horizon too. People from episode 1 basically act in character and role play as if they had lived in that world their whole life. They may as well have come from another fantasy setting, rather than being normal video gamers.

I also find pretty much all the characters to be pretty dull and stereotypical. Shiroe isn't that bad, but isn't interesting enough to make up for rest.

 

I don't know if you're caught up on the latest episodes, but the new season has started to get more into that. I do still think they're not taking it as seriously as most people might, but then a show about people freaking out and curling up in the fetal position probably wouldn't be that fun to watch. And not all of the characters have completely ignored their pasts - see Minori's flashbacks, which give some insight on her and Tohyas' actions and attitudes.

 

Up to ep 17, and the newer episodes haven't really resolved my issues with it much in my opinion.

For some reason, I have a fascination for Princess Lienessa which keeps me interested (in a B-grade anime type way), but this whole goblin invasion is completely lacking in atmosphere. And every scene with Minori's team since the invasion started has felt cheesy. Feeling zero tension from the impending war and all that.

Dunno, I suppose I may just be too fixated on these plot points I want to see in these sorts of anime, which SAO skipped over in 2 episodes and Log Horizon skipped completely that I may not be appreciating what currently exists, but just really not seeing the love for this except for the fact it's a bit unique.

 

I was really loving this series up until the last four episodes when it suddenly became almost like a slice-of-life/harem anime. I was fine with Akatsuki being the love-interest, but then they had to go and make Minori and Henrietta fall for Shiro too.

Minori is like 10-14 years old, why are they wasting time on her falling for Shirou. It was a shame, I was really liking her as a character before episode 22. Since then everything she does is somehow colored by her feelings for him.

I don't really understand why the series ended on such a low-note compared to the rest of the series. It was odd.

And I really hope that season 2 doesn't focus on everybody loving Shirou. Hell, even the evil chick in the final episode wants to bone him.

My wants for season 2:
* No love triangles/harem
* More Crusty/Princess Lienessa
* Character development for Akatsuki/less screentime her her being Henriette's toy.
*Less "glasses-adjusting." That got old real fast.


Are there any good fanfics out there?

 

Last time I checked there wasn't a lot of Log Horizon fic out there. The only thing I can recommend is Dislocation by Vathara.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/1014010/chapters/2013488

Summary: Becoming Shiroe meant gaining more than a few centimeters and some cool spells.

The given summary doesn't really explain anything, but, it's basically a collection of interconnected missing scenes/alternate viewpoints and similar stuff where the goal is to flesh out the universe more fully.