天下制覇

I, uh, don’t think you want us to answer that question, Log Horizon.

Impressions:

It certainly tries to kick off excitingly like Yada Yada Hero Yada, but instead of skeletons, breasts, and good animation, it has laser weasels, navigating menus, and such spectacular lines as "This ain’t no game, bitches! This is reality!" I may have punched that up a little. Then it launches into an OP that’s mostly screaming Engrish. That was also about where the budget ran out as the remaining twenty minutes of the show was a succession of talking heads. I think the moment that best exemplified things was when the ninja girl (still in male form) suddenly erupted in flames, wracked in pain and groaning. One of the others placidly asked "Um. Are you okay?"

I still don’t understand why they keep making these things to begin with. What about the pure fantasy setting screams to Japanese writers these days that what’s lacking is socially awkward protagonists shoehorned in, explaining at length about how realistic the VR is, the basic minutia of how to play games, and goddamned menu navigation? That’s clearly what Slayers needed. Menu navigation. And reminding us that picking things up is just like picking things up.

Anyway, production’s middling at best, poor most of the rest of the time, and most of it was just a boring info dump. Because I’m sure people will make the comparison since the two settings are basically identical, I did find it slightly better than SAO’s first episode, but that’s mostly due to laser weasels and that SAO’s first episode was 100% info dumps and the artists touching themselves to the backgrounds. It was still tremendously boring, completely generic, and just slotting itself into very treaded ground. The most I can say for it is that it’s safe, probably too afraid of doing anything at all different that would make it stand out.

Next Episode:

Griffons.