RogerBW's Blog

2014-2015 fantasy, light novel adaptation, 25 episodes: AniDB. Sequel to 2013-2014's Log Horizon. The players of a virtual-reality fantasy game are trapped inside it, and have to learn to live in their new world.

This isn't a good place to start; the story carries on directly from the first season, and little time is spent bringing new viewers up to speed. The setup obviously invites comparison with Sword Art Online, but where that show is about a traditional hero's journey, this one is much more about how one builds a society in a new world: it was all very well when it was just a game world, but now that people have to live in it full-time, they want more rules than just the will of the strongest mob. Unfortunately that gets fairly short shrift this time round, with the story focusing more on major threats both to the adventurers stuck in the world and to the "People of the Land" (NPCs), who seem to be a lot more than simple script-following bots.

Character designs and styles have shifted slightly (while the director and some of the script writers are the same, this season is being made by a different studio), and given the substantial cast brought along from the first season this can sometimes make people hard to recognise.

Meanwhile the story seems to slow down: there's less focus on the protagonist, and more on secondary characters and their small arcs. Much of the second half leaves out the "core cast" completely. I was interested in the stories, both personal and about the world, that had been built up and left hanging at the end of season 1, but they got very little time here; much of it ended up feeling like filler.

There are no current plans for a third season, and while there's no cliffhanger there are lots of plots left unresolved. On balance, I can't really recommend it, unless there turns out to be an amazing third season.