Log Horizon
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is stuck in an MMORPG.
After .Hack and Sword Art Online, here comes the next series about people stuck in an MMORPG. What sets it aside from these two is that it by far takes itself the least serious. Of course there is a solid storyline behind it and all, but a lot of time in this episode was spent on wise-cracking jokes and characters acting quirky, or looking cool while trying to fight monsters. It is much lighter than Sword Art Online by not making an as big of a deal of what happens when you die, and it’s much less deep in its themes than .Hack//Sign was for example. There are still some issues of charcters taking certain things surprisingly serious, like an assassin who talks and acts like an honorable ninja that makes you wonder how she behaved in normal life…), but yeah if you like the banter between the characters then this can be quite fun. Unfortunately for me, that banter often annoyed me and the only good jokes were the ones it made about its setting, how it deconstructed some overused MMORPG cliches with its tongue in its cheek. Most of the jokes though are characters repeating their quirks over and over, and they’re not even funny quirks.
OP: Hilariously cheesy engrish. I did not expect an OP with this intensity, though.
ED: Aagh, and they still come with an ED that has been copied and pasted from every other generic ED out there.
Potential: 65%
Diabolik Lovers
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is stuck in a house full of vampires.
Ah, nearly forgot to check this one out because it aired a few weeks earlier than the rest of the series. Its episodes are only fifteen minutes long, so why not? Diabolik Lovers turned out to be… a really weird horror series. I’m not kidding, the entire premise of this show is that a girl enters a house full of six vampires who start assaulting her, all while looking incredibly creepy. This goes back to the strange amount of occurrences of rapey fantasies that you see all over anime and manga, which I still don’t quite get. But yeah, the bishies are hot and mysterious. The big problem here is that every character so far is a one-dimensional stereotype without any hints of more, so this one definitely isn’t going to win any awards. Good soundtrack, though.
ED: Actually not a bad ED for a horror series.
Potential: 0%
Yuusha Blahblah
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a hero.
Oh my god. What the hell was that? I originally wasn’t really looking out for this one or anything, but I was not prepared for how phenominally BAD the direction of this series would be. I mean holy crap, the director of htis show did just about everything wrong. You really have to try to be this awful. From the outside it doesn’t look that way, because the series does seem to have quite a big budget, but here is the thing: you do not simply assign all of your inbetweeners to your boob shots. Seriously, the animation in this series is crap, aside from the close up fanservice shots, and it’s so incredibly thickly laid on that it’s not even funny. Either way this is an incredibly sexist series with some of the dumbest female characters out there, but beyond that the acting is incredibly wooden. This show fails to introduce anything, it fails to set any kind of standards for its world, it randomly jumps from one scene to the other without any lead-in and it doesn’t make any attempt at comedic delivery. Add that to the uncanny ability to focus on a girl’s boobs or ass and you’ve got one of the worst directed episodes of the year, especially considering how much budget went into this and was just wasted. The bad thing is that this director is directing TWO series at the same time this season. Who the hell found that a good idea?!
ED: The only way to get any lazier than this ED is to just not record a song for it.
Potential: 0%
The bishie vampires are apparently all sexual abuse victims, and they blame the girl for it because spoilers. The story is really weird and fucked up, but very interesting. I’d play it if it was available in English.
no not really if you remember right their are 3 mommies the purple head is the worst shes the one who would sexually abuse her kids and the stern blondie would push the 1st child into growing up and pay no mind to reji(he wears glasses and has black hair) and the other mother who was raped by their father and produced the lesser evil boy the one who gave yui a knife his mother was going insane i belive and would have fits of rage and smack him and love on him and then call him names she even sometimes told him to kill her 😛 you should read the wiki -_- the wiki explains everything so really all of their issues are caused by their parents or more importantly their mothers
If thats true then maybe I can count myself in checking it out after staying on top of it and going back to it if theres actually more too it. Right now its one of these “I hate this because I don’t series”
Damn, now you caught the ‘call everything sexist’ bug too?
I thought Yuusha was fine though people disliking over the too fanservice is obviously going to have that reaction.
I don´t know man, a show about a war veteran and an undereducated country girl from the losing side, working in an electronics store during a post war economic boom, sounds pretty cool.
About Log Horizon, I really liked it. The ED is not the original type, but it’s well done. If something makes the setting different, it looks like it could be the impossibility to die (it is mentioned in next episode’s preview). Usually the drama comes from not wanting to die but the opposite can be fearsome too.
Log Horizon is suck? It’s just quick assumption. This Anime will not impress you in 1-2 Episode. but just watch it over 7 – 8 Episode. You will be surprised that this Anime is CLEARLY DIFFERENT than other same plot like SAO or .hack. The char development and the story itself is quite interest me and VERY UNIQUE. if you an ANIME and MMORPG lover this show is worth it.
I’d also like to point out that Log Horizon is decidedly different than your usual stuck-in-an-MMO anime. It’s far more focused on the various quality-of-life consequences of a game being translated into real life, and there’s a good amount of politics and scheming as the show goes on and the characters start taking advantage of their knowledge of game mechanics (one of the major storylines is about cooking, for instance). It’s actually a fascinating watch if you’re at all familiar with how MMOs and video games work.
Having finished the first season of Log Horizon I can definitely say it’s a better take on the stuck-in-an-MMO show than SAO (can’t speak for .hack//sign, since it kind of bored me). Its story is more about learning to live in the world and about the politics surrounding a world where death isn’t as much of a consequence since you can respawn. I think SAO- particularly the ALO arc- tried to take itself too seriously (the SAO arc I suppose was pretty serious, so at least that had a reason, but later arcs to me just felt more and more silly), but LH doesn’t need to.
But about Akatsuki: I think she was just meant to be a role-player. Personally, I like to actually feel like my character when I play most RPGs (like sometimes even after a play session of something like Skyrim, I might try to Fus Ro Dah something irl…usually scares people off, but it still happens)