Log Horizon: Entaku Houkai
Log Horizon: Destruction of the Round Table
ログ・ホライズン 円卓崩壊
Third season of Log Horizon. It's been a year since Shiroe and his friends were trapped in Akiba due to the Catastrophe. Their forging of the Round Table has brought order and prosperity to its people. But fracturing political alliances and the constant menace of the Genius monsters threaten to destabilize all they've fought for and built. Can faith be restored and they persevere, or is its destruction truly inevitable? (Source: Funimation)
Synopsis
Third season of Log Horizon. It's been a year since Shiroe and his friends were trapped in Akiba due to the Catastrophe. Their forging of the Round Table has brought order and prosperity to its people. But fracturing political alliances and the constant menace of the Genius monsters threaten to destabilize all they've fought for and built. Can faith be restored and they persevere, or is its destruction truly inevitable? (Source: Funimation)
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Reviews(20)
hexashadow13
December 26, 2023
tl;dr: A series of transitionary arcs that are interesting in how they’re building up a lot of different elements, but that holistically feel lacking because very little happens in this season itself. Log Horizon had two seasons way back in 2013-2015. Of course it is expected that one watching later seasons has watched previous ones. However, in the case of large gaps between seasons, it is often the case that some sort of recap is provided either separately from the anime or in the anime itself. The third season of Log Horizon does neither. It doesn’t ease in the viewer at all and pretty much expectsthem to be as familiar with the franchise as they would if they had just finished watching the previous seasons. As such, if it has been a long time since you’ve watched the previous seasons, I would recommend doing something to get refamiliarize yourself with the series, whether it be to rewatch the series, read the novels, or go find a detailed third party summary. Between the previous seasons and this one for reasons that will not be elaborated upon, the franchise hit a very turbulent period. And by that I don’t just mean the anime, but the novels as well. Log Horizon was originally a web novel that was receiving a light novel release, however in 2015 production of that pretty much stopped as well with only one volume released after that in 2018. Previous seasons also adapted material from the web novels before it got released as a light novel. However, the issue this time is that there wasn’t all that much to adapt from the web novels either. As such, while previous seasons of Log Horizon were two cour, this season is only one cour as there’s simply not enough material left for a second one. That isn’t inherently a problem, but in this specific instance I feel that this has resulted in a pretty weak anime because the current season is composed solely of arcs that feel like they’re building up to something, but without any arcs that really feel like substantial stories of their own. There are three very distinct arcs. Across the three there’s a some pretty good content in a lot of different areas, but there’s no real depth nor any really good any content in any specific area. The first arc is centered around conflicts within the Round Table and some political intrigue arising from that. There’s a lot of good world building that it is clear will have a major impact going forward, not just in terms of Akiba but in terms of Yamato overall. However, this is pretty much entirely tangential to the main plot and thus not really focused on yet. In terms of what is focused on, the actual political gambits are incredibly simplistic which results in the story not being all that strong in and of itself. There’s also a focus on Rayneshia’s character growth which is written decent enough, but is pretty generic so it’s not particularly memorable. The second arc is about the adventures of Krusty off in the Log Horizon equivalent of China. As an adventure story it’s pretty good and has some great action involving interesting twists on MMO mechanics. Still, it’s a story that’s very much in the early stages it feels like. It has a lot of world building regarding Geniuses and the Moon, but it doesn’t feel like this arc has any sort of event that results in major progression to serve as a solid conclusion to the arc. Rather, it’s not clear at all where things are going to go exactly. The writing is setting up a lot of intermingling plot threads, but it feels like actual progress in all of them is going incredibly slowly. As of yet, I don’t feel the narrative has done anything interesting enough with Geniuses to justify how much focus they’ve gotten throughout this and the previous season. The third arc is centered around the younger members of Log Horizon, especially Minori, growing to become more capable adventurers. There’s a large focus on how raids work, but that was already a focus in season 2. Furthermore, while season 2 focused on high level raid tactics and such with Shioe, this focuses on the basics with Minori, which feels like a step back. This season gets more into the nitty gritty than season 2 did so if this was before the raid focused part in season 2 I feel this would have been perfectly fine, but focusing on the basics at this point just isn’t that interesting. There’s also some romantic development, but it’s more focused on making clear what currently is and where things will go in the future than actual progress, so this is yet another area where it’s building things up but not actually making any progress on them. The art and animation are solid enough in terms of quality. The design work has a pretty fun style that combines fantasy and modern Japan in a pretty unique way that I’m pretty fond of. The OP and ED are both pretty solid in terms of the song and visuals. I love how overtly dramatic the OP is about the Fall of the Round Table arc. The soundtrack was decent enough but not particularly memorable.
