Read other peoples’ reviews of Log Horizon and a pattern emerges, whereby your enjoyment of the series seems predicated on your level of involvement with MMORPGs and by how much you want an anime series to capture the feelings they invoke. So on the one hand you have those who have played since the heady pioneering days of Ultima Online and Everquest and have moved past the day to day minutiae of MMO activities with an elevated focus on community and meta aspects to the experience. On the other, you have those who seek the thrill of loot, of building one’s character, min-maxing and optimising and savouring the Pavlovian new-level ping.
that knowing sense of daftness when a samurai takes down a boar ten times his size, or when a griffin tries to eat Naotsugu’s head
Log Horizon contains characters from that entire spectrum but as a series, favours the former over the latter. The concept of characters becoming trapped within an MMO is definitely not unique but its approach to telling a story within that structure is. Perhaps most crucially though is that the series seems to understand which core tenets of MMOs make a good story rather than doing the opposite trying to apply a story to an MMO.
Battles have all the subtlety of throwing a super sentai squad and some fireworks into a washing machine and hitting 'spin'
In Accel World's jargon Zero Fill is when, due to lack of willpower, the signal transmitted to an avatar is reduced to zeros only. A fitting analogy for a series which, despite some promising foundations, an unconventional protagonist and a general high level of visual polish, ends up being brainless and largely unfulfilling.
It's not surprising given how exposition and the script in general is delivered like a kudgel to the forehead. Regardless of ongoing events, be that an all out war or impending attack , meticulous explanations as to what is going on are sure to follow. Combined with the protagonist's ostensibly chivalrous but archaically chauvinistic desire to protect the gaggle of women folk who flock around him, it's not long before genre titans like Bleach and Naruto begin to exert their influence.
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was born as a dream project: bringing together some of GAINAX's finest in an original concept with all the flamboyance and energy the best works from the studio are noted for. An ensemble of animation and episode directors could have easily birthed an amalgam of half-cocked ideas and tepid action; instead a rare gem, vast in imagination and rich in breathless enthusiasm, was created and took the varied mecha genre to outlandish heights.
the spiral becomes a standard for the loud, energy filled cries that characterise every duel, skirmish and battle
Beginning deep underground, Simon is a reticent young digger for a village sequestered from the surface; his companion, Kamina, is brash, forthright and instantly charismatic. After a giant robot falls from the surface - swiftly followed by the sparsely clothed Yoko - they begin an adventure across the surface and all the trouble that entails. For many series this would be the entire narrative, however after a monumental battle with the aggressor of the surface, the Spiral King, time moves forward. Characters are older and divisions deeper, it is only then that the true threat appears which threatens not just the world or the galaxy, but the entire universe.
