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Log Horizon (TV) (all seasons).


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MaxSouth



Joined: 11 Oct 2008
Posts: 1363
PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 4:11 am Reply with quote
SPOILERS WARNING: here are more than fifty seven points about this show, so there are so many places to hid with the tag that it would make the text barely readable, if applied.


Concept:

1) after ".Hack" series and "Sword Art Online", this one is different since it is not quite about human technology getting so advanced that it allows people to be fully submerged into virtual world, and something going wrong so players would be stuck there -- which is good;

2) idea of time flowing twelve times faster within the virtual game versus real life is not feasible since human brain would not just all of sudden capable of operating twelve times faster to accommodate to that;

3) the idea that with dying in this virtual world you lose memories of specifically real world, rather than random memories, is not convincing and is done only to dramatize the story;

4) as always with such projects, unrealistic game mechanics, including ridiculous monetary system, in which one meal costs five golden coins -- while sane price for that would be something like five bronze coins -- not even silver ones, let alone golden. Also, the lack of accessible travel is also unrealistic, since slow endless travels was only issue in older games. Developers since then realized that no one wants to waste time, so teleporting on the map is the solution. The griffon summoning would have never be a secret since player info always boasts his/her achievements. Beginner player abuse is prohibited by such games, it is not believable that rules would allow this. A lot of English-language "terms"/jargons that sound bad and makes no sense since such games are in Japanese from very beginning or well-translated. Making half-scaled version of real world makes no sense; if such project would exist, they would choose to make fully scaled version, or much smaller. Characters say they can smell taste of prepared via menu food, but can not feel taste -- it makes no sense since taste mainly conveyed by smell, not via basic senses of tongue. It is weird that some game veterans are shown to not know about cooking/chef subclasses and skills, they are not new. Players have their in-game electronic menus, but still engage in paper work?

5) due to necessity to follow idiotic upside-down "morals", no sex life in mentioned;

6) target audience of this show is not clear since there is some fighting, but there a lot of petty talks and cake eating, and some significant harem. And yet neither male nor female major characters are drawn to be "sexy";

7) the manner of skipping a part of an episode to show it later is annoying, not a great direction, it does not add anything to the storytelling. But, apparently, show's main director thinks it is a cool idea;



Story:

1) to be in awe of this anime's smarts, viewers have to believe that no one in the game besides one player knew about cooking and no one besides another player knew that guild building could be bought -- which is not feasible, so all supposedly "genius" plot turns and schemes by main lad are fake;

2) in a lot of episodes, especially in the begging, nothing important happens, no stakes in anything that occurs, party acts more of boredom than of any true necessity;

3) there is a lot of minor fights in the show; they are not exciting at all;

4) there were couple of examples of bad smaller guilds abusing players, but there was not nee to create "round table council" and laws to deal with them -- they could have been crashed regular ways;

5) main lad's plan was done already with knowledge of the fact that NPCs in this world are full human emulations, so not selecting NPCs' representatives (who also live in the city) in the round table council was stupid and provoking NPCs for dissent;

6) one of Russian NPCs, a girl, is incorrectly given male name;

7) the first tasty food a guild of players decide to sell is junk, which is quite sad for Japanese project -- the country is known for its excellent cousine;

8) players forgot to took quests so whole virtual world is now in great danger, and this is plot-moving vehicle for this show? Ridiculous;

9) whole children practice story line is a showcase of the most pathetic party that could not possibly ever be players in such game -- they wasted days in dumb team-play before caring to learn how each others abilities work -- though they should have known already as they played the game before;

10) the show is often times boring as one one of three parallel mini-story lines is interesting; you can not care about the other two: the rectangular glasses guy courting NPC princess and children learning how not to be too stupid in team play -- they are fillers in sense that they only done to fill the episode number count;

11) one lad in the group of youth, yellow haired one, decides to commit suicide in the battle -- he knows he can not be resurrected as he is a NPC, not a player, and still goes to make pointless attack against an enemy. The "desperate" attack made no sense since as soon as it has happened there were no enemies around any more, so whole party was shown to take their time to mourn lad's grave condition;

12) it has turn out that at least health/defence magic support lasses knew that the lad was NPC, and yet did not treat him in a way that would reflect his much higher vulnerability to death. The excuse that he has asked one of lasses not to expose him does not work since there was way to care for him without bluntly exposing him, and the one lass was not asked to keep any secrets any way. So, as it turns out, those two lasses did not care if lad would be killed, despite the show trying to depict it as opposite;

13) main hero, a war strategist, leaves his duty to help a child for reason that even he does not not know in the beginning (to save yellow-haired NPC magician) -- not believable;

14) the party says that the lad has pulse, but if so, then the fact that they can not heal him is nonsensical -- the more so after main strategist lad has added mana;

15) player fighters should have go to Goblin King's cave and kill him while his troops are away; the excuse that regular goblins would just go on rampage is not convincing: in such games murdering top boss is usually the way. Besides, goblins are always on rampage anyway -- they are attacking either there is a king or not;

16) the main lad was made to behave badly towards NPC princess for a non-convincing reason just to invent at least some drama -- obvious seam in the storytelling;

17) second series starts with ridiculous strain of invented drama with monthly fees for owning city buildings all of sudden becoming twice bigger than the price of purchase;

18) characters are sad that they miss Christmas with their families, but it is ridiculous that authors suppose that players forgot the difference in speed of time (which is, as it was explained earlier, unreal, but still);

19) one of players talks to main lad that the lass he asked to protect NPC princess "is working hard" while all she is doing is jumping everywhere to watch how others train, instead of being around the NPC princess and actually protecting her;

20) it was stupid to commence with the raid in the city against crazy "defender" before his source of magic was turned off; makes no sense;

21) the magical circle was turned off, but somehow they forgot to turn it on -- stupid;

22) at one point a party that has stormed undergrounds with huge gold was defeated, and everyone all of sudden has started talking about how useless this effort was. This is nonsense because players get experience and level up, and also because they have defeated few top monster bosses there, and got the best loot from them. So even if they do not complete the raid, the effort was totally useful;

23) a little lass is sad about returning to real world because she loves to see cat-man, but it makes no sense as no one would forbid her from logging in the game from time to time and contacting to/playing with cat-man;

24) one of guild masters that teaches little NPC prince sword fighting does it wrong way: at no time he should hit so hard that boy's wooden sword would be thrown away off his hands;



Characters:

1) relations between many characters are not believable since players do not revere each other so much; at best, they are pals and think that some other plays are cool, but nothing like this show depicts;

2) this project has cliche interactions such as "pervert" lad versus annoyingly violent and yet subservient lass (I hate such characters because they are so plentiful in all kinds of anime and insulting to women), though she is cute otherwise (pony-tail assassin);

3) there is yet another female character that is abusive of her male friend;

4) it is sad that adult young lass (pony-tail assassin) had to be turned into a immature ten years old child avatar to response paedophilic fetishes of some of the audience; make her taller at last;

5) the cliche caricature on LGBT player is bad. But, considering conservatism of Japanese society, one must one if it should it be considered as good sign anyway;

6) evil players characters are mostly caricature, not like how they would look like in a game (evil people do not choose openly evil-looking avatars);

7) characters talk to themselves aloud;

8) main hero is supposedly good, but he has hid from large crowd of players that they loose part of their memory when they die -- otherwise they would not be so eager to participate in pointless (for them) war with goblins;

9) main hero is so "smart" strategist that children always surprise him with ideas to such as to attack goblins first -- and this is a moment when "adults" make round eyes only to think "wow, not bad idea" later;

10) despite many central characters have reached level 90, they show no interest in progressing to level 100 -- not convincing;

11) cat-man fighting stance with one of rapiers behind his back is ridiculous as at no point it could be ever beneficial to fighting;

12) with the main lad, authors went overboard with his childhood where he has spent nights in a yard, while more believable version would be him playing video games (as he is gamer-escapist);

13) elf guild master has split personality disorder: he talks to himself, disputes; needs to attend medical professionals;

14) the little lad of the youth party once got all of sudden very annoying towards one of "suicide" players; it was none of his business, the "suiciders" were fine;

15) main lad's musing on whether players have to return to their original world is ridiculous, as, of course, nearly all of15 players want that, it is not a question, despite how it is portrayed in this show;

16) it is funny when characters come in in panic and scream "Trouble!" and "The city!.." -- no one talks like that in real situation as it makes no sense, it does not convey any information. In urgent situations, it would be stupid to waste time for useless talk, you'd get right to the point;


Visuals:

1) typical, bland, mundane, unoriginal, tired, cheap human character design -- users have priorly seen nearly every of those characters in other anime;

2) uninspired monster designs;

3) great technology designs (such as ships and trains);

4) lower jaw does not move when characters speak, which is not a cheap way to animate characters;

5) in the second series, the quality of backgrounds has increased, characters' drawing line became thinner, reaching 1080p quality -- the first season was also broadcast in 1080p, but in reality quality was mostly about 720p;

6) princess' pyjama looks nothing like those fit for the era of that type of clothing;

7) glasses design does not fit the fashion time line;

8) lasses' sexy clothes like those in which NPC princess changed to are lovely, there is nothing wrong or embarrassing about them, but it is deplorable when only major female characters get dressed that way -- it is not fair. So either both sexes have to have such clothes, or none;


Voices/music:

1) it is good to hear the usual villain scary voice, Jouji Nakata, playing good character, cat-man;

2) the music is not bad at all, but it is too quiet even at times when it is not in the background of characters speaking;


Resume:

The show is 48 episodes-long (both seasons), but it would lose all the irrelevant, useless, boring filler, it would take like 39 episodes. This show is way over-rated in ANN database voting due to the theme being "popular" among viewers. Also, the second season is better than the first one, both content and execution-wise, while the rating supposes opposite. Overall, the first season deserves between "Decent" and "Good", and the second season between "Good" and "Very good". This series is also not really finished; and whether it will ever be, is doubtful.


SPOILERS WARNING: here are more than fifty seven points about this show, so there are so many places to hid with the tag that it would make the text barely readable, if applied.
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Cam0



Joined: 13 Dec 2009
Posts: 4916
PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 4:28 am Reply with quote
MaxSouth wrote:
4) as always with such projects, unrealistic game mechanics, including ridiculous monetary system, in which one meal costs five golden coins -- while sane price for that would be something like five bronze coins -- not even silver ones, let alone golden.


Not every game has "bronze" and "silver" coins. Only gold, so 1 gold is the smallest amount of money. So in this game 5 gold coins is probably pretty cheap.
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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
Posts: 14084
Location: currently stalking my waifu
PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 4:37 am Reply with quote
^
Gold-only currency systems is so overwhelmingly popular in fantasy RPG games (both multiplayer and offline) that I highly doubt MaxSouth has ever played any of them.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15545
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 6:38 am Reply with quote
Okay, I am tackling this.

MaxSouth wrote:
2) idea of time flowing twelve times faster within the virtual game versus real life is not feasible since human brain would not just all of sudden capable of operating twelve times faster to accommodate to that;

Why do you assume that it is virtual reality? It is quite common in MMO and games in general for the days in games to go by quicker compared to real life so people can experience the different times of that world when they might only have a window of their day to play.

MaxSouth wrote:
3) the idea that with dying in this virtual world you lose memories of specifically real world, rather than random memories, is not convincing and is done only to dramatize the story;

They have ended up in a situation where HP is their actual life energy (they feel pain), mana/stamina whatever is their actual fortitude (they get tired). And experience is equated as actual experience, which would be memories.

MaxSouth wrote:
4) as always with such projects, unrealistic game mechanics, including ridiculous monetary system, in which one meal costs five golden coins -- while sane price for that would be something like five bronze coins -- not even silver ones, let alone golden. Also, the lack of accessible travel is also unrealistic, since slow endless travels was only issue in older games. Developers since then realized that no one wants to waste time, so teleporting on the map is the solution. The griffon summoning would have never be a secret since player info always boasts his/her achievements. Beginner player abuse is prohibited by such games, it is not believable that rules would allow this. A lot of English-language "terms"/jargons that sound bad and makes no sense since such games are in Japanese from very beginning or well-translated. Making half-scaled version of real world makes no sense; if such project would exist, they would choose to make fully scaled version, or much smaller. Characters say they can smell taste of prepared via menu food, but can not feel taste -- it makes no sense since taste mainly conveyed by smell, not via basic senses of tongue. It is weird that some game veterans are shown to not know about cooking/chef subclasses and skills, they are not new. Players have their in-game electronic menus, but still engage in paper work?

While you can find games that may choose to go by the increasing coin value of bronze, silver, and then gold, for a game it is really quite common for them to just have a single gold currency.

MaxSouth wrote:
5) due to necessity to follow idiotic upside-down "morals", no sex life in mentioned;

So they chose to be allowable for a broader range, keep their PG rating.

MaxSouth wrote:
6) target audience of this show is not clear since there is some fighting, but there a lot of petty talks and cake eating, and some significant harem. And yet neither male nor female major characters are drawn to be "sexy";

And this is a problem, why? Mature does not mean boobs have to be thrown in. Their battles could be just as much talks as physical combat.

MaxSouth wrote:
7) the manner of skipping a part of an episode to show it later is annoying, not a great direction, it does not add anything to the storytelling. But, apparently, show's main director thinks it is a cool idea;

It can be alright, give the audience a taste of what is to come before they set it up. Have people think of similar events again after knowing more is not a bad thing.

MaxSouth wrote:
1) to be in awe of this anime's smarts, viewers have to believe that no one in the game besides one player knew about cooking and no one besides another player knew that guild building could be bought -- which is not feasible, so all supposedly "genius" plot turns and schemes by main lad are fake;

Most people who liked the idea of cooking, would have put it as part of their role. If they put so much work into cooking in the game, then using the convenience of the menu would be likely, and it did not work for anyone who did not have the skill.

MaxSouth wrote:
2) in a lot of episodes, especially in the begging, nothing important happens, no stakes in anything that occurs, party acts more of boredom than of any true necessity;

And boredom was the risk, the problem was that there was nothing to do and thus that was their danger as immortal beings.

MaxSouth wrote:
4) there were couple of examples of bad smaller guilds abusing players, but there was not nee to create "round table council" and laws to deal with them -- they could have been crashed regular ways;

They needed to create the round table council to start people on track, and it was best that such decisions and laws were that of a representing group and not a single group of people that look like they are forcing their ideals on others.

MaxSouth wrote:
5) main lad's plan was done already with knowledge of the fact that NPCs in this world are full human emulations, so not selecting NPCs' representatives (who also live in the city) in the round table council was stupid and provoking NPCs for dissent;

The round table council was for matters of Adventurers, it was their representative body, and the city is largely an Adventurer town. The NPC people still had their own groups.

MaxSouth wrote:
7) the first tasty food a guild of players decide to sell is junk, which is quite sad for Japanese project -- the country is known for its excellent cousine;

Their first food they made was something that was made to be tasty, fast, and easy to make and eat, while being more of the modern world that was not in line with the native culture but of their own. Nutrition was of no concern.

MaxSouth wrote:
8) players forgot to took quests so whole virtual world is now in great danger, and this is plot-moving vehicle for this show? Ridiculous;

The world changed from the game, before they might be used to general game quests from NPCs always in the same place with giant exclamation points above their head, and one could easily see on a map or something. The world they now found themselves in is far more complicated where presumably Adventurers would need to seek out people through whatever political method it would be, that just was not familiar. We don't have a great idea of how this looked from NPC side.

MaxSouth wrote:
9) whole children practice story line is a showcase of the most pathetic party that could not possibly ever be players in such game -- they wasted days in dumb team-play before caring to learn how each others abilities work -- though they should have known already as they played the game before;

As low levelled players they had only started playing this MMO shortly beforehand. Many single player games can done fairly well with your own abilities, and they were not familiar of the strengths that combining their skills could be.

MaxSouth wrote:
10) the show is often times boring as one one of three parallel mini-story lines is interesting; you can not care about the other two: the rectangular glasses guy courting NPC princess and children learning how not to be too stupid in team play -- they are fillers in sense that they only done to fill the episode number count;

Or your know, do world building and establish character?

MaxSouth wrote:
11) one lad in the group of youth, yellow haired one, decides to commit suicide in the battle -- he knows he can not be resurrected as he is a NPC, not a player, and still goes to make pointless attack against an enemy. The "desperate" attack made no sense since as soon as it has happened there were no enemies around any more, so whole party was shown to take their time to mourn lad's grave condition;

It was a strong enemy and the party had pretty much exhausted most of their energy. Sure the other people would not have died in a true sense, but it was an established part of his character that he greatly wanted to be an Adventurer, and to him it was protecting others with everything he has. His friend is angry.

MaxSouth wrote:
12) it has turn out that at least health/defence magic support lasses knew that the lad was NPC, and yet did not treat him in a way that would reflect his much higher vulnerability to death. The excuse that he has asked one of lasses not to expose him does not work since there was way to care for him without bluntly exposing him, and the one lass was not asked to keep any secrets any way. So, as it turns out, those two lasses did not care if lad would be killed, despite the show trying to depict it as opposite;

It was his pride, and indeed Rudy's pride is his most prized thing, that betraying that would betray him. They did protect him, and Izana continually openly expressed concern to him that he act safer. But ultimately it was his decision.

MaxSouth wrote:
13) main hero, a war strategist, leaves his duty to help a child for reason that even he does not not know in the beginning (to save yellow-haired NPC magician) -- not believable;

He could trust most to the others, he likely felt he had things under control, but more than just a strategist he was their friend and if asked to he would go and help them.

MaxSouth wrote:
14) the party says that the lad has pulse, but if so, then the fact that they can not heal him is nonsensical -- the more so after main strategist lad has added mana;

So you understand the biology of a magical interdimensional video game like universe? Well he must have received a mortal wound but not what you would call enough to just disappear.

MaxSouth wrote:
15) player fighters should have go to Goblin King's cave and kill him while his troops are away; the excuse that regular goblins would just go on rampage is not convincing: in such games murdering top boss is usually the way. Besides, goblins are always on rampage anyway -- they are attacking either there is a king or not;

To do that they would have to leave the army of Goblins to attack all of the villages, at which point they would then become unpredictable after beating the king, while being able to see what they were doing made them manageable. I think the implication also was that later being able to farm the goblins on the war front also proved to be profitable, probably since there was mention of shortages of places to level up and get gold in the first place.

MaxSouth wrote:
16) the main lad was made to behave badly towards NPC princess for a non-convincing reason just to invent at least some drama -- obvious seam in the storytelling;

I am not entirely sure of the scene, but good cop bad cop can have surprising uses. And by acting not to close to the person you are aligning with can be an effective tool to throw off others politically.

MaxSouth wrote:
17) second series starts with ridiculous strain of invented drama with monthly fees for owning city buildings all of sudden becoming twice bigger than the price of purchase;

There was not anything other than the technical rent?

MaxSouth wrote:
18) characters are sad that they miss Christmas with their families, but it is ridiculous that authors suppose that players forgot the difference in speed of time (which is, as it was explained earlier, unreal, but still);

Time is still passing at what it would feel like for that period of time, and season. So what if the people in the original world did not have so much time pass?

MaxSouth wrote:
19) one of players talks to main lad that the lass he asked to protect NPC princess "is working hard" while all she is doing is jumping everywhere to watch how others train, instead of being around the NPC princess and actually protecting her;

Just because we only saw her watching people train, does not mean that she was not otherwise watching the princess. So maybe she takes an hour off to watch practice while she is somewhere secure or she has someone else take over for a bit before she gets back to watching the area for danger.

MaxSouth wrote:
20) it was stupid to commence with the raid in the city against crazy "defender" before his source of magic was turned off; makes no sense;

Again can't quite remember, but I think they were rather short on time.

MaxSouth wrote:
22) at one point a party that has stormed undergrounds with huge gold was defeated, and everyone all of sudden has started talking about how useless this effort was. This is nonsense because players get experience and level up, and also because they have defeated few top monster bosses there, and got the best loot from them. So even if they do not complete the raid, the effort was totally useful;

Except they lose experience when they die so they literally feel like they go backwards when that happens. And I think it was also mentioned dyeing has an odd effect on their minds as they are forced to face their failures when they do.

MaxSouth wrote:
23) a little lass is sad about returning to real world because she loves to see cat-man, but it makes no sense as no one would forbid her from logging in the game from time to time and contacting to/playing with cat-man;

If she left, would she be able to come back? The game was like a modern MMO, not actually virtual reality, while they are in this world their characters are very real as is their relationships to others, and that would change if they went back.

MaxSouth wrote:
24) one of guild masters that teaches little NPC prince sword fighting does it wrong way: at no time he should hit so hard that boy's wooden sword would be thrown away off his hands;

Losing is an important part of training, and know that at early parts of training you are far from matching them can be important. The kid takes it well in knowing that there is a lot of effort left to overcome. Being to nice in training could get them killed.

MaxSouth wrote:
1) relations between many characters are not believable since players do not revere each other so much; at best, they are pals and think that some other plays are cool, but nothing like this show depicts;

Many higher players got their strength via sitting at a keyboard telling their character to kill some polygon creature. Well there was effort, but is it really such a big deal that you would bow down at largely the time players put into increasing their levels over other types of effort?

MaxSouth wrote:
2) this project has cliche interactions such as "pervert" lad versus annoyingly violent and yet subservient lass (I hate such characters because they are so plentiful in all kinds of anime and insulting to women), though she is cute otherwise (pony-tail assassin);

When you are in that situation their is probably as much of a effect of using words purposely to play with them as hitting their largely damage resistant bodies.

MaxSouth wrote:
4) it is sad that adult young lass (pony-tail assassin) had to be turned into a immature ten years old child avatar to response paedophilic fetishes of some of the audience; make her taller at last;

Well clearly her lack of height in the original world was a part of a complex that had her search out and enjoy a MMO, and do the role playing that she does. People in the real world can have problems like height and it does not stop them from being cool online. It was also connected to in general her social problems.

MaxSouth wrote:
5) the cliche caricature on LGBT player is bad. But, considering conservatism of Japanese society, one must one if it should it be considered as good sign anyway;

I think I know who you are talking about, but he did not seem like a bad guy and was friends with the girls around him and did not seem to make anyone feel uncomfortable.

MaxSouth wrote:
6) evil players characters are mostly caricature, not like how they would look like in a game (evil people do not choose openly evil-looking avatars);

The true evil mastermind among the people was actually the maid, the dark dressed fox girl was largely a figurehead.

MaxSouth wrote:
8) main hero is supposedly good, but he has hid from large crowd of players that they loose part of their memory when they die -- otherwise they would not be so eager to participate in pointless (for them) war with goblins;

He does not want to start a panic, the knowledge is enough to know it best to subtling steer people away from not doing something they would regret.

MaxSouth wrote:
9) main hero is so "smart" strategist that children always surprise him with ideas to such as to attack goblins first -- and this is a moment when "adults" make round eyes only to think "wow, not bad idea" later;

Sometimes it is a good idea that looking at a situation too close can have you miss something that it is a good idea to get someone with a different person's point of view.

MaxSouth wrote:
10) despite many central characters have reached level 90, they show no interest in progressing to level 100 -- not convincing;

As levels increase it takes longer to reach the next level, while early on it may be manageable, later it may just be a huge time sink that may just be unwieldy when they have their other responsibilities.

MaxSouth wrote:
11) cat-man fighting stance with one of rapiers behind his back is ridiculous as at no point it could be ever beneficial to fighting;

Lots of stances can look strange, that it might look like a hindrance might be exactly why it might be used for a class about using tricks and debuffs instead of raw strength.

MaxSouth wrote:
12) with the main lad, authors went overboard with his childhood where he has spent nights in a yard, while more believable version would be him playing video games (as he is gamer-escapist);

Was it before he started his gaming habit? Perhaps that he did such a thing is important as the basis for his character. He may not have had such games in his house?

MaxSouth wrote:
13) elf guild master has split personality disorder: he talks to himself, disputes; needs to attend medical professionals;

He was what, like 17, the same age as Serara (look it up). Sometimes you cannot get your thoughts sorted out until you pit them against each other in some more real way.

MaxSouth wrote:
14) the little lad of the youth party once got all of sudden very annoying towards one of "suicide" players; it was none of his business, the "suiciders" were fine;

They were not fine mentally, and it is like part of not being a sociopath in caring about other people even if they do not want you to that way about them.

MaxSouth wrote:
15) main lad's musing on whether players have to return to their original world is ridiculous, as, of course, nearly all of15 players want that, it is not a question, despite how it is portrayed in this show;

But there may be some who do not. Imagine if they are like disabled, have terrible family lives, or some deadly disease there.

MaxSouth wrote:
16) it is funny when characters come in in panic and scream "Trouble!" and "The city!.." -- no one talks like that in real situation as it makes no sense, it does not convey any information. In urgent situations, it would be stupid to waste time for useless talk, you'd get right to the point;

Could it just be a difference of how the Japanese language works, I do not know. Many people in panic do not do the best at conveying much information.

MaxSouth wrote:
1) typical, bland, mundane, unoriginal, tired, cheap human character design -- users have priorly seen nearly every of those characters in other anime;

Okay tell me an anime that has Nyanta in it? Then tell me one that Naotsugu. I would like a couple Akatsuki since you have problems with the loli ninja thing. Serara, Krusty, and Demikas? And of course you see similar character in things, it is common to have common character types.

MaxSouth wrote:
2) uninspired monster designs;

The WOW like MMO has a number of uninspired monster designs?


MaxSouth wrote:
5) in the second series, the quality of backgrounds has increased, characters' drawing line became thinner, reaching 1080p quality -- the first season was also broadcast in 1080p, but in reality quality was mostly about 720p;

Well there was a change in studios, this caused some slight changes in characters designs.

MaxSouth wrote:
6) princess' pyjama looks nothing like those fit for the era of that type of clothing;

Their magic staves and goblin fashion looks nothing like the era either.

MaxSouth wrote:
7) glasses design does not fit the fashion time line;

From my understanding modern ideas of maid outfits also are from the 19th century, and thus would logically be out of place for middle ages like fantasy time.

MaxSouth wrote:
8) lasses' sexy clothes like those in which NPC princess changed to are lovely, there is nothing wrong or embarrassing about them, but it is deplorable when only major female characters get dressed that way -- it is not fair. So either both sexes have to have such clothes, or none;

Well maybe not many people dress that way in general, while they would rather wear something else. Well maybe a silly thing to say but often the ones most comfortable putting characters in fetish like outfits are men, and not many of them are using female characters. They wanted to set the princess up as a character for the audience.
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Dessa



Joined: 14 Jul 2004
Posts: 4438
PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 9:59 am Reply with quote
Oh boy, here we go...

MaxSouth wrote:
2) idea of time flowing twelve times faster within the virtual game versus real life is not feasible since human brain would not just all of sudden capable of operating twelve times faster to accommodate to that;

Time doesn't flow 12 times faster. A day is still 24 hours, which is the exact same 24 hours as the real world. However, while it was still a game, like most games, an "in game" day was shorter. Heck, in Minecraft, a day isn't even an hour of our time!

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3) the idea that with dying in this virtual world you lose memories of specifically real world, rather than random memories, is not convincing and is done only to dramatize the story;

They never said that they specifically lose memories of the real world. You lose memories, period. But considering most of the characters are adults, who have spent 20+ years in the real world and only about 1 in the new world, which has the larger percentage to lose? Additionally, it's been established that, at least to start, it seems to be more minor memories that you lose (William can't remember his cat's name, for example), and "how things work in this world" is pretty high up on the importance scale.

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4) as always with such projects, unrealistic game mechanics, including ridiculous monetary system, in which one meal costs five golden coins -- while sane price for that would be something like five bronze coins -- not even silver ones, let alone golden.

I've never played a JRPG that has more than one monetary system. Far too confusing. Plus, remember that as a JRPG, it's based off of the Japanese monetary system, which only has 1 currency, the Yen.

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Also, the lack of accessible travel is also unrealistic, since slow endless travels was only issue in older games. Developers since then realized that no one wants to waste time, so teleporting on the map is the solution. The griffon summoning would have never be a secret since player info always boasts his/her achievements.

Watch the first episode again. There are instant-travel methods. They're explicitly stated to not be working, or they're naturally random, and therefore dangerous to use.

As for the griffons, they were a limited-edition item that was only available from a limited-edition raid event. The people who have them don't want to be accosted by people begging them for the items, so they don't tell people they have them.

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Beginner player abuse is prohibited by such games, it is not believable that rules would allow this. A lot of English-language "terms"/jargons that sound bad and makes no sense since such games are in Japanese from very beginning or well-translated.

There are rules for abusing other players, beginner or not. But there's no GMs to enforce the rules. And again, this is a JRPG. There's always English terms. Because the Japanese find it "cool" to use Japanese terms. Furthermore, considering that this is an international game, and you can move freely between servers, important terms need to be in a single language that everyone can understand.

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Making half-scaled version of real world makes no sense; if such project would exist, they would choose to make fully scaled version, or much smaller.

The game developers wanted to make a half-scale world. Period.

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Characters say they can smell taste of prepared via menu food, but can not feel taste -- it makes no sense since taste mainly conveyed by smell, not via basic senses of tongue. It is weird that some game veterans are shown to not know about cooking/chef subclasses and skills, they are not new.

Uh, hi, yeah, you don't know how biology works. Yes, smell is part of taste, but it's still not as big as taste buds (don't believe me? Plug your nose and eat something. You still taste it).

And people knew about the chef subclass. But while it was a game, it was a useless role-playing class, so not many had it. It's clearly established that you don't only need the subclass, but you also need to be sufficiently leveled in it. Considering that within the time it was discovered, a) no one knew that that was the secret, and b) they would lose all of their skills from their previous subclass (with no indication switching back would regain them), it's not a surprise that more people weren't jumping to chef once it was discovered.

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Players have their in-game electronic menus, but still engage in paper work?

I do that when I play games, too. The motions of physically writing something down helps you remember it better, too.

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5) due to necessity to follow idiotic upside-down "morals", no sex life in mentioned;

1) There's no reason for sex to be involved, it's inconsequential to the story
2) In the side materials, there is attempted rape.

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6) target audience of this show is not clear since there is some fighting, but there a lot of petty talks and cake eating, and some significant harem. And yet neither male nor female major characters are drawn to be "sexy";

I'm glad that the characters aren't drawn "sexy." It would take away from the show. Furthermore, it's established in the novels that the characters don't look exactly like the player avatars did while it was still a game, they've taken on aspects of their players, making the lack of
"sexy" characters much more realistic.

And the target demographic is most likely the high school/early college age. When in doubt, assume that the age range is the same as the main characters. This is true for just about anything.

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7) the manner of skipping a part of an episode to show it later is annoying, not a great direction, it does not add anything to the storytelling. But, apparently, show's main director thinks it is a cool idea;

Non-linear storytelling and flashbacks are classic literary devices. Just because something happens in chronological order, doesn't mean we need to know what happened in chronological order. It enhances a story to not show key pieces of information, only to reveal it via flashback later, when it will have more of an impact, and not be spoilers.



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1) to be in awe of this anime's smarts, viewers have to believe that no one in the game besides one player knew about cooking and no one besides another player knew that guild building could be bought -- which is not feasible, so all supposedly "genius" plot turns and schemes by main lad are fake;

Again, people didn't have the chef class, and those that did didn't have it leveled up. It took someone like Nyanta who had role-played it enough to practically max it out to figure it out.

And no one knew that any building (or zone, for that matter) could be bought because, when it was a game, it couldn't be bought. And people were trying to figure out how to survive, and weren't paying attention to things like "oh, hey, this random building is buyable now".

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2) in a lot of episodes, especially in the begging, nothing important happens, no stakes in anything that occurs, party acts more of boredom than of any true necessity;

So there's this thing called "character development." You seem to have not heard of it, I'd recommend looking it up.

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3) there is a lot of minor fights in the show; they are not exciting at all;

It's not meant to be an action series.

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4) there were couple of examples of bad smaller guilds abusing players, but there was not nee to create "round table council" and laws to deal with them -- they could have been crashed regular ways;

And how, pray tell, would these "regular ways" have worked? There are no more GMs, so there's no one to enforce the rules. And unless it's physical harm (the side material, again, establishes that sexual contact is not considered physical harm), the Guards won't step in.

As long as they were in their guild building, and free to come and go with no penalties, there was no way to keep them from abusing the players.

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5) main lad's plan was done already with knowledge of the fact that NPCs in this world are full human emulations, so not selecting NPCs' representatives (who also live in the city) in the round table council was stupid and provoking NPCs for dissent;

The Landers have their own government, and Shiroe rightfully didn't want to mess with it. What he wanted was a way to create a governmental body for the Adventurers, to enforce rules on the Adventurers. What the Round Table does only affects the Adventurers, it doesn't effect the Landers.


I'll continue with this later, I need to go to work.
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MaxSouth



Joined: 11 Oct 2008
Posts: 1363
PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 12:41 pm Reply with quote
dtm42 wrote:
^
Gold-only currency systems is so overwhelmingly popular in fantasy RPG games (both multiplayer and offline) that I highly doubt MaxSouth has ever played any of them.


My main point was that the prices are ridiculous; the fact that some games only have gold does not change that. You can not possibly find it reasonable that a meal can cost ten golden coins. And yes, I have played a lot of RPGs.

DuskyPredator wrote:
Why do you assume that it is virtual reality? It is quite common in MMO and games in general for the days in games to go by quicker compared to real life so people can experience the different times of that world when they might only have a window of their day to play.


At no point the project shows that days lasts only two hours for players, everyone moves and acts real time as in real life for full day, and yet main lad states the time flies twelve times faster than in normal world.

DuskyPredator wrote:
They have ended up in a situation where HP is their actual life energy (they feel pain), mana/stamina whatever is their actual fortitude (they get tired). And experience is equated as actual experience, which would be memories.


My point was not about that, but about the idea that specifically memories of the old world would disappear, not just any memories randomly, and this is really ad hoc to only to dramatize the story.

DuskyPredator wrote:
So they chose to be allowable for a broader range, keep their PG rating.


This is not tied to PG rating; I am not talking about turning the show into porno, I am talking about simply admitting the fact that sex life exists at all. The hypocritical puritanical "morals" would not even allow that, which is ridiculous. And bad for Japanese society, which is already much removed from sex life between people.

DuskyPredator wrote:
And this is a problem, why? Mature does not mean boobs have to be thrown in. Their battles could be just as much talks as physical combat.


I did not write that it is exactly a problem; it was just an observation on vague target audience objectives this show has.

DuskyPredator wrote:
Except they lose experience when they die so they literally feel like they go backwards when that happens.


They only lose tiny amount of experience after deaths, and they keep their loot with them. So it is always net positive anyway.

DuskyPredator wrote:
If she left, would she be able to come back? The game was like a modern MMO, not actually virtual reality, while they are in this world their characters are very real as is their relationships to others, and that would change if they went back.


Of course, she would: the cat-man is player in original game. Whatever happens with connection to this new world, is irrelevant to the fact that the lass could easily connect to the cat-man at any time. Yet authors have forgot about that and written that episode in way that makes no sense.

DuskyPredator wrote:
Okay tell me an anime that has Nyanta in it?


He is the only reason why I used "nearly" regarding all character designs that come from other prior anime. The rest you have mentioned are all seen in other anime.

(The rest points are point of views/too debatable, so it makes no sense to go in rounds about those.)
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Cam0



Joined: 13 Dec 2009
Posts: 4916
PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 1:07 pm Reply with quote
MaxSouth wrote:
My main point was that the prices are ridiculous; the fact that some games only have gold does not change that. You can not possibly find it reasonable that a meal can cost ten golden coins. And yes, I have played a lot of RPGs.


The prices are NOT ridiculous. According to the Log Horizon wiki, a goblin is worth 5-6 gold. Go into low level wilderness and kill a couple of easy monsters and you'll have enough gold to buy a dozen meals. If you go through a dungeon you'll probably make a couple hundred gold at least. Don't assume that gold has the same value in every RPG game.
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MaxSouth



Joined: 11 Oct 2008
Posts: 1363
PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 1:25 pm Reply with quote
Cam0 wrote:
MaxSouth wrote:
My main point was that the prices are ridiculous; the fact that some games only have gold does not change that. You can not possibly find it reasonable that a meal can cost ten golden coins. And yes, I have played a lot of RPGs.


The prices are NOT ridiculous. According to the Log Horizon wiki, a goblin is worth 5-6 gold. Go into low level wilderness and kill a couple of easy monsters and you'll have enough gold to buy a dozen meals. If you go through a dungeon you'll probably make a couple hundred gold at least. Don't assume that gold has the same value in every RPG game.


The prices ARE ridiculous, because gold is gold. If authors mean that the currency is something super cheap in this particular game, then they should not call it "gold". There are a lot of RPGs that come up with imaginary currencies exactly because it would be stupid to call a cheap currency "gold".


Dessa:

1) On speed of time: please see my reply to DuskyPredator on that;

2) On losing memories: yes, they did state that memories are lost of original world, not just any random memories;

3) On currency: also, please see above;

4) On travel methods: yes, I know about the gates, but it has nothing do with what I meant by teleportation in modern RPGs: you can teleport to countless points on the map, you do not need any gates for that;

5) On rules against abusing beginners: I mean those that do not depend on manual, human-driven moderation, but the set of incentives and disincentives that make things like transferring things like your free mana or health potions to anyone else either pricey, or automatically penalized, or impossible;

6) On scale of the world: my point was that it is not believable that developers would want to make world with 1:2 scale. It is too close to 1:1; they would much more likely to go full-scale rather than this weird 1:2 scale;

7) On taste: if you can not smell, then you can only taste bitter, sweet, salty, sour, "umami", and nothing else;

8) On buying buildings: even if it was impossible to buy buildings in the actual game, the possibility that locked in this world play ers would not discover it (at least out of boredom) nears zero;

9) On character development: classy projects do not need loads of irrelevant boring filler for world-building;

10) On representation of NPCs: again, there are a lot of them in the city, so excluding their representation from council was an injustice.

(Other points are points of view/too debatable, so it makes no sense going in circles about them.)
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Cam0



Joined: 13 Dec 2009
Posts: 4916
PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 2:29 pm Reply with quote
MaxSouth wrote:
The prices ARE ridiculous, because gold is gold. If authors mean that the currency is something super cheap in this particular game, then they should not call it "gold". There are a lot of RPGs that come up with imaginary currencies exactly because it would be stupid to call a cheap currency "gold".


You're trying to liken the value of real life gold to gold in a fantasy RPG. Gold isn't necessarily a rare and valuable metal in Elder Tale (it comes from multiple gold waterfalls or whatever those were). It's called gold because gold is easy to understand as currency and dozen RPGs have called their currency gold for years so that makes it easier for new players as well. Many RPG fans tend to call any kind of currency that looks like a gold coin just "gold" because gold is such a universally used currency in RPGs.


Last edited by Cam0 on Mon Aug 17, 2015 2:35 pm; edited 1 time in total
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15545
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 2:35 pm Reply with quote
MaxSouth wrote:
My main point was that the prices are ridiculous; the fact that some games only have gold does not change that. You can not possibly find it reasonable that a meal can cost ten golden coins. And yes, I have played a lot of RPGs.

Okay, can you tell me how a currency gains worth? Well the general idea is that it have a limited scarcity, and it might be back by something that gives it worth. We won't go into direct modern situation ideas, but lets go a little bit back and you might think that the fact that money was backed by gold fits. Wow, gold is worth quite a lot for its volume, that must mean that the gold shown in Log Horizon is ridiculous for what it is buying? Think that and you are missing the point, these gold coins are not smelted, they are not even created, they are recycled back into the system, what they made of is surprisingly inconsequential. So what is it backed by. Well it is actually backed by the strength to destroy monsters, the show pretty much said they put the gold in for that very purpose, and what those gold coins are worth is a complex system of supply and demand that would take more complex macroeconomic principals to fully explain.

MaxSouth wrote:
At no point the project shows that days lasts only two hours for players, everyone moves and acts real time as in real life for full day, and yet main lad states the time flies twelve times faster than in normal world.

That is because it is not! Seriously, do you even listen? Do you pay attention and make halfway assumptions. I will break this down for you. The show, says that there are some clear connections to this world, and the old game world. Now the game, and really a number of actual games, the time flows quicker in comparison to what the player is experiencing in RL. Now these games won't say that these world's days are12 times faster, instead the game pretends that such RL like time has passed. These factors translate that time is in general experienced multiple times faster in that world, like say a certain space movie. This is why there are apparently legends of Shiroe's exploits dating back many years despite the fact he has not really been playing that long.

MaxSouth wrote:
They only lose tiny amount of experience after deaths, and they keep their loot with them. So it is always net positive anyway.

Maybe when they are lower levels, they are level 90, it is reasonable to expect that higher levelled players take much longer to level up, and suffer a larger death penalty. That is like basic game mechanics.

MaxSouth wrote:
Of course, she would: the cat-man is player in original game. Whatever happens with connection to this new world, is irrelevant to the fact that the lass could easily connect to the cat-man at any time. Yet authors have forgot about that and written that episode in way that makes no sense.

But would it be the same world? Does she have a crush on the middle aged guy roleplaying a cat on a computer, or is ihe swashbuckling cat-man gentleman chef? The show has already made the point they have changed a bit.

MaxSouth wrote:
The rest you have mentioned are all seen in other anime.

Thankyou for giving examples, of where these exact characters have been in before, and not just making sweeping statements.
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Dessa



Joined: 14 Jul 2004
Posts: 4438
PostPosted: Mon Aug 17, 2015 7:44 pm Reply with quote
Continuing where I left off, I'll reply to later comments after I'm done.

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7) the first tasty food a guild of players decide to sell is junk, which is quite sad for Japanese project -- the country is known for its excellent cousine;

Burgers are easy to make in large quantities for relatively cheap. Also, if you make them well, they're not "junk."

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8) players forgot to took quests so whole virtual world is now in great danger, and this is plot-moving vehicle for this show? Ridiculous;

The world revolves around players clearing major events (events, not quests). Because the players were more concerned with surviving, as well as not having handy out-of-game announcements reminding you of upcoming events, they didn't realize events were coming up. I should also point out, that it's made pretty clear that this is not a virtual world. This isn't .hack or SAO. They're not in Elder Tale. They're in another world that functions the same as Elder Tale.

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9) whole children practice story line is a showcase of the most pathetic party that could not possibly ever be players in such game -- they wasted days in dumb team-play before caring to learn how each others abilities work -- though they should have known already as they played the game before;

It's clearly established that these are new players. Shiroe had only met the twins a short time before the story starts. That's the entire point, they don't know how to play the game. They've never been in a game like this, they've never been in a party working together. Hence why they need to learn.

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10) the show is often times boring as one one of three parallel mini-story lines is interesting; you can not care about the other two: the rectangular glasses guy courting NPC princess and children learning how not to be too stupid in team play -- they are fillers in sense that they only done to fill the episode number count;

Boring to you, much more interesting than dumb fighting to me.

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11) one lad in the group of youth, yellow haired one, decides to commit suicide in the battle -- he knows he can not be resurrected as he is a NPC, not a player, and still goes to make pointless attack against an enemy. The "desperate" attack made no sense since as soon as it has happened there were no enemies around any more, so whole party was shown to take their time to mourn lad's grave condition;

Please do not imply suicide so lightly. Regardless on if the Adventurers can resurrect, he did not want to see his friends die, so he defended them with his life. He made a sacrifice, he did not commit suicide. To flat-out call that suicide is more than just rude, it's incredibly offensive, especially to loved ones of someone who has committed suicide.

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12) it has turn out that at least health/defence magic support lasses knew that the lad was NPC, and yet did not treat him in a way that would reflect his much higher vulnerability to death. The excuse that he has asked one of lasses not to expose him does not work since there was way to care for him without bluntly exposing him, and the one lass was not asked to keep any secrets any way. So, as it turns out, those two lasses did not care if lad would be killed, despite the show trying to depict it as opposite;

Isuzu knew that Rudy was a Lander. The others did not. And Isuzu was asked not to tell.

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13) main hero, a war strategist, leaves his duty to help a child for reason that even he does not not know in the beginning (to save yellow-haired NPC magician) -- not believable;

There's this thing called "emotions," that you apparently have problems understanding. People Shiroe cares about are incredibly upset and screaming for his help. You'd have to be a cold and callous person not to go help.

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14) the party says that the lad has pulse, but if so, then the fact that they can not heal him is nonsensical -- the more so after main strategist lad has added mana;

Watch that entire scene again, as well as the explanation of HP/MP and everything in a few episodes earlier. It's explicitly explained why healing his HP wouldn't have helped.

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15) player fighters should have go to Goblin King's cave and kill him while his troops are away; the excuse that regular goblins would just go on rampage is not convincing: in such games murdering top boss is usually the way. Besides, goblins are always on rampage anyway -- they are attacking either there is a king or not;

Them going after the Goblin King is a side-story from the second season, it's covered in a Drama CD.

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16) the main lad was made to behave badly towards NPC princess for a non-convincing reason just to invent at least some drama -- obvious seam in the storytelling;

You've never seen something with a Good Cop/Bad Cop running? He's explicitly making himself into a villain, so that the others look better, because he works better behind the scenes than in front. This is also explicitly stated.

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17) second series starts with ridiculous strain of invented drama with monthly fees for owning city buildings all of sudden becoming twice bigger than the price of purchase;

Even in the real world, in the long run, it can be much more expensive to upkeep things than to purchase them.

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18) characters are sad that they miss Christmas with their families, but it is ridiculous that authors suppose that players forgot the difference in speed of time (which is, as it was explained earlier, unreal, but still);

It's Christmas. They're not with their families. They have no clue if it's even possible to return home, let alone when that might happen. So how is it "ridiculous" that people are missing their loved ones at the holidays?

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19) one of players talks to main lad that the lass he asked to protect NPC princess "is working hard" while all she is doing is jumping everywhere to watch how others train, instead of being around the NPC princess and actually protecting her;

You did note the scene where Akatsuki explicitly says that she's not needed because there's so many other people watching her? Also, that wasn't the real purpose for Akatsuki guarding her, that was just the public reason. The real reason was for Akatsuki to be seen in town, because everyone knows that Akatsuki would never be separated from Shiroe, therefore Shiroe must be in town also.

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20) it was stupid to commence with the raid in the city against crazy "defender" before his source of magic was turned off; makes no sense;

If my options are either to fight or die, I'm gonna fight.

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21) the magical circle was turned off, but somehow they forgot to turn it on -- stupid;

It was explicitly stated that it would take months for it to work again. Them showing us the physical action of it being activated again wasn't necessary.

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22) at one point a party that has stormed undergrounds with huge gold was defeated, and everyone all of sudden has started talking about how useless this effort was. This is nonsense because players get experience and level up, and also because they have defeated few top monster bosses there, and got the best loot from them. So even if they do not complete the raid, the effort was totally useful;

When did anyone say it was useless? Other than Shiroe and Naotsugu, I believe that only William and Demikas knew what the purpose of the raid really was. The others were just told it's a massive raid.

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23) a little lass is sad about returning to real world because she loves to see cat-man, but it makes no sense as no one would forbid her from logging in the game from time to time and contacting to/playing with cat-man;

There's a massive difference in being able to physically see someone and hang out with them every day, and only being able see someone online. We don't know if they would be able to see each other in the real world, either, not just since we don't know distance, but also schedules. There's also a good chance that, given that she's only a middle school student, that her parents wouldn't allow her to log on any more.

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24) one of guild masters that teaches little NPC prince sword fighting does it wrong way: at no time he should hit so hard that boy's wooden sword would be thrown away off his hands;

Everyone trains differently. I'm pretty certain also that Isaac's intention was to get the boy to STOP trying to get training.

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1) relations between many characters are not believable since players do not revere each other so much; at best, they are pals and think that some other plays are cool, but nothing like this show depicts;

Shiroe is already highly respected. And Akatsuki is role-playing as his loyal ninja.

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2) this project has cliche interactions such as "pervert" lad versus annoyingly violent and yet subservient lass (I hate such characters because they are so plentiful in all kinds of anime and insulting to women), though she is cute otherwise (pony-tail assassin);

Again, Akatsuki is role-playing. If Shiroe asked or told her to do something she wasn't comfortable with, she wouldn't do it.

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4) it is sad that adult young lass (pony-tail assassin) had to be turned into a immature ten years old child avatar to response paedophilic fetishes of some of the audience; make her taller at last;

I find your accusations of pedophilia to be highly offensive. It is clearly stated that she changed her appearance to match that of her in real life. Some people are very short. I've known plenty of them. Heck, a friend of mine, who is 36 years old, is only a couple inches taller than her, and Japanese are known for being much shorter than Americans, on average. Her height and her appearance are also important to her backstory and character development.

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7) characters talk to themselves aloud;

You don't? I'm constantly being asked if I'm talking to people. Also, most of the "talking to themselves" is internal monologue, not out loud.

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8) main hero is supposedly good, but he has hid from large crowd of players that they loose part of their memory when they die -- otherwise they would not be so eager to participate in pointless (for them) war with goblins;

Revealing the memory loss all at once would terrify everyone. Which is why information is gradually released (by the end of the second season, it's common knowledge).

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9) main hero is so "smart" strategist that children always surprise him with ideas to such as to attack goblins first -- and this is a moment when "adults" make round eyes only to think "wow, not bad idea" later;

Just because someone is smart doesn't mean that they know everything, nor does it mean that someone else can't have a good idea, or see something that they don't.

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10) despite many central characters have reached level 90, they show no interest in progressing to level 100 -- not convincing;

In MMOs, leveling requires going out and risking dying, which they don't want. It also requires going to areas that are high enough to give you experience, which are not close to your base. Given the penalties for dying, I doubt many would want to do that. Also, all of them have gained levels anyway.

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12) with the main lad, authors went overboard with his childhood where he has spent nights in a yard, while more believable version would be him playing video games (as he is gamer-escapist);

Shiroe likes gaming, yes, but it was never said that he uses games to escape. Some people like being by themselves. I myself, whenever I get upset or stressed, go off by myself to be alone.

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13) elf guild master has split personality disorder: he talks to himself, disputes; needs to attend medical professionals;

You really have a problem with offensiveness, you know that?

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14) the little lad of the youth party once got all of sudden very annoying towards one of "suicide" players; it was none of his business, the "suiciders" were fine;

It was heavily implied that, after Touya became wheelchair bound, that he gave up on life. Not suicidal, but lost interest in everything. He sees that in them, and it upsets him. Furthermore, they only cared about dying, not about protecting the town, which is what upset him more.

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15) main lad's musing on whether players have to return to their original world is ridiculous, as, of course, nearly all of15 players want that, it is not a question, despite how it is portrayed in this show;

Some people obviously want to go home. Some people feel that they prefer this world. Without knowing if a way home would be "all or none," it's a legitimate thing to consider, especially since it could be forcing one way on people who don't want it. We only see a small sample of the several hundred thousand players, to show that it's clearly not unanimous either way.

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16) it is funny when characters come in in panic and scream "Trouble!" and "The city!.." -- no one talks like that in real situation as it makes no sense, it does not convey any information. In urgent situations, it would be stupid to waste time for useless talk, you'd get right to the point;

No, when you run in panicked after running, you're out of breath, and normally have trouble stringing sentences together. So you get out what you can until you've calmed down enough to explain more.

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6) princess' pyjama looks nothing like those fit for the era of that type of clothing;

She got her clothes in Akihabara, which was made by Adventurers, who are making real-world clothing.

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7) glasses design does not fit the fashion time line;

The characters wear glasses based on their real-world glasses.

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The show is 48 episodes-long (both seasons), but it would lose all the irrelevant, useless, boring filler, it would take like 39 episodes.

As I said before, it's character development. While some side-stories are expanded, there's really no filler.

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This show is way over-rated in ANN database voting due to the theme being "popular" among viewers. Also, the second season is better than the first one, both content and execution-wise, while the rating supposes opposite. Overall, the first season deserves between "Decent" and "Good", and the second season between "Good" and "Very good".

People vote the way they like it. You seem to be implying that people are voting "wrong," which isn't possible.

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This series is also not really finished; and whether it will ever be, is doubtful.

The light novels are ongoing. Volume 10, which the anime goes through, just finished online in July (it seems to match what was in the anime, which makes sense, since Mamare seems to have been involved in the anime). It hasn't been published in physical form. The first chapter from Volume 11 was just posted 6 days ago. Mamare has said that he hopes for a third season in a few years, when there's more source material. Given the ratings the show got in Japan, there's a good chance for that to happen.


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1) On speed of time: please see my reply to DuskyPredator on that;

As many people have told you, time isn't moving faster. There's just a difference in how the two worlds are synced up. This is common in most sci-fi, honestly.

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2) On losing memories: yes, they did state that memories are lost of original world, not just any random memories;

No. They are losing memories of the real world, yes. But they have never stated that those are the only memories they can lose. We just haven't seen anyone get to the point where the odds that they lose memories from the new world are high enough for it to happen. Or that anyone would notice what they're losing, for that matter.

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3) On currency: also, please see above;

Runescape. A mug of beer costs 2 gold.
Ultima. A night at an inn can cost 20 gold.
Diablo. A level 1 monster drops about 10 gold.

How is this different from what we get in LH?

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4) On travel methods: yes, I know about the gates, but it has nothing do with what I meant by teleportation in modern RPGs: you can teleport to countless points on the map, you do not need any gates for that;

What games are these? I've never played a game that had more than instant travel between certain points (which LH has established as not working or too random-and-therefore-dangerous), or a "return to home" spell, which LH also has established (which goes to the last hub you were at).

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5) On rules against abusing beginners: I mean those that do not depend on manual, human-driven moderation, but the set of incentives and disincentives that make things like transferring things like your free mana or health potions to anyone else either pricey, or automatically penalized, or impossible;

What "incentives and disincentives"? They were holding the kids captive. "Give us your crap, or we don't feed you." There's nothing to keep them from doing that.

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6) On scale of the world: my point was that it is not believable that developers would want to make world with 1:2 scale. It is too close to 1:1; they would much more likely to go full-scale rather than this weird 1:2 scale;

How is it "not believable"? That's what the developers wanted to do.

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7) On taste: if you can not smell, then you can only taste bitter, sweet, salty, sour, "umami", and nothing else;

I'm not going to argue with you, and, quite frankly, you can't really argue with me, either, as I'm speaking from personal experience.

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8) On buying buildings: even if it was impossible to buy buildings in the actual game, the possibility that locked in this world play ers would not discover it (at least out of boredom) nears zero;

People did notice it. Shiroe obviously did, and people weren't surprised when he pointed it out to others. But either they didn't care, or, more likely, they didn't have the insane amount of money you needed.

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9) On character development: classy projects do not need loads of irrelevant boring filler for world-building;

I haven't seen a single bit of filler. Not everything is super-huge and important.

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10) On representation of NPCs: again, there are a lot of them in the city, so excluding their representation from council was an injustice.

Again, it was a council explicitly for the Adventurers, to govern the Adventurers. Unless you feel that countries should regularly call in other countries to help them govern? I'm sure that the US would love to have another country's Prime Minister with a seat on our Senate, helping make laws.
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Newbie9



Joined: 11 Jan 2014
Posts: 38
PostPosted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 5:15 pm Reply with quote
I'd be first up to pay (at Amazon prices) a Log Horizon light novel sequel or story written by the crackerjack few here who've shown they know LH inside up and up and down almost better than the author himself with all these excellent deep points in the story and characters. I hope they take a crack at a few chapters for Fanfiction com or Wattpages. It doesn't matter to be whether it jibes with "canon," just as long as it feels a LH story.

Aside: While the point is well made that somehow the Log Horizon characters were supposedly magically beamed into another world and it's not supposed to be a VR anything, the anime producers didn't seem stressed on pushing that point much, making it almost ambiguous in anime, perhaps as I've read in some fan forums to ride the successful coattails of .hack and AccelWorld and SAO. I can see them doing that as a prudent market ploy.

I'd especially like to see Akatsuki first-story and what her real life is like. Did she get started down the hardcore gamer route with things like Feyland and how good is she at her Kendo class? Did her size cause her to be so embittered and hardened her so much that in the game she seems to have no problems or remorse about splitting throats like the light novels have it? And how about Tetra's background and orientations, and Etc Etc Etc....

Just a thought I had to get out since Log Horizon has really grown on me that kind of sprung from a naughty joke on Facebook; "How does Shiroe make love to Akatsuki? First calls the cops to say she's legal."

Happy happy coming St. Pat's all!
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Dessa



Joined: 14 Jul 2004
Posts: 4438
PostPosted: Sun Feb 19, 2017 10:28 pm Reply with quote
While the first season it is indeed ambiguous, in the second season opening you can clearly see Kei (Shiroe's player) sitting at a computer screen with no headset on.
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Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
Posts: 11762
Location: Earth
PostPosted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 2:33 am Reply with quote
Season 3 airs today, it's been over 5 years.
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Animegomaniac



Joined: 16 Feb 2012
Posts: 4134
PostPosted: Wed Jan 13, 2021 1:05 pm Reply with quote
My Honest Log Horizon (season 3) reaction:
Initial: It's Log Horizon!
Middle:... it certainly is Log Horizon.
Finale: .... I have no idea what's going. It's definitely back.

I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't baffling bureaucracy right from the start.
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