Recap

Lenessia flies to Akibahara to rally the Adventurers to her cause. Even so, reinforcements are hours away as the summer training camp fights a desperate battle from both sides.

Iro’s Thoughts

Long story short, this was a great couple of episodes. The surest way for me to tell if I’m enjoying something is if I unconsciously end up with a big, goofy smile plastered across my face in the middle of it, and that definitely happened with Log Horizon.

Let’s get the bad out of the way first, which is thankfully relegated mostly to episode 18. I’m still not a fan of Lenessia, partly because of her unimpressive characterization and partly because she’s invariably paired with Crusty all the time, who is a very boring character. He’s as good a strategist as Shiroe, he leads the biggest guild, he gets all the ladies, and is otherwise so boringly perfect in every sense that the show is dragged down every single time he appears onscreen. Souji at least has the decency to have his chick magnet tendencies treated as a farce, and Shiroe is defined partly by his ability to rely on his friends.

Lenessia’s rousing speech works well enough both in and out of context, mostly thanks to the anime’s presentation, which continues to be top notch considering their limitations. The slowly swelling music and the crowd banging their weapons together makes for a great “Hell yeah!” moment, and the promise of a large-scale battle is a great sign of fun things to come in the next episode.

Accordingly, episode 19 is almost entirely action scenes, and after the show has spent so long with just talking, it’s a great feeling of catharsis to see things start blowing up for once. It’s a textbook example of proper pacing to show us a glimpse of the large scale battle with hundreds of Adventurers tearing apart mooks (unfortunately, heavily featuring Crusty McBoring), then to the telepathic communication network directing individual platoons, and then zooming focus onto to the kids’ smaller party. It gives us a good sense that the battle is raging all across the countryside, while still keeping us emotionally invested.

Moreso than their escapades in the dungeon, we really get a handle that the kids have improved their skills by a significant margin, particularly Minori. They lay it on a bit thick, but seeing her command everyone like Shiroe did early in the show is a great contrast from her earlier timidity. Really, the entire sequence parallels the moments where the teamwork of Shiroe’s group shined brightest, with little things like Rudy’s lightning spell passing between enemies (like in episode 2) and Minori using her once-a-day spell (like Naotsugu in episode 4).

By the end of the episode, they’re fighting a defensive battle (on a bridge and in the rain, no less, which is like the perfect formula for a dramatic fight), and we finally get the reveal we all saw coming months ago. Rudy goes full badass (complete with animation bump!) and sacrifices himself to blow up a couple of dire wolves, knowing that as a Lander, he can’t revive at the Cathedral. Again, an obvious twist, but it does add a fair bit more depth to his actions up until now. He worked and fought harder than anyone else to become something he could never be, and that makes him an underdog hero in the best sense. It remains to be seen what Minori thinks Shiroe can do to resolve this situation, but considering what we’ve seen so far, I’m hoping it won’t be too much of a deus ex machina.