Log Horizon S2 Episode 25: The Pioneers (FINAL)

Things wrap up as Shiroe and co. head to the roof of the building to encounter the raid boss. Shiroe is back in gear, showing us that beautiful brain of his in his complex and brilliant strategies. Summing up the battles in Log Horizon have always been hard for me, and it’s better to just watch them than explain. They use spells and whatnot, but Shiroe was perceptive enough to figure out the patterns of the raid boss’ attacks in such a short amount of time.

I think this was probably the best and exciting fight in the show this season. The raid boss didn’t bother talking things out, like Shiroe had hoped to do. If they didn’t hurry, the raid boss would destroy the antenna. And even though they had fifteen minutes until the moon would rise, the raid boss called forth the moths, attacking everyone. They spread out through the world, so before the world would get destroyed, Shiroe and group have to hurry up and defeat the boss. After much wonderful teamwork, that’s exactly what they do. The first half of the episode is dedicated to the fight, and destroying the boss. They were able to save both the world and the antenna. Whoo hoo! After that, they get to working on the communication device in the building. It works, and a familiar voice is heard.

It’s Kanami! Still in the China server. She’s also in some building, and found a communication device. She didn’t know what it was, but she thought it was interesting and just fiddled around with it. Well, these two haven’t talked to each other in a long time, so there’s small talk. Then Kanami brings up that she has a three-year-old daughter, and she starts happily talking about her. Shiroe thinks she wants to go home quickly to be with her child, but Kanami thinks the opposite. She wants her daughter to come to this world. She wants her daughter to ride a griffon, she wants her to meet her friends, she wants her to experience a new and vast world. This surprises Shiroe at first, but he always dabbled the possibility of having the real world and their world merged together. Well that’s a whole other thing! Connecting the two worlds together. There is a possibility of war in their world, but going back to their own world may not be the best solution. But there are adventurers that love being in that world. Connecting the worlds together, being able to visit one world and live in another, would be an ideal solution. Shiroe takes it upon himself to figure out a way to do just that.

We don’t get much out of Kanami after that, because what’s his face mage screwed up one of the wires or something, and the device exploded, so they lost connection. But they were able to speak, and come down to a solution. But also one thing before the device broke, we got news of a certain someone I’ve been wondering about since…forever.

Somehow, Crusty is in the China server with Kanami and her group. I have no idea how, and he’s even carrying that Misa girl’s arm with him. But I’m glad his crusty ass his fine, because it seems like I’m the only one that cares about him since the others didn’t bother looking for him or something. Anyway, the Log Horizon head back to Akihabara while the West Wind group watch over mage man, but it turns out he ditched them and followed Log Horizon. With Plant Hwayden, they’re going to cease war. They’re most likely going to be working with the Round Table, so they await contact with Shiroe.

I expected an announcement of another season in the end, like they did last season, but we didn’t get anything. Just a “The End”. Of course, we now have another goal, and we need to see how that’s going to play out.

For me, this season had a lot of ups and downs. Describing it as a roller coaster would be accurate. It was exciting and fun, and there were a lot of ups about it. But there were also lows, but then it went back up in the end.

I simply loved the first half of the season. In the first season, we got a lot of fun and politics, but when it came to characters it fell a little short. In this season, we got all the character development we wanted. Namely Shiroe and Akatsuki, but also from Lenessia and others. We learned more about minor characters, and they became much more likable than before. Shiroe and Akatsuki’s moments and their growth were a thrill to watch. It was also fun watching the characters interact with each other more, since it made them feel like more of a team, especially with the other guilds. New characters were also introduced, and they were fun as well. I kinda wish we got more on Kanami though, but I still like her. The first half was definitely the strongest, but…

The second half had problems. Maybe I missed something or it wasn’t made too clear, Plant Hwyaden’s intentions were still in the dark. We don’t really know much of anything about them or what they want, and what is up with Nureha and why she’s treated so poorly by that purple-haired woman. I just wanted to know more about them. When you put these characters in the opening, it means that they must be important. Well, they certainly are, but we didn’t get enough.

Also, when it came to the children (Minori and group), that was probably the weakest part in the whole show. Those 5 or 6 episodes were extremely slow, slower than I’m used to with Log Horizon, and then it got to the point where I was having trouble watching these episodes because they were so boring. It’s not that I don’t like the newbies, but they could have at least made the episodes more fun. It was nice watching them getting along together, and finally being independant now, as they’re much stronger than how they were in the first season. But their issues were uninteresting to me, and I feel like they could have introduced us to Roe 2 in another way. I know they were trying to develop the children in the show as well, but it fell flat to me. And honestly when their expedition finally came to an end, that’s when the show started picking up the pace and I started enjoying it again.

The animation this season disappointed me. I don’t know why they switched studios, but I thought it was a mistake. I don’t know if it’s just me that thinks this, but the animation just got worse. Whenever they would show flashbacks of scenes from the first season, you could really see just how better it looked. Log Horizon never had the best of animation, but it just got even worse this season, and that bothered me a lot. Damn it Studio DEEN…

With more events to come, trying to keep war down, and finding a way to connect the two worlds, I’m sure we’ll probably get news of a new season soon. I don’t think they would leave it incomplete, and at such an exciting moment. We’ll just have to wait and see. This season wasn’t as enjoyable as the first one, but it was still pretty good. I’d give this season a 7/10. Log Horizon stills retains it’s clever strategy battles, politics, world building, and now wonderful character development. But it fell short in the pacing in the middle, and with mysteries in the plot at times, but this season was still an enjoyable watch. If there’s another season, I’m not sure if I would cover it honestly. I feel like Log Horizon is more fun to watch than write about, because of how slow it can be. It would probably be better to write about with each arc, and not weekly, but I would have to think about it.