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「ワールド・フラクション」 (Waarudo Furakushon)
“World Fraction”
Some of the world’s secrets are revealed with the discussion of the world-class magic World Fraction. Three times the world has changed, and there are consequences to dying after all. And to think, Shiroe was a living legend all along.
World-Class Magic
For an episode full of exposition, this was probably my favorite episode of the series so far. This was world building done right, laying out the answer to a ton of the question that we had been wondering about, and a bunch we didn’t know to ask but were fascinating to hear about. The entire saga of the three World Fraction spells was fascinating, and I didn’t expect the world to have gone from such a magitech golden age down to its present state. No, that’s not right – we had see what looked like moss-covered wind turbines and and interstate highways, so that was wel foreshadowed, it’s how the demi-humans came into being that I was surprised about.
Mythology, that’s what this was, and the Lord of the Rings fan in me loved to hear it. Hearing about the fall of the Alvs and the six bent princesses, the Luquenje and their simultaneous (but unrelated) quests for revenge really grew the world for me. It gave it depth and a history, bringing it to life by showing that there’s more there than that which directly relates to our protagonists. This world has been here for a long time, and its people have been living their lives long before our heroes got here. It makes them feel small, but it’s a good small. It means there’s a big, wide world out there for them to interact with, and I can’t wait to see that go down.
The Legendary Archmage Shiroe
One of the fun things about playing an RPG is that you get to become a legendary hero. Zelda, Final Fantasy, the Tales series (not to mention all the Western ones)…when you play these games you become the One True Hero, and it’s you who gets to save the world. In MMORPGs this is a trickier proposition, but if you’re a young’un with a lot of free time then the challenge of becoming a well-known adventurer among even other well-known adventurers is an exciting one, because there’s no guarantees, and a quest you might fail at is always the most fun. Oh how it would be, to be considered a legend for your exploits…
Turns out that Shiroe is exactly that. Due to the difference in time between Earth and Elder Tales – two hours on Earth equals a day in the game – Shiroe’s eight years of playing the game became 98 years of solo adventuring, earning him the classification of Archmage and making him a legend in his own time. It’s hard to enunciate why I find this so fascinating, but I guess it’s because instead of Shiroe being respected for his high level, his experience, or simply because he’s an immortal adventurer at all, it’s like all that time he spent playing the game actually mattered. That’s wish-fulfillment to a bunch of MMORPG-playing nerds if I’ve ever seen it.
Losing Your Memories, Forgetting Your Past
Just as some LN-reading commenters have been gleefully hinting at for a while – seriously guys, chill out. I know you’ve read them, that’s cool, just use those spoilers and stop hinting at stuff! – dying isn’t the 100% no-repercussions get-out-of-death-free card that it once seemed. (Ignoring the EXP penalty, which was reason enough to avoid dying.) The discussion of psyche and anima was interesting for two reasons: 1) Because it explained both what we see in the world and how it linked up with the game in a way that made sense and was internally consistent – that’s hard to do, by the way – and 2) Because it justified the newly-found repercussions of death in both the world and game logic, and that’s really hard to do. It made a lot of sense that some information (the player’s memories) would be stored in the psyche while other information (EXP, level, etc) would be stored in the anima, and with them together now…
More to the point, I find the repercussions of death here to be more…well, more to my taste than what we saw in the first arc of Sword Art Online. I’m not bashing SAO here, this is merely a preference, because while the in-your-face oh-my-gods-we’re-going-to-die-forever terror of the death game was effective, it wasn’t very subtle nor especially clever. This, however, is. You’ll keep resurrecting, and you’ll still be you, but your memories of the real world – or even of your friends and guildmates in this world – could slowly disappear. This isn’t the sudden dramatic death, it’s like the early onset of Alzheimer’s in people far too young to be experiencing it (not that anyone should). Personally I find that death has become a cheap plot gimmick, it’s used too often, but the idea of slowly losing your memories and forgetting those who are important to you… *shudders* It’s not frightening, not exactly, but it is unsettling. This could have serious effects on the balance of power in the world, and I think Shiroe was wise to not spread the word immediately. How to deal with this requires some thought.
“Call me Rudy, Miss Isuzu.”
The newbies were handled well again this episode. A delicate hand is best here, because too much time spent on them would be annoying and take away from the more interesting world building – and in fact, I cried out in frustration when the scene switched from Shiroe’s group to the newbies. Fortunately it switched right back, which shows they’re doing it right. They know where the story is really moving right now.
As for what we did see from the newbies, it mainly had to do with Isuzu x Rudy. More correctly, it had to do with Isuzu realizing that Rudy is a ridiculous showoff, yes, but he’s also an earnest hard worker who doesn’t want to drag his team down, even if his own personality quirks don’t always let him be honest with what he’s feeling. More simply, watching those two interact was a treat, and Minori noticing when Isuzu called Rundel Haus “Rudy” was…I’m not sure. Does she realize that they can become more than just teammates, that they can become real friends? I hope so, and I think so.
Looking Ahead – Stand Up, Minori!
I don’t know what good waiting for the afternoon to enter the dungeon will do, other than simply letting them rest up and do something different, which are valuable in and of themselves. Whatever the case, it appears that Minori is finally going to stand up and take some kind of leadership role (or at least organizational/strategist role) in the party. I do look forward to these five becoming a stronger group and better friends, just don’t skimp on the world-building exposition, alright? I still want to know more about that third World Fraction. It’s kind of a big deal.
tl;dr: @StiltsOutLoud – The mythology of world-changing magic that created adventurers & helped Shiroe become a legend. Also Isuzu x Rudy too kawaii #loghorizon 14
Random thoughts:
- The action-class, combat-class, operation-class etc. etc…up to world-class magic was an odd way to think of it, unless you think about it in conjunction with the magical classes. For instance, a combat-class nuke. I think it would have to be fluid though, because sometimes a simple action can have far-reaching effects, as many an assassin has found out. Though perhaps I’m thinking about this too much… Though then again, I like it that this show makes me want to do that!
- Humans created the werecats and others? No different than on Earth then, they just had the tools to do a proper job of it. I’m still waiting for one of the Race of Ritual that no one ever plays to show up. (No spoilers, LN-readers!)
- Akatsuki thinks she’s been crushing on a 98-year old man, hah! That’s okay Akatsuki-chan, I’ll take you. I’m even taller than Shiroe, if that helps.
- Restoration magic can work on People of the Land. I don’t know if that’ll end up being important, but to my eyes that’s huge, at least for the People of the Land. They have a way to dodge death too.
- The heavy EXP loss penalty adventurers face is another hint that Touno-sensei played Everquest, though I guess Elder Tales didn’t have Cleric epic weapons that could bring people back to life with 96% experience restoration at no mana cost. Hah, suckers!
- Note: Please be careful with spoilers. If you’ve read the LN and know what’s going to happen, make sure to use spoiler tags aggressively (and to clearly and in a non-spoiler manner label what the spoiler is about) when you’re commenting so that anime-only watchers don’t get the surprise ruined for them. Anime-only viewers might also consider using spoiler tags for guesses that most people may have missed, in case you’re right and others would have preferred to maintain the suspense. Thank you.
Check out my blog about storytelling and the fantasy novel I’m writing at stiltsoutloud.com. The last four posts: Explain yourself, Mix it up, Look for execution, and Why I don’t write fanfiction.
Full-length images: 16.
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Log Horizon is really getting good! I love how all the RPG mechanics are intergrated into a fantasy world.
And that was my childhood lies come from. I thought HP was Health Point.
this series really ebbs and flows to extremes. nothing happened this episode except for a lot of plot build up for the next episode. i did like that minori finally grew some balls at the end. really looking forward to that.
This is a weird comment. I mean you’re right that nothing action-y happened, but what did happen is literally the thing that people have been asking for since episode 1, which is to finally get some answers about the world.
lol omg get ready for the influx of LN readers going “OMG did you see that? did you see that?”
Seriously though, did you just see that? =P
I’m not an LN reader… so are you talking about what I’m talking about below?
Actually, no, nevermind. I don’t want to know if it’s a spoiler. I spotted the thing I posted about on my own.
I think I should get out of here like really soon then.
I’ll be back in a while, when the spoilish comments will have properly downvoted 🙂
…. Did you see THAT?!
All the exposition was fascinating, and it’s helping me conclude (or further conclude, since I was already thinking in this direction) that this is actually a world that already existed on its own, and the game just…. interfaced with it, somehow.
Interesting thoughts on the newbies, Stilts, but you seem to have overlooked what appeared to me to be the most interesting and earth-shaking (yet quite subtle) piece of information from those scenes. Can you spot it?
I see what you did there
It’s a screenshot. I didn’t do anything other than take it. And post it. And look at it before taking it while thinking “wait a second…”
i know what your’e pointing at it clearly coincide
Show Spoiler ▼
I don’t see it. What are you looking at?
For some reason Rudy is classed as a sorcerer while Isuzu is classed as an adventurer.
I noticed that when I watched the show too, I thought that was the point of that scene, but then Minori made no mention of it, so now I’m curious if it’s just some kind of typo.
Isuzu was listed as a bard two episodes ago. Why is she mislabeled here?
Look at the name tag’s colors: Isuzu is blue, Rudy is green.
Also when you look at the scene in episode 12, all of the characters have big anime eyes except for Rudie who has normal ones. What’s more, all of them have short, small mouth, but he’s got a very wide one. And he’s blond!
Yeah it looks like the game served as the medium via which both world “communicated” with one another. It seems too that each major update to the game (alpha release, beta release, expansion pack) served as the world-class magic the mage was discussing. Only thing outstanding now is why have the adventurers only now been “brought” into the game and not before? Someone therefore is up to some shenanigans.
I don’t think it’s as simple as the alpha, beta, live are the 3 spells. Because the history states that, physically, the game world was BETTER before the first world fraction. Which doesn’t really jive with an alpha-build.
I agree though that the game seems to have been an interface of some kind.
There’s no reason to say that the game world wasn’t in existence before its “creation” in the real world. Thus the alpha build would be when the real world first exerted influence over the game world via the game medium, and every update after further solidified that influence.
In effect it’s like all the standard time travel stories where visitors from the future drastically change the world, except instead these visitors are from another universe entirely.
Oops I forgot a part of that response.
Thus the introduction of monsters, bosses/NPCs, and the adventuring system (levelling up, reincarnation, etc.) could be enough to overturn what was once a well-formed and stable world. Guaranteed our world wouldn’t be the same if suddenly a god or alien space bat decided to overturn all forms of natural law and replace them with new ones.
Come to think of it Log Horizon now sounds similar to S.M. Stirling’s Dies the Fire series, at least in terms of world class magic and world altering events.
Except the explanation you’re giving implies that OUR world somehow caused this via building the game, while the in-show explanation we’ve been given (which I fully admit isn’t complete yet and could be full of holes) says that the people in THEIR world (the game) summoned our people into it.
I’d say the big question that’s left, aside from the 3rd world fraction of course, is just what was the game? The people of the land can’t answer that because they don’t seem to be aware of it. So there must be some other character or thing that will shed light on the role the game played in all of this.
Only for the third event, if I remember the first simply created the demi-humans, the second the precursors (who we so far only know to be NPCs at a level very similar to the adventurers) and the third brought the adventurers. I agree there is not enough here yet to properly answer the question, but if the People of the Land can make use of adventurer technology and recipes, why couldn’t they as well make use of world class magic? Or were the adventurers transported into the game by someone from the real world? Heck if we want to go all the way maybe the adventurers were created themselves and placed into the game 😛
Really this is just all just brainstorming, for like you mentioned we will have no real understanding until a proper explanation is given to what exactly the game is.
No the second summoned the adventurers and the precursors, the 3rd is the apocalypse when they somehow came to exist completely inside the game.
I disagree, it did not summon them during the second event as much as create them; all we know is that they “appeared” (direct quote) suddenly.
I don’t really understand how you can ‘disagree’ it literally said that the second use was a spell of summoning for something to fight the demi-humans, and that was what lead to the appearance of the adventurers. Shiroe literally does the math in his head working out the timing of the second spell to the release of the beta version of Elder Tales on Earth.
This isn’t a mystery. There are many mysteries left. That the second World Fraction is the beginning of the beta/coming of the adventurers is not one of them. But to each their own.
Yeah disagree is probably the wrong word, apologies 😛
I guess it just sounds like we’re arguing over semantics. I’ll have to rewatch that part because I assumed it was the world class magic that brought the adventurers, not a particular summoning spell. If I really misunderstood that part then I concede the point.
God I cannot edit my posts properly at all tonight, that should be “world class summoning magic” and not “world class magic and summoning magic”
Regan still doesn’t actually seem to know what World Fraction actually does or how it works, he’s only able to observe its use by noting the scale of the effects. Each time it’s been used the effect has been different. You could say adventurers were summoned or that they were created; he doesn’t actually know, because he doesn’t know what the spell does. He is a scientist for magic: observing the results of spells and attempting to come up with explanations for them. He observed that the second time a spell that affected the entire world was cast, adventurers appeared and started fighting the demihumans.
Oh, it is the world class magic, you’re right. He just calls it a summoning spell, and then AFTER saying that he says this was the second World Fraction.
From what was said we have:
1. 300-some years ago, cast by the 6 bent princesses, summoned the demi-humans/monsters.
2. 240(?) years ago, cast by ‘humanity’ (presumably humans, elves, and dwarves), summoned humanity’s ‘champions’ the adventurers and the precursors
3. month or two ago, the apocalypse, brought the adventurers mentally into the world, but we don’t know who did it or why. It doesn’t seem like the people of the land would care about this because from their point of view, the adventurer’s were already there for centuries before this.
@Wanderer:
Definitely. It does seem like a result thing. Which begs the question, exactly how did the 6 bent princesses (who apparently weren’t working together) cast this thing, and how did humanity do it if no one knows what it is? Obviously the 3rd we just don’t know anything about yet.
And sorry if I sound at all belligerent. I tend to be a very definitive typer and you can’t edit on this page.
No worries, I can be an angry pedant at times too should the right topic come up, so I understand. Already know about the editing too, my problem is I don’t check over my posts before posting lol.
Wanderer too seems to have summed up best what I was trying to say. All we know is 3 events transpired, with 2 having causes accounted for in the lore and the last having no known cause. I was nitpicking the second event because it wasn’t really the adventurers present after it occurred, it was their virtual game avatars. Only the third event truly “summoned” them per say which is where of course this then runs full circle: why do their minds need to be brought into their virtual game bodies? Why at this stage now and not earlier?
I know EXACTLY what you’re talking about…For a Sorcerer, Rudy has WAY more HP than Bard Isuzu! That’s totally not fair!
Well, perhaps Rudy or Izusu has the “wrong” Gear. Perhaps Rudy put much HP+ Stats and so on, while he should force his INT or WIS to make his Spells more Powerful. Perhaps both dont have the Experience to Trust the Group, and there more a Solo player with sometimes Group play
For a Sorcerer, Rudy has WAY more HP than Bard Isuzu! That’s totally not fair!
Maybe he just rolled a much higher CON stat 😉
Is that what Wanderer is talking about? I actually noticed that when watching through the episode, but my first thought was just that it was a careless animation error.
Even if it was done on purpose, how would it be “earth-shaking” (as Wanderer describes it)?
to Tre:
Hahaha, if you really still didn’t see it after all that comments & the screenshot then my advise is to avoid spoilers & wait for yourself to realize it.
When I’m reading the LN that hit me like a god-dang brick. Like how the Negima Mars reveal or Kira’s horrible return & multi-layered plans of doing so.
If you really cannot wait another 3~4 episodes for it to spell out plainly for you then here: Show Spoiler ▼
No his health bar is just longer because his name is longer. Isuzu actually has 1778 HP, while Rudy has 1321: we saw that in episode 12. That’s not what I’m talking about.
Spoiler tagged for those who should still try to spot it themselves:
Show Spoiler ▼
to Radam:
Nah, Rudy didn’t have a larger HP points than Isuzu, his HP bar just had to be longer to fitted with his longer name. Notice that there’s no numbers at those two HP bars?
I went back & checked at episode 12 when the newbies 1st introduce themselves to one others & found that:
Isuzu has HP-1778 at Level 24
Rusy has HP-1321 at Level 23
Ah dammit! Dang you slow computer!!
to Wanderer:
Yeah I think Radam knows what you try to imply there, he’s probably being funny & trying to make people like Tre more confused.
LGM you bastard. OMG. What a shock!
Unlike Stilts, this show got me into a habit of underthinking everything. I’ve tended to not paying attention to any of the player stat pages, so this isn’t something I would have ever noticed unless someone pointed it out directly.
I usually do quickly spot this kind of thing in other shows, so maybe they did well in luring me into a false sense of security in thinking I could understand everything superficially.
@Tre actually the show’s been pretty smart at throwing hints here and there before the big reveal. Just like in the case of the food, where they mentioned that ingredients have taste and you could add condiments, but Naotsugu still burned his wiener. And the next scene we have Nyanta preparing teas as if it was all normal. All this before the big reveal a couple episodes later that you could cook food.
Same with Shiroe’s plan to buy the Guild Building, with a big build up of hints over the few episodes. Like the amount of money he had to accumulate, that adventurers could buy any building. The variosus mentions of the importance of the Guild Building, its services and importance to adventurers. Then they threw the hints about permission settings.
Last episode even people started to speculate on that scene with Marielle noticing something on the sea Show Spoiler ▼
So just like those times, those noticing a few hints here and there or noticing stuff out of place or with keen eyes, might get and idea of whats coming.
@Kamui04: I don’t know, it doesn’t seem like there was enough information given in all these hints to really be able to forecast much of anything, except for this latest one. I feel like most of that was done just to get a rush out of the light novel readers (or get non-light novel readers to read it by making them feel like stuff was being skipped over).
I taking more along the lines that the moment the developers created the world and added NPC’s the time started an 8-12 year Alpha stage development seems a bit much, but you never know.
I did see that. If it means what I think it means though, I just didn’t want to point it out to those who missed it. Should make later better for them…unless I’m wrong. We’ll see!
Frankly this has gotten out of control. We should be able to discuss the possibilities of a screenshot from the actual show without the spoiler people come out of the woodwork and ‘hinting’ at what’s true or not true.
#KaleRylan: Frankly this has gotten out of control. We should be able to discuss the possibilities of a screenshot from the actual show without the spoiler people come out of the woodwork and ‘hinting’ at what’s true or not true.
Two things. First, I would hope that people take my post as the jest it was intended. I have yet to see any STR, INT, WIS, DEX/AGI, and/or CON type states for players so it couldn’t be a spoiler even if I wasn’t joking.
Second, AFAIK, one person in the above discussion seems to have read the LN and posted a “spoiler” which was essentially pointing out what was significant in the screenshot – the very same thing you wrote WITHOUT spoiler tags. Sorry, but I don’t see where “spoiler people are coming out of the woodwork” with their “hints”. Frankly, in terms of “discuss[ing] the possibilities of a screenshot”, even that’s been limited to what’s significant about the screenshot itself rather than any possible ramifications that might foretell.
Look at this entire page, and the pages before, and count up the spoiler tags, and the ‘hints’ that aren’t in spoiler tags. This series’ reviews are flooded with the stuff.
My point stands. As Stilts pointed out himself in the review.
I had to agree with Kale here. Posting spoilers ON THE HINT is actually the spoiler in itself since it clearly points out the significance of that said hint. So it’s better to try pointing out hint without spoiler tags like what Kale did above, but try avoid drawing any definite conclusion. Too late for that anyway.
Holy sh*t…
The implications here are just… damn.
Yeah, thinking about that OP scene. Damn!
Oh, now I see…
She added laxative to the sandwich, right? 😛
It’s a bitch when I know what you are talking about but I can’t say because of RC’s muh spoilers
tyrannypolicy.Anyhow the whole thing still feels weird. But I hope we do get Rudy’s comprehensive backstory in the novel because of this.
I really want to know what everyone’s hinting about. There’s so much, “yeah, you see that right there? That’s really important and all and I’m giving a lot of cryptic answers of what it might or might not be, but wait my answers might just be deceiving you so you’re better off not reading this spoiler that isn’t a spoiler that is a spoiler.”
Its giving my brain blue balls.
Flavor, I think enough clues (some rather blatant) have been provided by various people to figure it out. If you rewatch the scene or look at the screenshot provided by Wanderer, you should be able to notice something is odd. BTW, I’m not an LN reader.
@FlavorOfEvil: play “one of these things is not like the others” with the screenshot.
Rudy name’s tag is green.
Wow… I actually missed that one. As an LN reader, I am ashamed of myself
Well, so many are complaining here and try to push us to the Focus… Even i realized what they want.. There are so many soft Pushed over the Edge, that i cannot Ignore
I think it has to do with how shoved-in-the-viewer’s face it was, almost to where it was awkward and off-putting. Made you want to look away, not pay more attention.
This was a nice exposition episode, as it provided a view on how the world came to be from the People of the Lands’ perspective. There’s still a lot of questions to be answered, but this gives us something to go on. I also wonder how much of it is a metaphor for development in real life (time of the gods – earliest game development, world being created) or if this really is a world that somehow managed to make a connection to ours by way of a game. Gotta admit I love the explanation for hit points and other MMORPG mechanics from the perspective of the inhabitants as well, as it makes a lot of sense when you hear them explain it. I do love me some worldbuilding.
And so the stakes are raised too. Death has rather horrifying repercussions, if the mage’s words can be believed – our memories make up our identity, and that identity is at stake for them now if they start dying in droves. If they were to get caught in a war or something, it would have grave consequences even for them. Frankly, it’s creepier than death.
On the noobies’ side, I hope Minori steps up and starts becoming their tactician or something. I was kind of rolling my eyes too for a moment when they cut back to them in the middle of the worldbuilding, and their story in general is less interesting than that of the main characters. Still, if the payoff is worth it, I’ll forgive the show for it. Maybe they’ll form a beta team or something, could be interesting.
Yeah, the groundwork has to be laid if they’re going to become as cool as the main characters even if it’s a little frustrating to deal with now.
I liked the scene with Rudy practicing, it fleshes his character out nicely. Minori is very frustrating but if I’m being fair it makes sense that someone as obviously shy/reserved as her would take a while to find her courage. It’s still been annoying to watch.
My guess is she’s going to train them to be a party before they go in the afternoon. I wish they would have just said that as the cliffhanger though. Having the musical cue kick in and then her dramatically stand up just to say ‘let’s go this afternoon’ was really anti-climactic. Something like ‘we have some training to do’ would have been better.
And thus it became clear: The 6 scrapped princesses of the Alves were the game developers in this dimension, probably a nerdy all-female IT staff too(I want to date a cute female nerd ;_;).
Anyway, Rudelhaus and Isuzu. Isuzu started calling Rudelhaus “Rudy”. *Squee* RudyXIsuzu OTP!!!1! A hardworking, prince-like, charming guy and a country girl with cute freckles(most freckles are cute, no matter what the girls who have them think of them). It’s the only pairing I’m really looking into in this series.
Frankly I still think the answer to all this is just straight fantasy. I don’t think the Game developers somehow created a really-well realized world. I think there was a legitimate fantasy world that cast a spell that somehow interfaced with our world via a game.
That’s just my feeling though.
But who were the developers? That’s what I want to know now. I also want to know if the adventurers had left their bodies on Earth and just brought the “soul” to Elder Tale.
I agree. Those are two very big questions. Did the developers know they somehow connected to a real world? Or did they somehow create this world?
My personal theory is that the 6 princesses through magic teleported themselves into our world. And then became game developers to add stuff to their own world.
It kind of make sense. The Demi-Humans are their way of punishing the people for revenge purposes. But the Catastrophe can be seen as their way creating a socialist revolution in Elder Tales. Because the players who play Elder tales likely represent a segment of a population that are likely to in fairly socialist and pacifist views on society. And by example, they can create quite a change to the world
Not really important, but they sort of revealed that Log Horizon is set in 2018.
Which is interesting to know. I think.
1998 + 8 = 2018?
8 years is the amount of time shiroe has played. It’s stated the game’s 1st beta was 20 years ago. hence 2018
They also, once again, revealed that Elder Tales is a late 90’s / early 2000’s-style MMO, just like I keep mentioning. Mostly because it amuses me more than I think people aren’t listening ^^
No spoilers, just based on your screenshots, there is an ignored clue.
The only problem is: we should understand Japanese characters!
I am afraid that some audiences would not be able to notice that hint.
Here’s a hint: You don’t need to understand Japanese to get the BIG CLUE.
Putting another major hint in a spoiler:
Show Spoiler ▼
It is more difficult!!
People need to stop with these hints. It’s getting so bad that we can’t even discuss legitimate clues in the show because the LN readers come out of the woodwork to tell us how the ‘important’ that clue is which might as well just be giving us a spoiler anyway.
KaleRylan, all that is needed is for you to develop the mental fortitude to not click on Spoiler tags if you don’t want to be spoiled.
This is world building done right, every major question except the central one (why are they in EW in the first place?) has now been answered. Being an anime-only watcher, the revelations given here IMO push Log Horizon directly into science fiction territory rather than fantasy. It looks like something out of the multiverse hypothesis, where world-class magic is the method via which to “bring” people from one universe into another, in this case Shiroe and friends from the real world into the Elder World. Quite neat if there is any truth to this idea as I cannot be the only one who while playing a game has thought “wouldn’t this be awesome if it actually existed?” Basically LH now looks like an interesting piece of science fiction making use of the fantasy setting, I like 🙂
Expanding this further then the question becomes who instigated the third use of world-class magic and why; what purpose is there in “bringing” the adventurers directly into the game and effectively “changing” the natural order? If there is only one such antagonist I’m also going to wager we’ll see them (or further hints of them) soon, probably in one of this cour’s final episodes. The People of the Land will guaranteed be involved in this as well, if the indication that they too can “avoid” death has any relevance in the near future.
I don’t really get how this makes it sci-fi. Plenty of fantasy stories have alternate dimensions, and if the vehicle for the story is giant magic spells used by ancient magical races I’d say that’s even more fantasy than it was before.
My personal opinion is that this is slowly losing any sci-fi trappings it had and turning into a pretty pure fantasy, except instead of a wardrobe, this used a game somehow.
I guess it’s ultimately subjective but I think it’s leaning sci fi because there is clearly something here that is “beyond” the game. The fantasy setting serves more as a sandbox for explaining the otherworldy phenomena occurring rather than acting as the boundary for the story’s universe. Not to mention the discussion of memory could easily bring this into the Ghost in the Shell questioning of just what is human/living and how do you define it?
Really though it depends on how you like to separate sci fi from fantasy, there is a never a true answer when trying to categorize something by genre unfortunately 😛
I’ve always considered Log Horizon to be hard fantasy, but the line between hard fantasy and sci-fi is very vague. It’s also unimportant…whatever it is, it’s showing more of a propensity to explain itself, so if you like that kind of fantasy/sci-fi then this is a great example of the form. I know I do!
Amem! That’s good writing in play. Really good writing is when those elements don’t
surprise or seem like lazy ties to loose ends. Log Horizon has done a great job so far.
Can’t wait to see where it goes next…
great episode. it wasn’t boring at all despite the fact it was more or less talking-episode.
building of a world, especially fantasy world, must be done wisely. on the one hand, you want to deepen more and more of your world, on the other hand, you can’t go all out and spill all the details. also, you just don’t want to do only talking. it’ll be boring.
and although it was a lot of talking, it was interesting, going straight to business.
in a book, I like when the author gives details about the history and reveals more about the world mechanisms. yet leaves a taste for more. and that’s exactly what happened here. that’s why, even though it was talking-episode, it was great. I was intrigued, I wanted more, but the author knew when to stop chit-chat talking and move on a bit. I also liked that it was so much detailed and understandable. sometimes authors being too detailed and spreading too much. as a reader I want stuff to be understandable. even if complicating is great, that doesn’t necessary means it’s always best option.
as for what we had..it was interesting. mostly I liked how the story in Elder Tale starting to connect to Shiroe’s experiences+timeline and also to mechanism of MMORPG game (as similar to SAO).
I really like the practical discussion about “psyche and anima”. as someone who comes from the world of science (and I really love brain-science), I found this utterly interesting and understandable almost to anyone. and a lot of this is based on matter-of-facts in neuroscience, even though not completely (well neuroscience is only in its beginning).
still a lot of mysteries left for me such as: who is this sage?could it be that he is some sort of game-master?I mean…he knows a lot and familiar with history. and I am not so sure he is NPC.
and it still bugging me…how his conversation with Shiroe ended? I mean..it’s impossible he only shared info just out of kindness…he wanted something?so how did our villain-glasses deal with him?
there is also the princesses…rings a bell from the round table’s hall.
and is it possible that this special NPC princess (which we haven’t seen this-ep) is somehow related??or will be related??
as I said, truth is we now know a lot more about the world’s past and mechanisms. but actually there’s still a blurring on the field. and having familiar with a lot fantasy worlds, I know this is just part of the plan. the world in LH is still a lot more wide and detailed than we were told know. but this is more than enough for us to digest right now. I mean, there were a lot of details and all of them are important for next phases in LH.
This https://randomc.net/image/Log%20Horizon/Log%20Horizon%20-%2014%20-%20Large%2012.jpg
is just the Pre-Alpha Version of the Game. You can say it is the “Brainstorm” Version, what all made sense
And these 6 Princess where then the Lead Programmers that becan to Finalize the Game. They create the Mobs, and so on…
The action-class, combat-class, operation-class etc. etc…up to world-class magic was an odd way to think of it, unless you think about it in conjunction with the magical classes. For instance, a combat-class nuke. I think it would have to be fluid though, because sometimes a simple action can have far-reaching effects, as many an assassin has found out. Though perhaps I’m thinking about this too much… Though then again, I like it that this show makes me want to do that!
I think you’re looking at it a bit wrong. Maybe. The ones using that classification system are the people of the land, or as far as we know, maybe only the scholars studying magic (like Regan). And if they see only the magic’s effect, it makes sense to categorize magic based on how large-scale the effect is.
Also, I would add that thinking about it through the magical classes might not work too well. I have hard time believing a playable class would have a spell beyond operation-class…
Also, before anyone comes shouting “LN spoilers, man!”, the information given about the class system is the same in both anime and LN. In fact, the anime explains it better IMO, largely thanks to the visuals.
Humans created the werecats and others? No different than on Earth then, they just had the tools to do a proper job of it. I’m still waiting for one of the Race of Ritual that no one ever plays to show up. (No spoilers, LN-readers!)
Actually, race of ritual has shown up. Roderick, the glasses guy from three merchant guilds’ leaders is one (he’s also the representative of the race in that picture).
The confusion is understandable though, since at least the subbed version of this episode I saw used a different translation…
(It’s not a spoiler, but a correction)
The only thing I missed in this episode was Shiroe’s reactions to some of the exposition. All the important major stuff was there, but him comparing this new info to Elder Tale’s lore as known by players would have been a nice touch.
But the added Akatsuki reactions at Shiroe the 98-year-old archmage were awesome, so it evens out in anime’s favor!
Well, for me (how i understand it), this World class Magic and so on. Is the Creation Phase of the Game from the beginning. Yes, even if it took many Years to reach Alpha or Beta. We call this Post Productions
First a Brainstorm what all they could put in. Create of Races, begin to Balance them take out other not working things. Create the Mobs, check if the Routines are Working. Pre-Alpha Test phase, and Beta Test and then creating Races to seduce the RL Players with their Likes (How dont like to play Nekos? :))
In Short, what he tell the entire time. Was the Creation of the Game. From scratch, until it came out to that we know
Very nice done
And, perhaps Stilts is right, with the Focus on the World Explanation. But i dunno, we are Experience Players or Veterans. But i dont know, if these all “nice talk” will Hold the ones, that want see some Action. *shrug*
We should not get selfish. And let this little Flame for the Newbies keep burning. Well, in the end it comes to the right Balance. Where no one know the Perfect Solution
a good example here, is the “creation and Reboot” of FF14. Well the rough Gist
You’re not wrong, Anonymosity. I’m a marketer and a storyteller, and I’ve quite a fondness for history as well, so I have a keen understanding of how much powerful small actions can be – how an action-class ability can in truth change the world, for instance.
A better way to think of it (for me, at least) would be to consider those different classes as shorthand, or “most of the time” examples. It’s not that a combat-class magic will always change the course of a battle, it’s that it can and a lot of the time will. Same with operation-class and all the others. That doesn’t meant a combat-class spell can’t change the course of a war, it’s just that it’s pretty damn unlikely.
Also, thanks for the info on Roderick! I should have realized that because, well, he has runes on his face, I just didn’t think.
I find the classification really strange. It’s rather illogical that to have a mages classed after the size of their spells. It’s like a future fireball casting mage starts out not with a small flame, but a huge ball of slightly warm air and then later learns how to make the ball hotter.
It’s the magic itself that Regan classes that way, not the mage who casts it. World-class spells, or even country-class spells, are probably impossible for a low level mage to cast no matter what their sub-specialty. But you could imagine an in-game artifact or quest reward that triggered country-class effects. Shiroe even points out that some of the quests involve special artifacts designed by the Sage of the Lake (or however you want to translate Regan’s title).
But Roderick has already appeared/spoken in several episodes and it was pointed out at least twice now what race he was.
I found the ‘body’ of your video game character being analogous to your ‘body’ irl in the body-soul relationship to be an interesting concept.
Think of the consequences, Stilts.
Nyanta is 240 years old (he was a beta tester).
Naotsugu has been missing for 20 years (he stopped playing for 2 years).
And West Wind Brigade has maid they’ve been ignoring for 2 years since their inception.
The People of the Land refer to the Apocalypse as when Adventurers started behaving like humans, because up until them the Adventurers never talked to them, never interacted with them, and lived practically forever.
Also, think about how lag looked like form the People’s point of view.
I assume there is no lag in the game. Its the dream game of every MMO player.
Plus all those adventurers that can fight without rest for days! (Oh wait, that’s the real world too, sometimes…)
Adventurers stoped to run naked against a wall… certainly the PotL noted something is wrong…
The writers/author did a couple clever things here. Firstly, if you assume a midnight launch, they bought themselves 6-10 hours of real world time/3-5 years of game time before anyone would notice anyone’s gone missing. Secondly, they dropped the memory thing on Shiro last so that when everyone else was sitting around the table commenting on how no one there was interested in drawing on their mercenary skills, just their tech, he completely forgot what led up to the first use of the spell was; all the other races ganging up on a smaller, powerful, more technically advanced race out of jealousy and greed…
It’s 12 to 1 on Elder Tale to Earth time. 1 month in ET is 1 year on Earth so your 6-10 hours is only a week or two and they’ve already gone past that since episode 3 or 4.
Wish I could edit, mistype 1 month Earth Time is 1 year ET time.
That’s a good point about how the adventurers and the Alvs are possibly in a similar situation. I hadn’t even thought of that.
Assuming they’ve been shanghaied. The adventurers could very well be copies. Say their minds have been copied and put into their avatars, instead of remote controlling their avatars from their desktop computers. Kind of ties into the question of how can they get back home: what if they can’t because they never left, and the 3rd World Fraction/Apocalypse just finished the process of creating some uebermensch that could beat back the demi-humans and bring back the glory days.
WMG is so easy when the story refuses to answer the really important questions >.>
I think that’s a little unfair following an episode where we got a ton of answers. It’s a mystery, that’s the point. It’s not going to give all the answers right away. It wants you to ask more questions. And answers that lead to more questions are generally the sign of a well-written mystery.
This isn’t really a spoiler but I’ll be safe Show Spoiler ▼
I hadn’t even considered the parallels between the Alvs and the adventurers. Very nice! Of course they’re different – the adventurers are functionally immortal, and very few people know that they may be sacrificing their memories for those resurrections – but still a very nice parallel that could be exploited. Very interesting…
“It’s not frightening, not exactly, but it is unsettling”
For me it´s the oposite, the mother of one of my aunts had Alzheimer and by the end it was the most horrible thing you could imagine. If they die enough times they might find pout there are things far worse than death.
I don’t disagree with that, but not having experience with it personally (thankfully), I was thinking that memory loss is only the first stage, whereas all the dementia is the part that truly frightens me. Someone forgetting about me would hurt, but if they’re still mostly themselves and healthy, that’s one thing. All the nasty things that come later? *shudder*
That’s without me having any personal experience with it though, so I can only guess. IF you disagree, I’ll be moving that firmly over into the frightening column and wrapping myself in a warm blanket thank you very much.
I disagree with that conception but everybody have different definitions of Hell, having seen a love one in that hellish state left with pretty deep mark, hence my fear to subject of losing my identidy. Belive me the scary part is not the dementia, it´s the early stages when your memories are slowly fading away and seem that person strugglig so hard to put togueter what it´s no longer there. Well, let´s just leave at that, the conversation just got a whole lot creepy.
Yeah, the memory losing part is the worst for Alzheimer, not to say what’s at the later stages isn’t horrifying but the memory loss is the 1st moments of realization that you’re losing him/her (the patient) & there’s nothing you really can do about it.
I have a friend that father got confirmed Alzheimer, from the things he told me it is still very early. (but that was around 2 years ago) But at one time his father outright forgets who he is at their home & ask him face to face who he is.
Its already horrible enough for my friend at that moment but the worst is when his father suddenly remember & realize what he just did. He breaks down on the floor & cry & apologize to my friend over & over.
It sad enough listen to the incident, can’t even think what it would be like in their shoes.
& since your comments on Alzheimer just make me remember about this & make me cried a little just now so here.
I´m so sorry LGM-san, I didn´t want to bring back such a sad memory. It´s just that memory is define us as a living conscience entity, when something starts to mess up with that what follows is horror show, anybody will get depressed over something like that.
To try and move this in a hopefully less depressing direction: The question here seems to be just how fast this happens to them. Like Shiroe mentioned, a fair number of people have died since they got here and no one has mentioned any memory loss, so how slow is this process?
Well at the end he seemed to realize something but kept quiet, maybe the memory loss is so subtle that the adventurer doesn´t notice at all until it´s too late or pointed by someone. The other explanation is that they wipe out cleanly by the first death and they only retain the memories of Elder Tale.
Yeah, the more I think about it, the more frightening it truly is. I’m reminded of the limits of empathy, because as much as I feel for people in that situation, the true depth of it just isn’t apparent without having lived it–or at least, listening to those who have. I hope that’s enough. I don’t want to find out myself.
Happy thoughts, happy thoughts…
Weel your avatar is the guy with the most happy thoughs in the history of anime, danm I miss Horizon!.
Is it just me, or the magic explanation in this episode sounds really similar to DnD 4th edition?
“at-will power, encounter power, daily power, etc”.
I was more reminded of the power classes of the Noble Phantasms from Fate/Zero, with anti personnel , anti fortress, anti army and anti planet.
I don’t remember any of the D&D powers being catagorised by area of effect which seems to be what they are interested in here.
I love the way this anime immerses you, it makes me feel like I’m playing it.
That means the author of the source material did a good job with the story.
This is quite deep!
Please, clean those “hints”
Love this episode
Now to wait for the awesomeness of shiroe
This is most certainly a very engaging episode of Log Horizon. Coming on the heels of the Raynesia and Krusty interactions, now we get the much anticipated exposition of the world they are in. It appears that they are not stuck in a VRMMO or some experiment using plausible futuristic technology but instead is actually transported into a brand new world.
The fact that each time they die, they lose part of their memory (ALA Valvrave) means they cannot count on being immortal in a quality of life sense. Tying experience loss to literal loss of experience (aka Memories) is quite a twist, and brings up some interesting questions. Also the meaning behind their souls being reborn and the body being remade in the cathedral is literally per-se what happens in standard MMO’s.
Still this does bring up a question. If this is a parallel world, does that mean they were transported to a future of the parallel world? Because the basis of this world is our world itself. Still as has been pointed out the game has been going on for so long (As in-game time = faster in the Elder Tales World) Shiroe himself was considered a mage of great wisdom due to the Landers believing his game time.
Also of course the back story of the 6 Scrapped Princesses, the 3 World Fractions being Global-level magic that was brought as a reaction to the world. Very great world building.
Anyways, such questions aside, we do get the B-Team getting its stuff together. Throwing them in the fire per-se in order to build experience and working together properly was great. Still it did certainly brought back a lot of memories to a lot of MMO players. But it’s a great introduction to people who don’t play. Lot of people do not want just focus on the already Overpowered Lv.90 players no?
Minori finding her leader voice FTW! There is always a sense of excitement in me when I see a quiet and shy type overcoming his/her natural tendences and taking up leadership role.
Also, the story behind the world… epic!
Rudy’s status bar people. The color.
yes, it is green. But why that is important?
The revelation in this episode is quite interesting, but I think there are contradicting fact with the previous arc.
In the first arc the tasteless food and lack of inovative creation in the Elder Tale world implied that the ET world is a new world, but the revelation of ET world by Re-gun implied that this is a world with a long history and lore.
I’ve always found the People of the Land’s response to the food to be weird. To the point of being almost a plot hole. Were they cooking with menus? That seems weird. It’s been stated that they have most of the ingredients so why didn’t their food taste normal before the adventurer’s showed up?
And if they needed the chef class like the adventurer’s learned, then how are they cooking the food now? Do the people of the Land have sub-classes too? I just don’t get why their food was bland to begin with, or for that matter how it’s fixed now.
In episode 12 it was show that the People of the Land’s is able to cook without using menus, so that means they have a chef subclass among PotL, otherwise they won’t be able to cook tasty food.
But i don’t understand why PotL was able to eat bland tasted food for hundred of years and didn’t even try to find way to cook differently so they can eat tasty food.
Seems like it was implied in the novels that they(People of the Land) do cook from the menu option, which really is kinda weird.
Maybe that cooking from the menu has the intended flavor to the People of the Land but not for the Adventurers?
Before the adventurers started cooking properly, how would the People of the Land have been aware that food COULD have taste? Tasteless food was only an issue for adventurers because they knew what food was supposed to taste like. People of the Land never had an outside perspective. Without knowing that food COULD taste like anything, why would they have any reason to try to MAKE it do so?
The people of the land have shown repeatedly to REALLY like the new food, which suggests that it tasted like nothing before for them as well.
Which is just weird. They had ingredients, including complex ones like sausage and flour. Why would they not have cooked? Frankly it’s a VERY MINOR annoyance for me that I wish wasn’t there and I think doesn’t make sense.
I think the new technology of the adventurers would have been a fine way of making the PotL pay attention to their crafting and doesn’t require the weird logic problems of the food thing. But like I said, minor. The show is still amazing IMO. My favorite in a long time.
Why would they have cooked? For the entire history of their world, food has simply been a substance that provides nutrition. They had no reason to prepare food differently, because they had no concept of food having taste in the first place. You’re making it sound like “oh they were suffering all this time but they didn’t bother doing anything about it,” but as far as they knew everything was perfectly fine. They weren’t missing out on anything. Food with taste wasn’t something they were missing out on or desperately yearned for or anything of the sort, because that wasn’t even a concept to them.
You’re missing my point. They DID prepare ingredients naturally. They had to have or their ingredients wouldn’t taste normal. That’s the rules of the game. So they had sausage, fruits, vegetables, etc that tasted normal and then apparently used a menu for some reason at just the last stage of preparing the meal itself and then took their delicious ingredients and turned them into crap.
That doesn’t make any sense. Fruit tastes GOOD, if cooking it turned it into horrible purple mush/cardboard tasting pie, you would wonder what the hell was going on.
This is not a matter of they didn’t know what taste was. They DID know. This is a matter of them apparently accepting for hundreds of years that while FOOD tastes amazing, COOKED FOOD tastes like cardboard. And again, sausage is a complex ingredient. It was requires preparation. So they DID know how to work with food ingredients with their hands, they just apparently stopped at a random point in the process and started using the menu.
It’s just strange, and I think totally unnecessary to the plot.
Yes, they prepared the ingredients. They then used those ingredients through the cooking menu like they always did to prepare food.
We know of actually cooking food and going through a certain process to get a certain result. For the Landers it was, prepared ingredients -> cooking menu -> done. They had no reason to question this process or explore it was how it was always done.
Haha, see? This whole “ingredient have taste but menu-made foods doesn’t” is either a miss step of the writer (which he’s trying to cover up) or a total brilliant way of trolling the viewers by the writer.
After this episode, one may logically have come to the conclusion that the world of Elder Tale might be real all along, if all the info given to Shiroe is true the “MMO” that have existed for 20 years might always been real with the players controlling soulless constructs thought the monitor screen.
But then this whole food thing (plus the whole menu pop-up right in front of you) makes the whole world felt artificial. So that theory fall flats.
…but then you remember about an anime called Scrapped Princess & theories started flying all over the place again.
I don’t find it odd at all. Food in historical times, depending on location, can be quite bland. Even today there are places where I’m sure you’d find local foods bland. I would mention some myself, but I may accidently offend some people. 🙂
Anyway, it’s not insane to have a medival setting that the local populace eat gruel and bread drinking water everyday.
English food sucks! Except fish & chips, and the beer. The good beer, not that macro crap. Give me a cask bitter any day and I’ll be a happy Stilts.
& really, I’ve always found the People of the Land’s response to the food to be weird, come on man you’re being unfair. If a “fact” – however strange it may be, that have always existed most people will never questioned it.
Real world example? You possibly know that when water freezes into solid ice they expend in size right. But do you know only liquid H2O does that? All other liquids in the world shrink in size when they freeze into solid ice. & that’s logic, since atoms stopped moving when solid & move around while liquid of course the solid would be smaller compare to the same amount of liquid. But water as in H2O isn’t like that, & science still have no solid idea why is that.
See? Ice will be bigger than the same amount of water, a weird yet common phenomenon that normal people just see as normal because it was always was & will always be.
In the novel, minor spoilers regarding food Show Spoiler ▼
A funny story regarding food that happen long after this arc also show just how strange this menu-created food system is: Okay, this is some MAJOR spoilers regarding food –
Show Spoiler ▼
@Xacual
If the landers is only npc without emotion and incapable of logical thinking that make sense, but it has shown that the lander has desire and emotion just like normal human.
@baubo
Yes it’s normal that in times of war and plague of medieval era people eat bland gruel and tasteless bread, but that is only happen because lack of food.
If people can eat delicious sausage and tasty ingredient like fruit why would they want to eat tasteless food by combining tasty ingredient
Spoiler, only for LGM’s eyes:
Show Spoiler ▼
Silverhorn, why is it not logical? I mean it’s great to say what they’re not doing isn’t logical but you’re looking at it from our point of view. In their world, food is made by taking ingredients and using the cooking menu. It’s how it’s always worked as far as they’re concerned. We don’t see it that way because our world obviously doesn’t have a cooking menu so we developed the skills necessary to prepare food. They never had a reason to do that so it’s perfectly logical for them to not know that preparing food makes stuff have tastes.
Can you rephrase why it’s not logical without using examples from our world?
@Stilts: Agree as to both fish & chips and the beer, though I prefer Bass Ale or Newcastle Brown Ale over bitter. 😀
People continue to sort of miss the point. If you have an apple that tastes amazing, and you have an apple pie that tastes like soggy crackers, why would you ever cook? Menu or no, why would you cook in the first place? This is made clear with the adventurers. Immediately upon discovering that only ingredients taste like anything, they pretty much stop cooking. If we are to believe that PotL are basically intelligent, logical beings, they would behave the same way.
And again, you all keep acting like they are unaware that you can use tools and hands to affect foods form, shape, and taste. Yet this is impossible because we know explicitly they have sausage and flour, both ingredients that require preparation and tools to create. So they DO know how to prepare food. They just apparently for hundreds of years never tried it once.
If in the real world cooking made good ingredients taste like crap, no one would have ever cooked. We would just live like gatherers. Eating fruits, vegetables, nuts, etc. The idea here that they voluntarily made their normal tasting food taste like crap is crazy.
It’s the same thing as when people asked how Nyanta was the only one to discover the correct way to cook. But what people have to remember is that he figured that out in days and we’re just supposed to believe that he HAPPENED to be the first player to figure it out in Japan. The idea that no villager ever tried using one of the tools that they use in their farming and living on this food for at least several hundred years is nuts.
People keep acting like the PotL didn’t know what taste was, so it didn’t occur to them. But that’s not true. They knew what taste was from ingredients.
sorry, 1 last thing:
This all would actually make much more sense if ingredients tasted like cardboard too and it was the correct method of cooking that provided taste. Then it would be perfectly logical to believe they simply thought food was supposed to taste like crap. As is though, it makes no sense that they made crappy, computer-generated food out of delicious, hand-produced ingredients. There’s a logic gap there.
I do think this is somehow a plot hole as well. The Landers do have the concept of cooking and cook as profession (as shown in the anime and the gaiden manga) but somehow never actually produce any prepared offd with taste?
If that is the case they should be eating raw food ingredient all the time instead of eating cardboard…
Ok, what if they didn’t? What if PotL only sold cooked food to adventurers and didn’t eat it themself.
As for the classes/sub-classes, i like to ask how skills there handled in this ’90 mmorpg’s. Was a class a skill-bonus of sort like elders scroll or did it give a skill-tree like dragon age?
If the latter, the people could be class-free, as in having all skills, then it’s only a matter of training.
Do the people of the Land have sub-classes too?
Show Spoiler ▼
The landers did eat their (bland) food. I don’t know this still count as spoiler or not, but it is explicitly stated in the novel.
Reply for TheMoondoggie: Spoiler, only for LGM’s eyes
Show Spoiler ▼
“People continue to sort of miss the point. If you have an apple that tastes amazing, and you have an apple pie that tastes like soggy crackers, why would you ever cook? Menu or no, why would you cook in the first place?”
Because as tasteless as the menu generated foods are, they’re easy to made, easy to keep since doesn’t matter how bad &/or rotten the ingredients are – the food generated will always came out the same. They did a passing mention of this in the anime around the 15:00 mark in episode 13.
“This is made clear with the adventurers. Immediately upon discovering that only ingredients taste like anything, they pretty much stop cooking. If we are to believe that PotL are basically intelligent, logical beings, they would behave the same way.”
Maybe most of them stop cooking but not all. People still gets hungry & as episode 3 ~7 showed, adventurer still eats those tasteless crap. Why? Because readily eatable ingredients are hard to come by, & since making food at that point does not need fresh ingredients most ingredients on the market probably rotten.
“And again, you all keep acting like they are unaware that you can use tools and hands to affect foods form, shape, and taste. Yet this is impossible because we know explicitly they have sausage and flour, both ingredients that require preparation and tools to create. So they DO know how to prepare food. They just apparently for hundreds of years never tried it once.”
…dude, do you somehow miss the explanations on food ingredients on the 02:35 mark of episode 7? Cooks don’t actually need to know how to turn raw bloody meats to sausage, readily-cut meat & sausages poop out the moment cooks kills the animal.
& yeah they probably can make flour manually (or maybe same as meat flour just pop out the moment you collect the grains from the field) but like hell they know how to turn that to bread.
Just like one of my previous comment example, yes the Lander knows to make bread you need flour but how to turn the flour to bread without using the menu? Unlikely. They probably doesn’t even know what baking is. Actually now comes to think of it, cooking something with fire probably is something they never did before, since –
“It’s the same thing as when people asked how Nyanta was the only one to discover the correct way to cook. But what people have to remember is that he figured that out in days and we’re just supposed to believe that he HAPPENED to be the first player to figure it out in Japan. The idea that no villager ever tried using one of the tools that they use in their farming and living on this food for at least several hundred years is nuts.”
Anyone who isn’t a cook (& worst of all, isn’t a cook that have the required levels) cannot cook for shit. Every time someone try cooking the real world way the food became charcoal or icky stuff that has no name.
For one of the adventurers to find out about Nyata’s discovery on their own one have to:-
– accept that all foods that are not ingredients are tasteless but still believes that there’s a way to make food that have taste.
– is a sub class of cook with enough level & can actually cook in real life.
– believe somehow even though everyone else try to cook all failed him/her will be able to cook the old fashion way.
Would a real life cook played a sub class of a cook? Will an adventurer that sub class in cook tried to cook? Maybe, but even if there are other adventurers like that during the time of episode 3~10, they are rare & like Nyanta, keeps that to themselves.
Of course as times gone by, more adventurer cooks might find out about this but on episode 7 they are only around 1 month in the apocalypse. It is totally possible for Shiroe to did what he did. & for the Japanese adventurers that found out about the discovery to number only a handful.
As for the Landers? Hundred years of tasteless food, totally believable. How would they find out cooking the real world way? Professional Cooks in their world probably doesn’t even use fire during their working hours before, remember, as far as Landers are concerned foods are made from taking ingredients & menu-ed them into foods. Who else can discover one can roast meat over the fire since one can’t if you’re not a cook.
@GLM
Base on your explanation there is a possibility that ingredient quality, lack of information, and the constant conflict between Lander’s and demihuman has halt the advancement of tasty food creation. Just like the dark age, human advancement can be halted by various reason, and in the ET world the advancement of tasty food is halted because of the reason you mentioned.
But i find it funny that every lander’s house have a kitchen complete with cooking utensil like stove and other, but they never use it because it is easier to cook using the menu option.
@LGM: My understanding is that Show Spoiler ▼
Warning: Explicit spoilers. Second even contains a novel-quote.
Show Spoiler ▼
And now the novel-quote:
Show Spoiler ▼
Meh, I disagree. But this is getting too long. And as I said at the beginning, this is in no way wrecking the show for me. This is my favorite show in years. So I’m just going to leave it at that.
I got what you mean,the same doubt came out.
While I thrown this question out in other forum, an assumption I received on the forum: maybe people will get sick if take too much raw materials, like apples in your example, if POTL need 10 apples fill their stomach, but taking all 10 at the same time they might get diarrhea…
Of course this is just wild guess without official proof.
No new OP & ED? There goes all my excitement racked up during the 2 week break…
Umm… Log Horizon didn’t have a break.
NHK shows usually only have one OP/ED per season no matter how long that season for the show is. Considering the OP shows scenes from volumes 1 to 5 it was pretty likely it was going to stick around for the full 25 episodes.
No speculating, how Shiroe being half-alv could have weight later on?
No wondering, that Shiroes race was enslaved or if there are “alvs of the land” still around? And if, are they still enslaved? Or if slaves are still allowed at all.
We don’t know how unified Eastral is and what laws it has.
My hope is that alvs and half-alvs “of the land” are still around and seek Shiroe out to help with a new alv empire. Shiroe is, in at least educated circles, prominent for the people and was already prominent for the adventures. Now, with the round table and guild Log Horizon, he will be seen as an actual force to consider, previously only been an important voice but not actor.
Like some said that the adventurers are in a similar situation like the alvs, this could bring some sympathie too.
I’d be surprised if this happened, but it’s an interesting thought. Says something about the story that it can go so many interesting ways, I think.
I do think Shiroe being Half-Alv will be important as it seems to be a mildly rare race and it’s explanation in the various materials say it is ‘connected to the game lore’ and ‘dungeons and ruins react to it’ or something like that.
That seems like a perfect excuse for major story stuff. That said, I highly doubt the answer is building a new empire. If anything I think it’ll be something like he’s the only one that can learn the answers to the ancient magics of the world (like ‘world fraction’) because he’s the right race and he has the skills. The various world shaping spells were apparently Alv in origin after all.
Did you ever notice Isuzu cry for Rudy at the end of the opening? Now we know why. 🙁
Because they’re friends?
This is what we learned from the latest episode, if you didnt get it consider yourself lucky and DO NOT READ: Show Spoiler ▼
From the way this anime keeps hinting at things its pretty obvious what will happen, I would love to be proven wrong though. Except that means Show Spoiler ▼
Traumtulpe, you missed one important detail that we also learned this episode. People of the Land can be resurected just like players if done soon enough after their death.
oh dammit! I was enjoying Rudy, he did a nice pair with izusu … hopefully the OP is wrong … : (
Thank you all the “hinters” for ruining the fun to others. I hope you enjoy the show yourselves.
While I agree that people need to back off with the desire to post spoilers, is it really “hinting” if it is observable in the episode itself?
Yes, it is, because if it wasn’t hinted to be important, people would not think of it as important. Spoilers can change your focus, not just your knowledge.
Mongoose said it well. Too specific of a hint is the same as a spoiler. Because stuff that you may have naturally thought ‘hmm…’ to suddenly make you focus really hard when people start going HINT: THAT IS IMPORTANT IN THE FUTURE. It changes what you focus on, and clever foreshadowing that might be fun to discuss suddenly becomes a spoiler that no one can talk about because it’s so obvious thanks to all the ‘hints.’
Totally got Ultima vibes from this episode. The premise of those old-school RPGs has similar elements, that time passes in Brittania much quicker, so each time the player is summoned (in a sequel), the NPCs are older or have passed away.
C’mon, ppl, why give even give hints? You’re just ruining any surprise for everyone else for your own amusement, and that’s really a shame. Spoilers suck, and hints are mini-spoilers, because they focus attention on things that would’ve been ignored.
Really, it’s like a bunch of virtual people tittering at you behind their hands. Just be patient and let everyone else be blissfully ignorant, because if you ruin things for others, they will not be joining you in the party afterwards.
I love how Log Horizon doesn’t just focus on how the players can’t log out and trying to find a way to fix it. The npcs and the actual backstory of the game matters. The fact that they actually mentioned Open Beta made me smile. I thought Shiroe played as a Closed Beta player when Miral was talking about how Shiroe was a legend, but it was Open Beta, which is pretty much an already released game, only “unofficial”.
Actually, Shiroe has only been playing for 8 years, and Elder Tales has been out for 20 years. (In Earth years, of course.) He just knew when the Beta happened, he didn’t play then. He would have been like 3 years old when it came out, lol
Oh damn, I thought Shiroe was a part of the Open Beta. Elder Tales must have had a lot of expansion packs for it to be out for 20 years.
I guess the Closed and Open Beta testers were just ancient myths compared to Shiroe. His Half Alv race probably wasn’t even playable during the Beta testing.
I believe the bald with ponytail guild leader guy with the monocle is the only player we’ve been explicitly told has been playing since the beginning (can’t remember if they said beta or not, but long time).
It’d be funny to see what the Landers think of him. Though he may simply not be that famous. Shiroe may be famous for both being around a long-ish time, but also for being one of the greatest battlefield strategists in their history. Older players may not have had the skills to measure up. It’d be kind of fun to know what the Landers thought of the Tea Party in general.
@ Magoiichi
Check the Wikipedia article on Everquest and all the expansions it’s had. That’s 20 expansions in 15 years. Even if Elder Tales follows the slower “expansion rate” of later games like World of Warcraft (4 expansions in ~9 years) it’s undoubtedly had quite a few, though I’d guess it has expansions more like EQ since that’s what Touno-sensei played / Elder Tales is clearly based upon.
…Or I could just google the answer. The latest expansion, Novasphere Pioneers, is Elder Tales’ 12th expansion pack. The More You Know~
Just a Warning!. Dont dive to deep in this Wikipedia.. Or you get Spoiled
the adaption is really good so far. but they fail to inform the viewer that Elder Tale is pc game and Shiroe got sucked in his monitor. even first Ep of manga shows this. i have seen a lot of people misunderstood that Elder Tale is VR game like SAO and asking “what happen with their bodies? why someone does not unplug the VR machine since it wont kill them?” that’s one big fail. even when this Ep show Shiroe playing Elder Tale on his PC some people still be like “few point. so they change from pc to VR after years of release”
That’s not true. Basically anyone who thought this was a VR game just weren’t paying attention. They’ve mentioned monitors several times. And how different it looks now that they’re actually IN there. It’s been said straight out since episode 3 and been fairly obvious since episode 1.
KaleRylan is right. It hasn’t been explicitly noted, as in “Hey, this is a traditional MMORPG, not VR!”, but then again should it be? VR shouldn’t be the assumption, that’s future (see: sci-fi) technology that needs to be mentioned. Otherwise the assumption would be normal PC game.
But yeah, they were definitely mentioning how much different it was to be in the game, how weird it was to fight like that, etc, as early as Episode 01.
yes, VR shouldn’t be the assumption. if there was no SAO before. most people who watch LH jumped from SAO to LH because it shares the same idea of MMO Prison and most of them still stuck with the idea of VR Machine. that’s why it need to be more obvious. some people didnt realize that “got sucked in monitor” is something that possible in this kind of anime(MMO base in a real world, got sucked in monitor might be too sci-fi to assume). it’s one of the biggest mystery of LH so it should point out more for casual viewer who didnt pay much attention on detail. for more rating of course. with low rating in Japan we could only dream about Season 2.
how weird it was to fight like that, etc, as early as Episode 01.
Weird how? Pls. elaborate.
reply to TheMoondoggie:
How weird? Now let’s think how you play most MMO like Ever Quest or WOW. 3rd person view, mouse click on skill or keyboard shortcut – skill activate, mouse click on enemy – attack enemy, & maybe pressing a key you jump & etc.
Now suddenly you’re the avatar, 1st person view – as real as you using your eyes now. Want to attack? swing your weapon at your enemy – & better swing it as natural as you can. Skill? Need to call out the skill name with the skill movements. You actually had to run to run, actually to jump to jump.
That must have been very weird, especially for people that never fights or learn martial arts before.
“their are consequences to dying after all”
=(
There.
Ahaha, thanks for the catch. Writing fast + squishy human imperfection means even someone who writes as much as I do will make silly mistakes sometimes, I’m afraid.