Welp, we’re back with the kids again. This was a slow, slice-of-life style episode, with lots of gags and enjoying food, but it did establish a new character conflict for Isuzu and new overall goal for the younger team. It’s hard to really feel much enthusiasm for a quest that doesn’t have any inherent tension to it, but hopefully the character conflicts will give it some weight. And “go get quest materials to make a bag” is such a boring starting narrative that I have to assume this will go somewhere else eventually… or it could just focus on the concert stuff, I guess.

Anyway. Here’s my ANN post on the episode, and you can check out my rough notes below!

Looks like we’re back to Isuzu and Rudy’s gang

Log Horizon tends to juggle two stories at once, with one story working on the ground-level character side and the other being more focused on the big concerns of the world. Unsurprisingly, the big world concerns are generally more exciting

The opening to this episode was a really nicely intimate moment

Rudy and Isuzu are so cute

Shiroe’s sending the kids on a quest

“Get the Magic Bag”

“I think they want to try a real quest, all on their own.” Self-determination was kind of a theme in the first season, from this group’s initial escape from captivity to Lenessia’s narrative

The first season mentioned this quest was kind of dead, though

And now we get a bit of Isuzu’s previous life, where she actually lived in a musician family

“No one told me my music was bad, but no one told me it was good, either. But even I can’t be a pro like you, I can still use my lute to blow off steam, right? Because it makes everyone happy.” More finding your identity in this world

“Even if I sucked, it was fun”

“I didn’t know what to do once we were freed. But this instrument gave me the drive to keep going.” Yep, back to that ‘finding purpose’ theme

“It’s kind of tiring, knowing they’re looking out for us all the time”

Oh my god, Serara in this Nyanta fantasy

These horses so bad

Characters eating, as always

Isuzu’s got mixed feelings on whether she “deserves” to perform