Akatsuki’s Akihabara Adventure came to an end this week, with a final fight that I honestly found kinda underwhelming. It’s not like Log Horizon is usually that visually impressive, but they’ve been hyping this conflict all friggin’ season! It sucks to see even the most dramatic moments reduced to still frames and speed lines, particularly since the episode three weeks ago seemed to demonstrate that this new show staff actually can pull together an aesthetically compelling production when they want to. Ah well. Bring on the Shiroe raid, I suppose.

Training montage time! We’re still on the Akatsuki/Lenessia narrative, which is finally kicking into character-development overdrive. I felt Akatsuki’s stuff was a little overplayed this episode, but really liked the Lenessia bits… but this is me, so you really shouldn’t trust anything I say about Lenessia and Log Horizon. What with all the narrative-tidying the flavor text reveal managed this week, it’s looking like all the pieces are in place to wrap this story up next time. Bring on the fight scenes!

In other news, this guy’s shirt:

This week wasn’t as strong as the last, but it actually paid off a bunch of the work the show’s been doing so far, and its big setpiece scene was wonderful. I feel like Log Horizon 2 isn’t always hitting the mark it aims at, but it’s at least trying to do things – it’s attempting to rise to a level of drama and character development that the first season never really engaged in. I can respect that, even if the show isn’t as good as it’s trying to be.

This week was easily, far and away the best episode of Log Horizon S2. I guess this is kind of what Log Horizon does? We slowly gather pieces, set up conflicts, establish character issues, and then all that work is paid into the conclusions. That seems like an oversimplification, though – frankly, this episode almost felt like it was created by an entirely different director. Maybe it was? The scenes bounced and built off each other, the shot framing actually elevated the mood, and there was even an impressive and well-directed fight scene at the end. More of this, please.