Log Horizon: Destruction of the Round Table

Episode 6

Don't you just love it when an episode of anime crams ¾ of a book into one episode? I sure don't! And I have a sneaking suspicion that even if you haven't been following the original Log Horizon light novels you can probably tell that that's what's going on here. This is essentially a crash course in a little over half of the novel published in English as Krusty, Tycoon Lord (volume eleven of the series), and while it does manage to hit on the salient points, it also definitely feels too rushed.

In all fairness, however, the really good stuff in the book is in that final quarter of the novel, so it is a little harder to fault the anime here, and given what's just gone down in Akiba, what's most important for the rest of the main cast is figuring out where the hell Krusty is and why, especially now that Reyneshia is taking on a more active role in the governance of the city. As it turns out, he was transported to the Zhongyong (Chinese) server when one of his guildmates' weapons triggered some sort of magical response, and at the same time, he was slapped with a 150 level curse which prevents him from regenerating his health, naturally or via spells or potions. That means that he's not only really far from home, but he's also only got about a quarter of his health bar left – and if he dies with this curse, the implication is that just reviving in the Cathedral may not be enough to deactivate it and he could end up in even worse shape than he is now. (We have to assume that if he thought dying would work, he'd have done it already, given how bored he clearly is.) The curse also affects his memories, which, to his way of thinking, is an issue second only to the boredom of living in a celestial paradise being waited on hand and foot by adorable marten – a mink-like member of the weasel family - spirits.

Fortunately for Krusty, this is all happening very close to where Kanami's party is currently as they continue their migration to the Japanese server in hopes of figuring out if it was indeed the new expansion that trapped everyone in Theldesia. As you may or may not recall from the end of season two, Kanami is traveling with Leonardo, an American player from NYC (and yes, he is a reference to that Leonardo), Coppelia, and Person of the Land Ancient Elias Hackblade. Elias is the most important piece of the entire puzzle, because he's arguably one of the best-known NPC heroes in the actual Elder Tale game. He's on the box art, he features in many of the major quests…and he's definitely having some sort of existential crisis with the way his world is now. We don't know much about it yet – clearly his encounter with the Geniuses scarred him emotionally and being left behind by his party while they went into a dungeon in this episode didn't do anything to help that. Essentially, Elias is being set up as a hero who feels that he's fallen, even if that isn't necessarily the case.

That brings us to a particularly interesting question about the roles of the People of the Land. We've seen Rudy embrace the new world to the point where he transcends his role as NPC and becomes a PC, we've seen the cognitive disconnect between how Adventurers and People of the Land think and view the world that they're now really sharing. But we haven't really explored what all of this means for as highly visible an NPC as Elias Hackblade, a man known to everyone as a great hero who feels everything he knew to be solid crumbling beneath his feet. It certainly makes him easy prey for the mysterious woman who is obviously working to manipulate both Elias and Krusty. I'm not sure if her blatantly evil character design (seriously, no one good wears a veil like that that only leaves their bright-red mouth showing) is meant to show us Elias' innocence when it comes to the machinations of the Geniuses or to indicate that Krusty has clearly read this story before in some version and knows better than to trust her, but she certainly does make it clear what the differences are between the two of them. The question then becomes whether or not Elias can be taken out from under her influence before it's curtains for Krusty.

As the metafictional puppet show format of the episode says, we'll have to find out next time.

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Log Horizon: Destruction of the Round Table is currently streaming on FUNimation Entertainment.