[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by Proto

I consider William's speech (and the Elder Sister maid's I am human speech in the other series) to be by far the climax of their respective works.

Of course this is just my opinion. The past episodes have been slow as you say, and on a second read of my previous post I may have been a little high handed. My apologies.

Not a problem, Proto. I've come to respect your opinions over the years even when I don't agree with them. William's speech is a good example. I thought it was repetitive and at least twice as long as it needed to be. I understand that the author wanted to wave the flag for online gamers, but this is an example to me of how something that might work on the printed page doesn't translate well to video. Part of it might be that I don't sense much antipathy toward devoted gamers in 2015, so the need to rationalize their behavior seems misplaced. But mostly my objections are simply a matter of dramatic pacing, something that was better managed in the first season than in this one.

As always my comments reflect someone whose view of the work is based entirely on the anime adaptation. Adapting popular works is always fraught with problems as the producers need to balance the desires of existing fans with the demands of the audiovisual medium. A.O. Scott's column in the Times this week on Fifty Shades of Grey contains a thoughtful discussion of these issues.

There have always been film adaptations of popular novels, and sequelized, presold franchise entertainment, but the release of movies based on very recent best-selling book series is a fairly new development [in the US]. It started with “Harry Potter” and has continued through “Twilight” and “The Hunger Games.” In those cases, as with “Fifty Shades,” legions of devoted readers arrive at the multiplex expecting what they see on the screen to match what they loved on the page. This puts great pressure on filmmakers and studios, and also on reviewers, who tend to be more interested in how a movie works on its own terms than in its fidelity to source material.

Originally Posted by Irenicus

This would have been a great episode if it didn't come after many, many episodes of sheer time-wasting. And in itself it is half an episode.

I understand the context, the feelings, the development, I really do -- with the exception of the intentionally mysterious Roe2 -- but I don't feel half of it because, and I can't believe I'm saying this about Log Horizon, people talk too much. I understand the relevation about the knights' reckless actions. I intellectually sympathize with Touya's outburst, his background and his emotions, but all I could feel was me wanting to tell him and the rest of the kids, I don't care, get a move on and do something useful plox.

You expressed my feelings much better than I could, Irenicus. Thanks! When the wyverns arrived at the end of the preceding episode I thought the pace would pick up this week. What we got instead was a bunch of guys committing suicide and the Log Horizon team largely standing around and talking once more.