English Dub Review: Log Horizon: Destruction of the Round Table “Song of the Nightingales”

Overview:

With Akatsuki’s strength and Minori’s leadership, the Despair Genius is defeated. Everyone’s levels return to normal and a feast is had. Minori confesses her love to Shiroe but he is in love with someone else. Shiroe and everyone decides to go to Minami.

Our Take:

This was one of those episodes that flew by. It seemed like nothing and a whole lot happened all at the same time. One of the main disappointments is that this didn’t feel like a season finale. The after-credits even showed Shiroe deciding to go to Minami. So, something big is definitely left. I am wondering if this is a situation where they caught up with the source material so they had to cut it short.

If you were on the Akatsuki fan wagon, then this week you probably feel pretty vindicated. Shiroe doesn’t outright state that the person he loves is her. As he is speaking it shows her, I think that is as close to a confirmation as we are going to get. If you were rooting for Minori on the other hand… better luck next time?

This arc was great for the character development of the younger characters. We got to see Minori grow into a competent leader, Touya grew into his and class and Isuzu realized some of the mistakes she made concerning Minori. Everyone in this group is a fun character and I don’t dislike them but more time with the main cast especially in a short season would have been nice. Then again if your following a source and that’s the story then there isn’t much you can do.

As an episode, I really enjoyed it, as I said earlier with any piece of media if it flys by then usually it was enjoyable. That was definitely the case with this one. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth with how it ended. Usually, with season finales they skip the opening and ending because they want to give that cinematic feel. This episode felt like just another episode. It had important events sure but it didn’t feel like a season finale and I think that drags it down a bit.

I will go into a bit more with the season review but this was just a weird season for Log Horizon. Normally, we get more episodes and more focus on the main cast but this season felt a lot like filler and some of the bigger plot points just fell flat. Still recommend it but this was just a weird episode to rate.