Reki Kawahara will quite likely be remembered for years to come for his role in creating light novel franchises surrounding virtual worlds. One series in particular would clearly be Sword Art Online which is still being written and has a second anime series based on the Phantom Bullet arc set to air in a few months time. While it hasn’t received as much attention worldwide, his other light novel franchise Accel World also received an anime adaptation back in 2012 which was recently picked up by VIZ (North America) and Hanabee Entertainment (Australia / New Zealand) with the first half-season collection now available in stores.
Accel World takes place further into the future than SAO, where everyone is now able to access virtual reality through a device known as a Neurolinker embedded in humans at birth. Protagonist Haruyuki “Haru” Arita is neither rich, popular or attractive and is pretty much a target for all the school bullies. In order to escape from everything he often seeks refuge in the world contained on the schools network. Proficient as playing a virtual squash game and dominating the high score board, Haru’s actions draw the attention of school student council vice-president Kuroyukihime who introduces him to a game known as “Brain Burst”.
This Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Fighting Game gives him the new persona “Silver Crow”, and allows, or more specifically requires him to take part in battles against other players in order to win points. These points grant players the ability to accelerate their cognitive processes to 1:1000th of a second for whatever reason is deemed necessary. But Kuroyukihime, despite supposedly harbouring feelings towards Haru has a particular purpose in doing this – her goal to reach Level 10 and meet the creator of the game.
One of the issues I personally had with the Sword Art Online anime adaptation was they tried to cram too much into a 13-episode season. This ultimately mean’t that many events came off as rushed and not as well executed as they could have been. Granted it is far too early to tell if the entire plot is carried across effectively in 24 episodes, in my mind it is quite unlikely that Accel World could have pulled off a season any shorter. Having more episodes allowed the production team the opportunity to deliver the plot at a slower pace, while being able to introduce some of the more interesting concepts built into this distinctly different concept of virtual reality.
On the note of “concepts”. Accel World isn’t mean’t to be just another action anime series (Although there is plenty of action to be found) but brings plenty of ideas and events to the mix. These aren’t all flawlessly executed, at least not yet, but were entertaining to watch and left a fair bit for the second half of the season to deliver. Character development however is a bit of a mixed bag, and while each character is progressively introduced to the viewer with some solid development on the behalf of Haru and Kuroyukihime, others could have used more. Hopefully we see more from this promising character cast in the second half of the season.
Accel World is currently only available in Australia and New Zealand on DVD, but if you have waited this long to pick it up from stores then I strongly advise waiting until May 7th, 2014 to pick up the Blu-ray copy. The animation studio Sunrise (Of Tiger & Bunny acclaim) were behind this series and their production team managed to produce a visually impressive series. The characters, both the anime-style humans and more elaborate avatars, were appropriately designed while both the normal modern “real” city and dark and dank world of Brain Burst were also of strong quality.
The first half of Accel World contains a single opening and single ending theme. The opening theme “Chase the world” by May’n is fast paced and suited the tone of the anime well, coupled with distinct animation not simply copied from the episodes themselves. The ending theme “Unfinished” by KOTOKO is an equally enjoyable song with animation that didn’t cut corners either. The remainder of the series’ soundtrack did a good job of keeping up with the tone of any event the writers threw at it.
VIZ in particular have managed to really impress me with their English dub’s, a recent example being Tiger & Bunny which in my mind managed to be better than its Japanese counterpart. Accel World is no exception with the English voice cast matching the tone and emotions portrayed by the Japanese cast.
The team at Hanabee Entertainment like experimenting with their releases from having bookstyle packaging to simply including artcards inside the cover. While I have sat here for five minutes unsuccessfully trying to describe what this special feature is, be warned that Hanabee Entertainment have done something unique with their DVD covers for Accel World. Provided your cover doesn’t arrive scratched like mine did, the cover effect looks really effective, however its thinner design can clash with a shelf of normal DVD’s.
This distinct type of packaging is complemented by a lacklustre collection of on-disc extras simply consisting of Clean Opening and Ending sequences and five trailers for Hanabee Entertainment titles (La Storia Della Arcana Famiglia, Little Busters, Kokoro Connect, Girls und Panzer and From The New World).
There are many anime / manga series on the market that surround virtual reality and virtual worlds, .hack// and Sword Art Online just to name two of them. While both have their charms, it was refreshing to watch a series like Accel World which goes a step beyond by not just focusing on the virtual world but integrating a balance between real life and virtual elements. The first twelve episodes of Accel World proved to be a promising start for the anime series, and I look forward to seeing where the second half takes the viewer.
Unfortunately at this point in time there is no word on when Collection 2 will be released.
