#overskills

[kalicofox]

loghorizonfunfacts replied to your post “Log Horizon Headcanons”

Combat-related Overskills are different because you can't really teach the EXACT way to acquire it or write a "formula" for how to discover it. There's a lot of brute repetition and training involved, so if someone just wants an Overskill without putting in the work, they're not going to get it.

Okay, I agree that there’s no way to get an Overskill without putting in any work, I mean, that’s just logical. But not being able to teach it? That doesn’t make any sense. Sure, you probably can’t teach someone the exact way that you learned it, but in the subbed version, Nazuna specifically said that Overskills were ‘stupid’. A way at looking at using the spell or ability or skill that was so obvious, and so blatantly ‘well of course it works like that’ that the character would feel stupid for not realizing it before. I think, after that, that it would actually be fairly simple to say, ‘here, look at this skill this way, try it like this,’ and have another person facepalm and be all ‘Oh my god that’s so obvious what the hell!?’

On the other hand, it doesn’t make sense to have Combat related Overskills need a lot of brute repetition to gain them, when, from the one combat oriented Overskill we’ve seen gained, it looked more like something suddenly ‘clicked’ in her head and she just did it. Sure, the training she underwent before probably helped, especially all that repetition about knowing exactly what she was capable of, but there’s no possible way that I can see for her to have repeated any of that the multiple times ‘necessary’ to create an Overskill.

I can see repetition/practice working when it comes to subclass Overskills, especially when Mikakage discovers a way for non-chef subclasses to make a simple salad, but aside from combat training in general, I just don’t see it as useful for combat related Overskills.

[kalicofox]

loghorizonfunfacts replied to your post “loghorizonfunfacts replied to your post “Log Horizon Headcanons” ...”

Not sure if you're at that point, but Soujiro in episode... 22? 23? Somewhere in the last five episodes talks about the difficulty in teaching Overskills. As you said it just "clicked" in Akatsuki's mind, but that doesn't mean everyone's going to have it "click" at the same point or even in the same way. They may end up getting a completely different Overskill or none at all. One Overskill (that hasn't been brought up in series proper) more or less appeared by chance.

*nods* I’m not actually there yet. I watched the whole series something like two years ago, when season 2 was just coming out subbed, so now I’m re-watching it dubbed, just to refresh my memory, and I don’t really remember a whole lot past the arc where Isuzu creates the 43rd song.

On the topic of things clicking, though; if you’re doing math, and someone finds it easy to understand that 2+2=4, but someone else finds that difficult, and they only really get it once they realize that 1+1+1+1=4, then are the answers different?

I don’t think that, for the most part, it really matters how someone gets to the conclusion they get to, as long as they get there. I think it’s fully possible for someone to get the same Overskill as someone else, in roughly the same manner, as long as they’re being shown how or helped through it by someone who already has it. I mean, it’s in the name, ‘Oral Art’. That implies that it’s an art that can be taught person to person, and (looking at the wiki, ‘cause I’m broke as hell) the kanji apparently literally translates to Oral Art, which leads me to believe that that’s a much more accurate name than Overskill.

[loghorizonfunfacts]

ashleyien replied to your post: About Misa's hand

I don’t think there was anything at all in the anime about her overskill.

I’m pretty sure maybe around a third of the officially-known Overskills aren’t actually mentioned in-series. They were all added by Mamare onto the wiki first. Krusty’s Overskills weren’t mentioned (by name) until Volume 11, I think, but they were on the wiki before then. Same with Naotsugu’s Glimmering Shield, Henrietta’s Seven Sound Projection, Rieze’s Overskill, Charasin’s Multi-Line, Richou’s Overskill (from what I know).

[loghorizonfunfacts]

I just know that Misa has an overskill due to her missing arm. What is the skill and what does it do?

“Hermes Link - The Adventurer's Telepathy ability only allows sound/voices to be transmitted. Hermes Link, however, also shares what she sees with the other party. Obtained after she lost her hand.”

Where are people getting that she got this Overskill as a result of losing her hand? Did the anime state that? I was always under the impression that it was just designating a point after which she obtained it, not specifically setting up a cause-and-effect. (Double-checking the Japanese wiki, I don’t trust my Japanese interpretation skills enough to give a final verdict on it. For reference, the Japanese sentence is この能力は、片腕を失った三佐が手に入れたもの。)

[loghorizonfunfacts]

Do we know how Krusty (hey hey!) developed two Overskills, while everyone else seemed to only develop one? To you, what does this say about his character? What does this say about the nature of Overskills themselves?

As we were told, Overskills are really discovered by chance. Since Overskills revolve around using abilities outside of their intended game purpose, I would think that people who have more knowledge about game/world mechanics would have easier times figuring out Overskills.

Overskills can be surprisingly mundane. Even riding on shields (like Tetora did with Naotsugu’s in the anime) is an Overskill (called Shield Surfing, according to the Japanese Overskills doc). Other ones take advantage of the fact that what were once props in the game, like a book on how to create homunculi, now have actual text and instructions in them. Some, like Akatsuki’s and Nureha’s, involve combining skills to create a new ability. Nazuna’s Heavenly Road, Charasin’s Multi-Line, and Kanami’s Compression Combo basically came from the question “Why do I have to do this the game’s way?”

I think one thing that some fans don’t understand is that an Overskill isn’t some sort of “I win” button, or some measure of combat badassery. One Overskill is basically using a skill to step backwards instead of going forwards. They’re not all complex things. The basis of Kanami’s Overskill is basically the same as the above; when she uses a skill, she uses different motions than the game did, and so she can use that to create combos. Clairvoyance, Souji’s Overskill, is basically parrying and countering.

As for Krusty, I think it’s pretty simple why he has two Overskills. The first one, Hyperion Eye, allows him to see the HP and status effects of those within his line of sight. His schedule in volume 5 mentions that he spends around two hours every day observing large-scale battle simulation training, where he reviews coordination. That’s plenty of time for him to “start” acquiring it, and he fully discovered it during the Return of the Goblin King event. As for his second, Mnemosyne Taboo, I’m not sure when he acquired that, but he basically took Akatsuki’s “we gave up our memories to acquire strength” and made it literal. (The Japanese wiki stated he got that ability around volume 9, which means it was chronologically around the time of the Libra Festival or after.)

Also, as for Krusty being the only one with two Overskills, we can’t be sure of that. Rieze stated that the members of DDD have uncovered eight Overskills (sans Mnemosne Taboo, which Krusty didn’t tell anyone of). We only know the details of four of them, so it’s possible that there’s someone in DDD aside from Krusty with more than one Overskill.

[loghorizonfunfacts]

Update

Updated some of the Overskills on the doc (in particular, <My Forest>, <Fenrir>, and <Partial Soul Surgery>).

As an aside, I wonder if there’s a difference between <Overskill> and <Oral Tradition>? At least in some of the unofficial Overskills translated, Oral Tradition seems to be more like lore.

[loghorizonheadcanons]

Exorcist + Healer Overskill: "Silent Zone" When within a Player cathedral, the Player focuses strongly on a dead Player who they have a strong bond with. If the bond is strong enough, the Player will leave their physical body as an astral spirit, and be transported to an inverted place believed to be the spirit world. Once there, the astral Spirit can seek out the dead Player and meet with them, traveling through an ever-changing space till they do. Once together, they can return.

(anonymous)

LHFF comments: I feel as though at that rate, it’d be more practical to just die with the other player and hope that you meet up on Mare Tranquillitatis. Or, you know, revive them normally.

[loghorizonfunfacts]

Oh. I was under the impression that they formed a symbiotic relationship (contract???) that allowed her to keep her power (full raid monster) while still functioning as his partner. Is that not the point of his overskill?

Doesn’t seem so. Under most circumstances (AKA during the game era), Adventurers could not form contracts with raid bosses to begin with. However, it seems as though contracting with any monster in general reduces them to a -rank monster. (Not sure if that applies to Roe2/test server characters.)

(I don’t know that much about Crimson Contract because it wasn’t expanded on too much, at least to my knowledge. This info is what I’ve gathered from comments on AnimeSuki as well as from the spoilers to volume 9. I haven’t double-checked the Japanese wiki.)