You remind me how it was criminally short. I actually loved that set-up, so so much.
On another note: SAO isn't bad yet. Episode 3 was stupidly contrived, sure, but nothing is critical stupid yet. It's actually kind of enjoyable. Granted I'm only 4 episodes in, so that'll probably change soon.
So Asuna's plan is to lead the boss into town so that it can kill the villagers while they kill it. I like it when someone thinks tactically. Kirito seems against killing NPCs, but... they're NPCs. I love Asuna. So much.
I find Asuna more interesting than Kirito. Can we swap him out and give her the lead role?
Huh. The concept of Sleep-PKs is actually interesting. I wonder if that's a way to cheat the system and remain green.
Oooooooh. The plot thickens. I wonder if there's a way to hack the system. Hacker please?
This is essentially a murder mystery. My favorite kind of plot!
Well... that was an excellent cliffhanger. Wasn't actually expecting this to be a two-parter.
My main question at this point has to be: how exactly are they going to resolve any of this in the next couple of episodes? I'm interested to see how things will develop from here.
Shounen love stories are pretty lame. Not that they don't bring a whole new set of issues with them but you should really, as a rule, turn to shoujo for the love stories.
So I know this is going to go down poorly, but I finally realized why a part of me is actually sort of enjoying SAO: It reminds me of Digimon. Like, its a similar set up of a kid getting stuck in a digital fantasy land and having to go there and solve problems. This is how I was able to accurately predict that
Kirito will have to go back to the digital world
, too.
Disclaimer: I stopped watching Digimon sometime around the movie. But WarGreymon and MetalGarurumon are still the bossest Digimans.
Kirito jumps after the mysterious assailant, but he teleports away. I wonder though, is that shield he put up when Kirito threw the pins system-approved? Please be some kind of hacker.
Asuna can cook? I wonder if the materials to make a sandwich are cheaper than the sandwich itself. Interesting.
Kirito has some sort of epiphany, but lord knows I don't know what it is yet.
So they faked their own deaths to get back at Schmidt? That's kind of cool, but I'm disappointed. Clever trick though.
Laughing Coffin? That's a morbid name. Perfect for a guild of PKs I suppose. Of course Kirito rides in at the last minute, as he is wont.
Asuna is talking about marriage. Gee, I wonder what these two will do eventually.
Huh, this is actually pretty interesting. Griselda's death benefited Grimrock (it's taking everything in my power not to call him Grimlock)... but this raises the question: how come no one ever remembered that the spouse gets all the items from the deceased partner?
Okay. Grimrock has issues. Major issues. Of course someone changes their persona online. He's such a screwed up character. I guess this proves that people do stupid things in the name of love (and fear).
Also Asuna still rocks.
These last two episodes were really enjoyable and spoke to me. I actually feel like watching Detective Conan again.
Eh, it was okay. No where near the same league as the series, not by a long shot, but not all that bad. Artwork and animation was definitely rougher and in a much wackier style, not a lot time to do stuff so no focus on Tomoyo or Kyou or Kotomi (and absolutely zero Fuko and Ryou), and the story (which basically tries retells all the big parts of Clannad and Clannad: After Story in 90 mins) was definitely hampered by scrunching it up (some story points and backgrounds were change to accommodate stuff) but you do have the same Eng. VA cast in the same roles (and the original Japanese cast is all the same, except Tomoya's, apparently) and it's not entirely bad, just not nearly as polished or as well-presented. Still has a good dose of feels though, if that's of interest.
Okay, so the last holes in the Jun Sekitani story were filled. Really changes the perspective of him though. Much like the librarian said, he wasn't a hero. He was just a sacrificial lamb. Or bunny, if we want to use the imagery on Hyouka as our standard. His message to Chitanda and the meaning of the title really highlight how angry he was about everything to happen to him. Truly a case of "I have no mouth, and I must scream."
Houtarou is seeing some growth, if slow. He's slowly starting to realize that the way he's living really isn't a way he's going to look back on in the future and remember fondly. Even if he's still introverted, just helping Chitanda like he did is the rewarding sort of thing he wants more of, even if he doesn't entirely realize it yet.
That ED is weird. There's always gotta be some :sdburton.
Kirito jumps after the mysterious assailant, but he teleports away. I wonder though, is that shield he put up when Kirito threw the pins system-approved? Please be some kind of hacker.
Asuna can cook? I wonder if the materials to make a sandwich are cheaper than the sandwich itself. Interesting.
Kirito has some sort of epiphany, but lord knows I don't know what it is yet.
So they faked their own deaths to get back at Schmidt? That's kind of cool, but I'm disappointed. Clever trick though.
Laughing Coffin? That's a morbid name. Perfect for a guild of PKs I suppose. Of course Kirito rides in at the last minute, as he is wont.
Asuna is talking about marriage. Gee, I wonder what these two will do eventually.
Huh, this is actually pretty interesting. Griselda's death benefited Grimrock (it's taking everything in my power not to call him Grimlock)... but this raises the question: how come no one ever remembered that the spouse gets all the items from the deceased partner?
Okay. Grimrock has issues. Major issues. Of course someone changes their persona online. He's such a screwed up character. I guess this proves that people do stupid things in the name of love (and fear).
Also Asuna still rocks.
These last two episodes were really enjoyable and spoke to me. I actually feel like watching Detective Conan again.
Hotaru's story touches on some of the parental issues that I thought were seriously missing from Chibi-Usa's tragedy at the end of R down right to our damsel in distress becoming a hot sexy villainess who in the end is obliterated by the power of love (and special effects sakuga). Professor Tomoe (?) is just a better suited character to elicit the kind of emotions that come with this type of plot than Usagi and Mamoru, whose parentage to Chibi-Usa was mostly played for the shock revelation and that's that.
I've been wanting a confrontation between the Outer and Inner Senshi for a long time, but the preview made it look like it was gonna be a budget episode with :wonzo faces. I hope it was just that one shot... Well, at least I got some sexy Neptune and Uranus. I feel bad about it, too!
So is this another Kirito gets another possible love interest quest episode? I'm perfectly okay with this, since Liz and Kirito's interactions are pretty funny.
Crystalline dragon poop is just the best treasure, ever.
I feel bad for Liz. I really, really do. Maybe if she met Kirito sooner. Maybe.
The show's honestly been pretty good since ep 4. I'm disappointed.
It's actually probably best to keep in mind that the pacing in this series can feel a liiiiittle disjointed in the first half because a lot of the material is actually taken from random one-shot stories that were published later on in the original novels. The anime inserted them into the flow of things chronologically. Specifically, episodes
2-7 and 11-12
are all side stories, though most of them come from Novel 2 (which was a side-story collection) and so become fairly relevant later on.
By contrast, the first novel has a fairly well-paced and conclusive plot, without much in the way of timeskip except the massive one between the establishing scene at the beginning and the period where the meat of the story takes place.
Also by contrast, the second half of the series seems to take exactly the opposite approach, with the equivalent Novels 3 and 4 being completely chronological with no timeskips at all, and the anime completely skipping over one key escapade that wasn't particularly plot-relevant. Personally I think this omission was a mistake (it was one of my favourite parts of the arc in question) but I guess scheduling and stuff. Also it might have been a bit of a bitch to animate, but that's no excuse.
For the sake of people like Kirito I guess. And creepy players who want to trick/kill you. Probably stems from SAO's philosophy of hewing as "true to life" as possible. So you can hide as much or as little information as you like from your friends...until they find out by accident one way or another and you're screwed.
Um... Kirito dear? Hiding your level wasn't that horrendous. If you remember, they were doing fine in that dungeon until they hit that OBVIOUS TRAP. You aren't to blame for that one.
I think it's fairly natural to get caught up in fruitless thoughts of how you could have prevented it.
Kirito with his level did at least have experience of higher-level dungeons and was aware of the existence of those kind of traps, so he could have warned them if he wasn't so determined to keep his own secrets. The party had no idea traps that disable your crystals were even possible.
Wait what? You can see a player's level by looking at their menu? What kind of stupidity is that? How can party members not see your level, but people looking over your shoulder can? That seems needlessly convoluted.
See above "true to life" reasoning. SAO seems specifically designed to allow people to misbehave if they so desire. See also the above-mentioned tracking skill and the fact that there are skills that let you listen in on conversations through doors, an act that is specifically impossible on a system level otherwise.
“You're a beast tamer?” Um... didn't the show explicitly state that there were no classes in SAO? At least that's what was said back in episode 2.
Yeah, it's specifically noted in the novels that "beast tamer" isn't really a class, it's just a convenient term used to refer players with this unique advantage. Anyone can tame a monster, but the conditions are so strict that not many players bother.
Specifically, you have to trigger a rare random event where the monster in question takes an interest in you instead of attacking, and then give it some food to form a bond with it. In addition to being rare, this random event only occurs for a small subset of monster types, and is locked off if you have ever killed a monster of that type before. In Silica's case, she lucked out and a rare monster took a liking to her completely by accident when she first arrived on a new floor.
“I call her my little sister, but she's actually my cousin.” … Why am I feeling dread? Because with the way this is turning out, and her prowess with the sword, I'm SURE Asuna is this cousin. Please tell me I'm wrong, because if not...
That seems like a somewhat strange leap to make, considering everyone in SAO has their appearance from real life, and Kirito presumably knows what his sister/cousin looks like.
Same author as Sword Art Online (and actually takes place like 30 years after) and apparently is supposed to be better than SAO because it was written a little more recently when the author wasn't like 18
I've seen the first two episodes or so. It was alright.
Sadly, it seems like all the shows I initially liked have declined as the season went on (Titan, Gargantia, Maou-sama) but after initially hating Data a Live, it turned out okay. I guess setting the bar low at the beginning has it's advantages.
Hey, hey, I think I put enough disclaimers to make it clear that I just meant there were some similar ideas. Also that I haven't seen anything out of Digimon since the movie.
All I'm talkin' bout is a show where kids get stuck in a computer fantasy world then go back to the real world. Otherwise, they're not that similar. It just reminded me of it, that's all.
That seems like a somewhat strange leap to make, considering everyone in SAO has their appearance from real life, and Kirito presumably knows what his sister/cousin looks like.
While true, you can never be too sure in anime (she might've escaped the effect of the mirror, etc). But I'm glad they didn't go with that (from what you've all told me).
I-I just caught my little sister watching Sword Art Online. She is a Twilight fan too. This is the same girl who doesn't want to watch Utena because it looks old.
I should have heeded firehawk's warning. Now it's too late.
You've said a lot of wrong/bad/stupid things over the years but this is probably the worst thing to ever come out of your mouth.
This kind of shit is exactly why the phrase "Don't judge a book by its cover" came about. Embodied in this post is every irrational, knee-jerk dismissal in the history of art.
Congratulations, you're the vanguard of a thousand years of bad taste and uncultured ignorance.
If you're good little Jewelpets, Decosanta will come to you on Decorimas on her ice turkey and the turkey will poop out your presents in plastic eggs... wait, what?
You've said a lot of wrong/bad/stupid things over the years but this is probably the worst thing to ever come out of your mouth.
This kind of shit is exactly why the phrase "Don't judge a book by its cover" came about. Embodied in this post is every irrational, knee-jerk dismissal in the history of art.
Congratulations, you're the vanguard of a thousand years of bad taste and uncultured ignorance.
Part of me will miss this when it ends next week, the cast started to grow on me. The ending camera image of the city streets, always makes this feel as if its from before our time....
Cardfight!! Vanguard: Asia Circuit Episode 101 (EngDub)
And so we return to the plot. Kirito has reached Floor 78. Fun times.
He killed a bunny. YOU MONSTER.
A very rare bunny. Although this makes me wonder: how do the bodies on the outside of the game live? You can stave off hunger in the game all you like, but you're essentially in a coma in the real world. Also, how is the Nervegear connected? I assume you can move the body to a hospital to hook them up to an IV or something if the Nervegear is wireless, but if it's connected by wire, how does that work? I really really would love a scene in the real world sometime.
Wow, cooking in SAO IS simple. I wish it were that simple IRL.
Bwahahaha. I love Asuna. When you can threaten people with a butterknife and be taken seriously, you know you're awesome.
I understand taking your job seriously, but like the track function, stalking your protectee when she doesn't need to be protected is just weird dude.
Um... Asuna dear? You outrank him. Or did you forget that while trying to run from him? This isn't like you.
The duel went as anyone would've expected. I kind of like that Kirito destroyed the weapon intentionally so that he wouldn't harm Kuradeel's HP. He's considerate, if nothing else.
Oh so NOW Asuna remembers to pull rank. Well, at least she's back to normal.
And... they make a pretty damn good team in the dungeon, I must say. Oh hey, it's the boss monster from the OP!
A very rare bunny. Although this makes me wonder: how do the bodies on the outside of the game live? You can stave off hunger in the game all you like, but you're essentially in a coma in the real world. Also, how is the Nervegear connected? I assume you can move the body to a hospital to hook them up to an IV or something if the Nervegear is wireless, but if it's connected by wire, how does that work? I really really would love a scene in the real world sometime.
I believe the Nervegear is wireless, but there's a permitted length of time that it can be disconnected from the server (precisely so that players' bodies in the real world could be moved to the hospital). There was a period early on in the game where players had a tendency to vanish for a while due to this, so they're all roughly aware of the probable situation outside.
So we have more dysfunction with our two Precure ladies. Sure hope that's not going to continue throughout the entire season. Our villians are as great as ever, even if they aren't successful at their work.
Pfft. They can't handle this boss. Run! THE DOOR'S STILL OPEN!
So Asuna can basically make any condiment in existence. Kirito's right, she could probably make a fortune selling the stuff.
Bwahahahaha. Klein. I'm 24, single, and looking for a gir- Hey, let him finish Kirito!
And they're off to save the knight morons who didn't listen to them. I understand wanting to get out of the game as quick as possible, but taking unnecessary risks isn't wise.
Klein continues to be best chara.
Wooooooooow. Kirito, you really cut it close there. But I admit the fight was pretty cool.
A dual-wield skill. I wasn't expecting that to be a rare skill.
Of course, thanks to that battle, Kirito is the talk of the town. Also, Asuna's leave of absence isn't going over well with Heathcliff, her guild leader. So he's challenged Kirito to a duel with interesting stakes.
I hope it was just that one shot... Well, at least I got some sexy Neptune and Uranus. I feel bad about it, too!
