Sword Art Online Episode 11: The Girl of Morning Dew
In which the real glitch is in emotions.exe
Okay so Kirito and Asuna are apparently married now and have this nice little cabin by a lake. For some reason they still try to play the "oh no I'm embarassed, did you hear me whispering that I loved you" card even though
the characters are married and sleeping together. Asuna asks the dude if he wants to have fun and he's like "didn't we have fun yesterday and the day before?"
Dude, what?
BUT ANYWAY apparently fun is off the table so Kirito wants to take Asuna on a walk through the forest. Asuna decides she wants to ride on his shoulders but she'll totally murder Kirito if he accidentally looks up her skirt in the meantime.
They go to the forest and Kirito tells a ghost story and suddenly there's the ghost, but it's actually just a little girl who passes out and is apparently a player but doesn't have any of the usual UI indicators. They take her home, Asuna snuggles up to sleep next to this random girl they found in the forest, and when she wakes up the little girl can't remember anything. She "adorably" can't seem to pronounce their names correctly, so when Kirito says she can call them whatever is easy, she immediately settles on "Daddy" and "Mommy" for these two people she's known for exactly two minutes.
Anyway, there's some transparently emotionally manipulative "family" stuff, none of which really works, before Kirito and Asuna decide to take the girl back to the starting village to see if they can find her family. There they run into some army guys shaking down some kids and their teacher for money and equipment. Asuna knocks the army leader over a couple times and he and his buddies
freak the fuck out even though Asuna
explicitly points out that she can't actually hurt them in a safe area, and the army guys run away. For some reason.
Then the kid starts pointing at the sky and talking about everyone's hearts, and how she was never here, just in the darkness, then she starts visibly glitching out as the episode ends.
This is not a good television show. The "Mommy and Daddy" stuff feels unbelievably forced, all the "check out how in love these two are" moments don't really work, especially since Asuna still occasionally acts like she's still in the "it's not like I really like you b-baka" era of the relationship. I might be sort of interested in the story about this girl if the show wasn't too busy forcing all this SEE IT'S LIKE SHE'S THEIR KID ALMOST stuff down your throat to actually establish a compelling mystery beyond a basic amnesia plot.