Sword Art Online Discussion Thread

[Buckeye]

A show about players trapped in a virtual reality MMORPG where there truly is no reset button in real life once you die.

Airs Friday, July 6

Animation studio: A-1 Pictures

ANN Entry
Official Site
Crunchyroll

Trapped and fighting for their very lives in a Virtual Reality MMORPG, Aincrad Online, the story explores the mishaps and adventures of the greatest one handed swordsman of the VR world, Kirito. Together with his friends, the solo swordsman strives to finish the game, which in turn will release all the minds trapped into Aincrad.

Note
As usual, please try to follow these three easy forum courtesy habits when replying:
1) If you're the first person to post about an episode in any given week, please respond to the root post (this post) and indicate in the subject line which episode you're posting about.
2) If someone has already posted about an episode before you, please respond to that post (or a relevant reply to that post). Keep in the right subthread.
3) Don't use the blue "Post Reply" button because it causes your reply not to correctly inherit the subject line of the post you're replying to. Just click "Quote" to the post you want to reply to.[/quote]

[Buckeye]

That was a nice first episode, beginning with a highly-anticipated game like never before where you feel like you are in the game. Only to find out later that you are the game. That was pretty evil for Kayaba to disable the logout function and make it so that any forced removal results in the player becoming brain dead. Kirito and Klein have sure formed a nice friendship off the bat, and several players are already dying as shown in the preview.

I'll be looking to watch more of this as this show is definitely off to a flying start. Of course, it started off looking like .hack//SIGN, but it gets much more serious now that it's a matter of life and death in both the game and the real world for everybody whereas in .hack, they only fall into a coma.

[HitokiriShadow]

At first I thought "Only 10,000 copies? WTF? Did each one cost 50,000 yen?" but then the big plot set-up happened and it made more sense. Well, kind of.

Anyway, that was a damn good first episode. And it didn't even have a named female character in it at all, and it had like five lines from "female" unnamed and incidental characters.

It did a great job of introducing the game world in a natural way and setting things up. I can see why SAO is considered to be better than Accel World.

Kirito seems like he'll be a good lead. Can't wait to meet the girl.

Definitely one of the best premiers of the season.

[FUNiOP]

Opening theme by LiSA, music by Yuki Kajiura, animation production by A-1 Pictures (which obviously means it's Aniplex)... even with its similarities to Accel World, it's no wonder I'd like it more. But as it turns out... the source material is clearly far stronger for this one. Accel World always has me rolling my eyes at how melodramatic they get over a game that doesn't really matter, and while I feel like I should be having a similar reaction to how over-the-top the stakes are in this game, it totally works for me, because I really felt the pressure that the characters felt when they realized that they had to be the best around if they want any chance of survival in any world. Plus, I love RPGs, a lot more than fighting games. I don't play MMOs (mostly because real ones don't have nice endings like this one, thus my life would be destroyed by them in a different way), but this is a really well-realized RPG world that manages to feel like a game I'd like to play and also a world I'm happy to watch this story unfold in. Kirito is a very likeable lead so far, and for being in a game, I feel his emotion very strongly.

Easily my favorite show of the season based on first episodes.

[ookamigirl]

In the first few seconds as I started watching it, my thoughts were: this reminds me of .hack// and lets hope it'll be even better!
Kirito and Klein were fun to watch.
Being stuck in the game was not a good feeling for them & they weren't alone either.
OMG! That admin guy is a total psycho!!
So basically if you want to get out alive you have to beat the game!
This SAO game looks very cool, I'd play it if it was real (just without the crazy admin)^^
I'll be watching this!

[superdry]

That was a pretty dick move on the creator's part with how the game works.

But, that was a nice first-episode. The world-building was a lot more natural and evenly paced. Kirito seems like a good, level-headed guy. Interesting that there is no magic, but that doesn't mean the GM can't introduce it at some point, right?

Looking forward to the next episode to see what Kirito does since now it's the start of the real game.

Originally Posted by HitokiriShadow

five lines from "female" unnamed

"She" reminded of Haruka from iM@S. I suppose it could have been unintentional since it's animated by the same studio and what looks to be the same character designer.

Can't wait to meet the girl.

Agreed. She was the one that introduced and got me interested in the series after buying some Dengeki magazine (I want to say Bunko, but I don't remember) a few months ago and one of the bonus items was a poster (I think) of SAO.

[nakimushi]

Pretty interesting first episode. However, I kept wondering about one very important aspect of this setup: how were the player's bodies being maintained for the month they spent in the game?

There was no indication that game time runs any faster than real world time (unlike AccelWorld), which would mean a month spent in the game is a month in real time.

Did the surviving players all get feeding tubes, catheters and nursing care in the real world?

I imagine they will have to explain it next episode.

Seeing more female characters in the ED was something else to look forward to.

[something]

Episode 1:

- Fucking ouch. I usually have to max out volume on Crunchyroll to get something reasonable, but this one is about 2x as loud as anything else.

- Oh jeeze, all I'm going to be able to hear when Kline speaks is Uchuu Kyoudai's Mutta.
- Most shots are all girls. Who are probably all guys.

- Alright how the fuck did NerveGear get approved by various regulatory agencies? >_>
- 213 dead players already. >_>
- Clear the entire game? But their bodies will die long before that. Can't go too long without water.
- lol, yeah, most of the girls are guys. Hopefully there are still a bunch of cute girls left though. The heroine is pretty danm cute at least.

Well this is a shit-ton more morbid and dark than Accel World, for sure.

Post-ED:
- "In the game's first month." Uhhhhhh, so is there some kind of Burst Linker time compression going on? Wasn't happening earlier in the episode. Short of hospitalizing all the players on an IV drip, nobody is going to survive a month lying in bed without eating or drinking.

[something]

Originally Posted by superdry

That was a pretty dick move on the creator's part with how the game works.

"Dick move" is putting it pretty charitably. He's now already a mass murderer on a mind-boggling scale, with the blood of 2,000 people on his hands and another 8,000 in grave peril.

[Fencedude]

That was pretty much precisely what I expected it to be. Still, pretty damn good. Kirito's a bit irritatingly competent.

Next week, Asuna!