Sword Art Online Discussion Thread

[Buckeye]

It's Kirito in Beast Mode to wipe out those Salamander goons that had been chasing him and Leefa all the way to town. And then, it turns out that Sigurd is at the center of a grand scheme to take out the Sylph leader, and Recon knows about the plan, meaning that he had to tell Suguha in real life.

Great episode here as we finally see something out of Kirito that has nothing to do with swords, and it looks like Sigurd might be one of Sugou's henchmen set out to keep Kirito busy.

[ookamigirl]

Kirito learning about Spriggans and powers.
These fairy characters do have interesting magic powers.
Leafa & Kirito vs Salamanders.
Kirito's illusion magic was just wow!
Looks like other problems have arisen for Leafa and her kind.

[something]

Episode 19:

- Suguha is so elf racist.
- "Hey Leafa, you're the highly skilled player with a lot of experience in this game. So you should just sit back and heal me while I do all the cool stuff. While you're at it, make me a sandwich and do my laundry, missy." FUCK YOU KIRITO. I've tried to give him a lot of slack throughout this show because I really liked his personality at first but god, I don't think I can stand him anymore.
- Oh look Kirito can turn into a gigantic nigh invincible monstrosity because... I have no idea. Honestly I don't even care.
- Yui, at least, continues to be fucking adorable. I love her standing on Suguha's shoulders cheering during the fight. <3 Shiiiiiiiiit she is so incredibly cute.
- "Oh sorry, that sounded really arrogant didn't it?" No you didn't say anything wrong here. So how come you never say that when you actually say something arrogant? Oh right because those things are supposed to be TOTALLY KEWL.

Meh.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by something

- "Hey Leafa, you're the highly skilled player with a lot of experience in this game. So you should just sit back and heal me while I do all the cool stuff. While you're at it, make me a sandwich and do my laundry, missy." FUCK YOU KIRITO. I've tried to give him a lot of slack throughout this show because I really liked his personality at first but god, I don't think I can stand him anymore.
- Oh look Kirito can turn into a gigantic nigh invincible monstrosity because... I have no idea. Honestly I don't even care.

In fairness, these two points are completely related. He figured the only way to win was to use the "illusion" magic (really transformation), but the only way he could buy enough time is for her to keep healing him (because otherwise he couldn't take the hits). So it has nothing to do with her being a girl; he needed a support player to make his plan work otherwise they'd both be dead. For what it's worth, anyway...

[something]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

In fairness, these two points are completely related. He figured the only way to win was to use the "illusion" magic (really transformation), but the only way he could buy enough time is for her to keep healing him (because otherwise he couldn't take the hits). So it has nothing to do with her being a girl; he needed a support player to make his plan work otherwise they'd both be dead. For what it's worth, anyway...

The internal logic, which was obvious enough, as to what happened isn't nearly as important as why events were written that way in the first place (i.e. because lol protagonist boy is cool, so cool, isn't he cool, oh my god how cool). It's double frustrating because when Kirito is a good character when he's allowed to act like a normal human being - which is why I've been so hesitant for so long to truly dislike him - but oh my god genre conventions just murder his character when he's required to turn into a generic plot hacking overpowered twat.

At this point I can't decide if what has happened to this story is worse or slightly less worse than what happened to Accel World. This show still has hooks to keep me watching (...I think) that Accel World did not by this point, but I'm really starting to feel the same way about the overall structure.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by something

The internal logic, which was obvious enough, as to what happened isn't nearly as important as why events were written that way in the first place (i.e. because lol protagonist boy is cool, so cool, isn't he cool, oh my god how cool). It's double frustrating because when Kirito is a good character when he's allowed to act like a normal human being - which is why I've been so hesitant for so long to truly dislike him - but oh my god genre conventions just murder his character when he's required to turn into a generic plot hacking overpowered twat.

Well yeah -- clearly they wanted to show that his Spriggan magic wasn't as useless as Leafa thought it was (thanks to his already-established cheater stats), but even I thought it was a bit silly that they foreshadowed it so completely obviously in the pre-OP segment. "There may come a day when your Spriggan magic saves us all! Hahaha..." Ten minutes later...

In the end, since Kirito has to reach his goal by week's end, he basically gets thrust right to the forefront of everything right away, so he is incredibly overpowered in this arc. All in all, though, it doesn't really serve that much of a purpose other than getting him from Point A to B, because all his "power" doesn't really solve the fundamental problem of what he and Asuna are going to do once they meet up. So I guess I sort of take the "overpowered" thing as a necessary plot device in this arc. At least they established it from the get-go.

(Edit: And that aside, I often play healers in MMORPGs, so I don't think there's anything lowly about being a supporting class. So I didn't take it as a put-down. She obviously had the superior magical skills anyway; he just had the one Spriggan-exclusive spell they needed to play the frontline role. Even if he got to "look cool", he couldn't have done anything without her there.)

[something]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

In the end, since Kirito has to reach his goal by week's end, he basically gets thrust right to the forefront of everything right away, so he is incredibly overpowered in this arc. All in all, though, it doesn't really serve that much of a purpose other than getting him from Point A to B, because all his "power" doesn't really solve the fundamental problem of what he and Asuna are going to do once they meet up. So I guess I sort of take the "overpowered" thing as a necessary plot device in this arc. At least they established it from the get-go.

For me, what you just described illustrates why I think this arc's writing is so very lazy. At least the SAO arc kinda had to struggle with establishing a world and character relationships and an overhanging threat that I could buy into and find pretty interesting, and managed to do it well at times. ALO not so much.

And the (lack of) power balance has always seemed to be unnecessarily out of whack in this show. That doesn't mean all major characters must be equally strong. One of my favorite male-female character dynamics of all time is Shichika and Togame in Katanagatari, which was not even remotely balanced, but was skillfully built around that.

The one time I feel like they really nailed it perfectly was episode 13. I wrote this about episode 13:
"I'd normally be mad at Kirito for asking Asuna to stay out of this upcoming boss run, but this time it was presented really well. It's not just Kirito being a tough-guy protagonist protecting the girl; it's Kirito scared shitless and on the verge of a mental breakdown. That's so much more interesting to see than cliche heroism. Asuna's reply was pretty great too. It could be taken as "I have no life outside of you, you're the only reason I matter" but that's not what I really heard from her words.
...
Kirito's fear and hesitation in this episode made him so much more interesting and believable a character. It built on earlier scenes that had done this well too, but it's a lot more important now that he's going through those emotions with someone else.
Asuna had a great performance in his episode too, both in terms of getting to kick some ass, and in terms of really coming across as an equal to Kirito in every sense. I don't necessarily mean that she's equally powerful in-game, but certainly powerful enough to stand beside him, to work with him, to be a team. I was also really impressed with how she was the one who had her emotional shit together, so to speak, and kept Kirito focused even while she herself was just as scared as he was."

I want that show back. I really, really want that show back, badly. It took so long to finally obtain it, to give Kirito real emotional depth, and then that show just dissolved before my eyes.

I think this (plus ♥Yui♥) is why I didn't drop the show immediately after episode 15 no matter how infuriating it's been since. I've seen what it can be. And I keep hoping it achieves that again. Unfortunately each additional episode tells me I'm being hopelessly naive.

[Damius]

Are we going to the point where Yui and Suguha/Leafa won't be enough to make me continue to watch this show? We are not quite there... but we are dangerously close of that point.

[Damius]

Originally Posted by something

At this point I can't decide if what has happened to this story is worse or slightly less worse than what happened to Accel World. This show still has hooks to keep me watching (...I think) that Accel World did not by this point, but I'm really starting to feel the same way about the overall structure.

This may not be worse than Accel World, but the drop from what it was, from the point I was still thinking about importing it, is more important. I never thought a second to import Accel World, but I thought for a couple episodes about importing SAO. So, this could make it worse in the end.

[something]

Originally Posted by Damius

This may not be worse than Accel World, but the drop from what it was, from the point I was still thinking about importing it, is more important. I never thought a second to import Accel World, but I thought for a couple episodes about importing SAO. So, this could make it worse in the end.

Yeah, true, that's probably the main difference. SAO's heights are much higher than AW's heights in m opinion, so to see them occupying very similar altitudes right now is that much more disappointing,