Sword Art Online

I can say that I was anticipating this show the most and it didn't fail me. Glad it didn't turn out as a .hack clone.

Having not read the novels, I can see why this was anticipated by many. Yeah, Imma stick to this.

Also, they should've skipped the tutorial.

Well apparently 2000 people did.

How much of the novels did you read?

I stopped a bit after the 2nd book.

/pizza

Episode 2 was very non-sensical...

Also:
http://en.shindanmaker.com/247584

Tekkaman Calamity is stuck in SAO. Level: 25. Dies 2 days in after falling off a cliff.

I must've gotten bored playing that game.

Actually, it was a thing in the novels where players would commit suicide by jumping off the edge of the world (SAO is on a floating island, after all).

As for the anime, I can see why it would be confusing, since they really did take out all of the substance from the original. There's a whole bunch of differences. I don't want to list them, but this guy does a pretty good job of summing up my thoughts. It's all pretty disappointing, honestly. This story was supposed to serve as the setup for Kirito/Asuna's relationship, and now it's all going to suck later on because they botched the foundation.

If you have about 20-30 mins to spare, I highly recommend to give it a read (even if it's just the one side-story) and see for yourself. http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=Sword_Art_Online:Aria_in_the_Starless_Night

Oh, and they totally forgot to explain "switching" so I'll explain it here. The game is full-on PK enabled, which means you can friendly fire your own party members. "Switching" is where another party member tags in for the active player by timing an attack to hit during skill downtime/recovery caused by weapon clashes or blocks (while the first player and enemy are both in recovery). This takes the aggro from the first player and also minimizes the risk of friendly-fire. Apparently the enemy AI also has trouble dealing with it, making it the go-to efficient PvE tactic. It should be pretty obvious, but I thought it was super awkward when they just shouted it in the anime all the time without explaining it.

Ryuuka wrote:Actually, it was a thing in the novels where players would commit suicide by jumping off the edge of the world (SAO is on a floating island, after all).

As for the anime, I can see why it would be confusing, since they really did take out all of the substance from the original. There's a whole bunch of differences. I don't want to list them, but this guy does a pretty good job of summing up my thoughts. It's all pretty disappointing, honestly. This story was supposed to serve as the setup for Kirito/Asuna's relationship, and now it's all going to suck later on because they botched the foundation.

If you have about 20-30 mins to spare, I highly recommend to give it a read (even if it's just the one side-story) and see for yourself. http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=Sword_Art_Online:Aria_in_the_Starless_Night

Oh, and they totally forgot to explain "switching" so I'll explain it here. The game is full-on PK enabled, which means you can friendly fire your own party members. "Switching" is where another party member tags in for the active player by timing an attack to hit during skill downtime/recovery caused by weapon clashes or blocks (while the first player and enemy are both in recovery). This takes the aggro from the first player and also minimizes the risk of friendly-fire. Apparently the enemy AI also has trouble dealing with it, making it the go-to efficient PvE tactic. It should be pretty obvious, but I thought it was super awkward when they just shouted it in the anime all the time without explaining it.

That helps.

So a few things I need cleared up,
First off, Sachi has a scene in the OP, I kinda took that as meaning she was going to be a prevalent character but unless they pull a Dues Ex Machina, it's just gonna be Kirito and Asuna eventually.
The revival item really through me for a loop but I suppose if you assume that the headset delays itself from frying your brain for 10 seconds when you die then the item is viable.
Kirito thinks it would have been better if he told them his true strength although, if he had wouldn't they have taken bigger risks than they already were before "shopping for furniture"?
This whole time I thought maybe you couldn't open open PvP, but I guess you can? Although it seems like the holy dragon guild or whatever could have just killed off the competition right there and then for good so why didn't they? Can you not actually fully kill somebody else but maybe just disable them for a bit?

Now my biggest question is, I didn't know this before but Sachi made it sound like only one person needs to beat the game and they all get released. If that's so then why don't they all just chill out and wait for the big guild to deal with it?

Besides the huge time skip at the beginning............... and throughout the ep...... it was kinda confusing and messy all around.

I haven't watched the episode yet, nor have I read any review posts, but I'll try and answer questions anyways.

Chumara wrote:So a few things I need cleared up,
First off, Sachi has a scene in the OP, I kinda took that as meaning she was going to be a prevalent character but unless they pull a Dues Ex Machina, it's just gonna be Kirito and Asuna eventually.

Sachi was pretty much the reason why Kirito is so against partying with other people. Animu-styled angst caused by stupid past mistakes. All of the side characters serve a "purpose," but none of them are actually all that important to the story.

The revival item really through me for a loop but I suppose if you assume that the headset delays itself from frying your brain for 10 seconds when you die then the item is viable.

It does. There's also the fact that Kirito had been theorizing that if the revival item actually worked on "dead" players, then they might not actually be "dead" IRL. Of course, this was disproved when he actually got the item and read the description.

Kirito thinks it would have been better if he told them his true strength although, if he had wouldn't they have taken bigger risks than they already were before "shopping for furniture"?

He thinks that if he had just told them his status as a "beater" then they wouldn't have let him join in the first place, and there would have been a chance that they would have lived as a result. There's also the fact that he didn't actually try to stop them from opening the chest, despite knowing that it was probably trapped and they wouldn't be able to handle it.

This whole time I thought maybe you couldn't open open PvP, but I guess you can? Although it seems like the holy dragon guild or whatever could have just killed off the competition right there and then for good so why didn't they? Can you not actually fully kill somebody else but maybe just disable them for a bit?

I mentioned in an earlier post that the game is PK. There's also plenty of status effects that work on other players like paralyze/poison/stun, which you'll see a bit of later.

Now my biggest question is, I didn't know this before but Sachi made it sound like only one person needs to beat the game and they all get released. If that's so then why don't they all just chill out and wait for the big guild to deal with it?

Only one person needs to clear the game, but ironically the big guilds are not actually that powerful. They established it pretty early in the novels that the big guilds suffered huge losses during the early major boss fights and thus had to deal with nobody wanting to go to the front lines anymore. All they really do is bum around on the lower floors until the "clearers" map out the upper floors. As for waiting around for players to beat the game, that's really what the majority of the players are doing. Only a small percentage are willing to risk their necks to clear the game, and everyone else is just living it out on the lower floors.

Besides the huge time skip at the beginning............... and throughout the ep...... it was kinda confusing and messy all around.

In the novels, Red-Nosed Reindeer was a seperate story from Kirito joining the Black Cats and getting them all killed. I think they're trying to avoid flashbacks at all costs in the anime, so it makes sense that they would probably confuse a lot of people by trying to make it chronological. Red-Nosed Reindeer was about him almost dying to get the revival item so he find out whether or not Sachi hated him for causing their deaths. When Kirito joined the guild, he was around level 40 or so, but Red-Nosed Reindeer doesn't happen until he's level 70.

Also, I'm just throwing this out there in case they messed up the characterization again, but Kirito and Sachi didn't have a romantic relationship going on at all. Sachi said that Kirito was like a father to her. Kirito was hooked on the fact that the guild depended on him so much but at the same time was guilt-ridden about lying to them, so he felt that it was the least he could do to help Sachi.

Ryuuka wrote:
He thinks that if he had just told them his status as a "beater" then they wouldn't have let him join in the first place, and there would have been a chance that they would have lived as a result. There's also the fact that he didn't actually try to stop them from opening the chest, despite knowing that it was probably trapped and they wouldn't be able to handle it.

He tried to stop them but it was one of those cliche moments where the characters just "didn't hear him" during their excitement.

In the novels, Red-Nosed Reindeer was a seperate story from Kirito joining the Black Cats and getting them all killed. I think they're trying to avoid flashbacks at all costs in the anime, so it makes sense that they would probably confuse a lot of people by trying to make it chronological. Red-Nosed Reindeer was about him almost dying to get the revival item so he find out whether or not Sachi hated him for causing their deaths. When Kirito joined the guild, he was around level 40 or so, but Red-Nosed Reindeer doesn't happen until he's level 70.

So is the next episode going to go back to him being a lower level?

Also, I'm just throwing this out there in case they messed up the characterization again, but Kirito and Sachi didn't have a romantic relationship going on at all. Sachi said that Kirito was like a father to her. Kirito was hooked on the fact that the guild depended on him so much but at the same time was guilt-ridden about lying to them, so he felt that it was the least he could do to help Sachi.

Although it was pretty easily implied how he saw her and how she looked up to him, there was no explicit mention of it. Although......... they did........sleep together, literally

I think I should explain the format of the novels so you can get a better idea.

Volume 1 was focused almost entirely on how they cleared the game and developing Kirito/Asuna's relationship. Volume 2 is a collection of side stories focused on fleshing out the first volume. A lot of the characterization was already done in the first volume, so volume 2 is written under the assumption that you already know what happens.

The problem is that Volume 2 is where most of the anime is getting its material from. The viewers don't already know the characters or what happens to them so as a result, they have to develop them at the same time as telling stories that assume that people already know the characters and their circumstances. It's really just a big mess.

Basically, this director is a total n00b.

Sachi so sad, but you know, being Lancer is suffering.

I liked that episode, although it was kinda weird that we now are told that he's in the lead group 4 episodes in, but I guess it's a time skip.
The whole episode I thought Silica was going to die like Sachi did, I'm glad I was wrong, but after they found the flower I thought she was just going to be like "Can't we just port back to town now?" but I suppose Kirito would have rejected the idea for the greater goal regardless.
One thing I like about this show so far is just how confident and powerful Kirito is, it's not often we get main characters like this anymore. But I suppose in these last two episodes he has been running some lower level material.

Also, 2 embarrassing skirt moments.

But I suppose in these last two episodes he has been running some lower level material.

Actually now that I think about it, why was he in a lower lev area in ep 3? I mean he was pretty much bounty hunting in 4, but what was the deal in 3?

Nice Ass Online.

They really didn't ease us into his reunion with Asuna, I was expecting something a little more dramatic.

Log Jutsu.

I actually thought the realization in the episode was clever, but that means that the SAO developers were lazy and didn't code cool graphics for porting.

Chumara wrote:I actually thought the realization in the episode was clever, but that means that the SAO developers were lazy and didn't code cool graphics for porting.

I like the realization in the book better.

I like the book better, but whatever.

What happened in the novels?

Chumara wrote:What happened in the novels?

Kirito asks for Schmidt to write down the names of the guild members so he could interview them. After talking to Asuna, he was about to inventory the note when he closely examined it and realizes he's been had. They assumed that Kains was the victim, because that's the name they've been told, and the person with the name died on the same day/time and of the same condition of continuous piercing damage (CPD, basically why the weapons were sticking onto them) when they checked. When in reality it was Caynze. Everything fell into place after that.

I can summarize the chapter if you want, but they pretty much got the main points in the show. It's just events played out differently and a lot better and, you know, things were actually explained.

Kains died exactly a year before they staged the whole thing. They realized that they could use the similar name to their advantage.

But yeah, they also have a nice meeting with Heathcliff, who hasn't shown up in the anime yet. Also Kirito proposes to Asuna.