Sword Art Online

Huh? I just read the novel a few days ago and she appears in chapter 5, which is basically right after where the first episode of the anime ended. Even if they didn't change anything she'd appear in episode 2.

That's why he basically said "if you include the volume 2 side stories, she appears a lot latter." Volume 2 takes place during the time-frame of volume 1.

edited 12th Jul '12 6:06:18 AM by Belian

Yu hav nat sein bod speeling unntil know. (cacke four undersandig tis)the cake is a lie!

We seem to be derailing back to LN. Sorry, only anime watchers! I assure you there were no spoilers in the above discussion!

Saturday can't come soon enough for me... I', already planning on rewatching episode two five times too...

Meh. I don't see why there can't be LN spoilers in this thread, especially about Aincrad. We're still discussing about potential anime content anyway, and the spoilers are all hidden so if you highlight them, it's your own fault.

I don't see why not either, but, you know, just in case we... slip or something.

btw, the titles of the next few episodes are as follows(from what I heard, not sure if true)

2-Beater, 3-Red nosed reindeer, 4-the black swordsman,5-murder case in the area.

I guess we're going to see Sachi followed by Silica and laughing coffin guys, in that order. The speed seems to be really fast if this is true.

I have no idea what ya'll are talking about, but I've liked what I've seen so far. /clueless outside of the first episode

But that'll soon change thanks to baka-tsuki.

edited 12th Jul '12 4:29:06 PM by MurkyMuse

People are mirrors. If you smile, a smile will be reflected.

Murder in the Area is great because it has a guy named Grimlock.

If that is true, the pacing seems really, really fast. Aria gets just one episode and the story jumps to RNR in the next? Not sure if I'm liking what I see.

Frankly, Aria can't handle more than one episode without dragging. RNR works just fine as the third, since the absence of other main characters won't be as jarring, and people might not actually anticipate the outcome.

Anyway, it's better than jumping two years like the LN does.

edited 12th Jul '12 8:19:04 PM by Savoie

Just be happy they didn't translate it as Grinrock or Glimrock or something...(actually, most translators from BT are also following the anime to update the names to the 'official' ones.)

Yeah, but his name is a bit of a plot point. Still, it's a great name! Me Grimlock no guilty, me innocent!

edited 12th Jul '12 11:20:09 PM by Savoie

Personally, I thought that the two year timeskip was the best part. It changed it from a story about a guy playing a game where death is real, which quite frankly is a one of the most overused premises ever, to a story about a world where people inside the game treat it as seriously as life and death. Jumping ahead two years gives time for us to believably infer that everyone's been doing this for a while and it's sort of become "normal". They have a whole culture built around it. Obviously descended from gamer culture, but with enough little quirks to be interesting. There's a reason the author likes to go back and write sidestories in Aincrad rather than the other settings, and that's because it's quite simply the most interesting.

Telling the whole thing chronologically loses a lot of that, and the random jumps of months that'll need to occur are far more jarring than a single timeskip.

edited 13th Jul '12 6:24:47 AM by Clarste

Non-spoiler for anime watchers:

The original Light Novel jumps past the next few episodes and immediately moves the plot to the point where everything has "settled down" and we get to see how the characters/people are coping with the situation without seeing all the "navel gazing" while the anime is going to follow/use a number of short stories that were set in the timeframe of the first novel and we will see more about how the characters get to that point.

YMMV on which way is better. No one will be able to do a completely honest/un-biased comparison of the two, so let's not even try to compare them.

Yu hav nat sein bod speeling unntil know. (cacke four undersandig tis)the cake is a lie!

That was a pretty great episode.

It was terrible. Skipped all the details that made the setting interesting (like, why in the world do they have to eat in-game?*

), and had horrible problems with mood whiplash. It was hard to take the guy's death seriously. Also, the fight animations were kind of... over the top? I know it's a game and they're using "Sword Skills" instead of just swinging the sword around, but having the boss jumping around on pillars and whatnot was just silly. The game systems are all about formations and careful control of positioning, so something like that just makes no sense.

edited 14th Jul '12 6:53:45 PM by Clarste

Well, I was wrong: Aria was actually in an awkward zone that needed at least one and a half episodes.

So, for those who watched the episode, here's what you missed:

Aria begins with Kirito exploring the dungeon underneath the boss room, where he finds something unexpected: a lone rapier user cutting through mooks with a single well-executed but inefficient sword technique. The rapier user flubs against one of the kobolds and is rescued by Kirito, who learns that the rapier user has been living out of the cave and powerleveling for the last three months, getting only three hours of sleep a night or less.

Kirito realizes this is unhealthy, and invites the user back to the nearest town for a meeting, the one in the episode. He also encounters another beta tester known as Argo the Rat, who acts as a middleman and information broker. This sets off a B-plot of sorts involving the +6 sword of his and a mysterious buyer who really wants it and is willing to pay more than it's worth. It turns out that the buyer was the guy raising a fuss about beta testers, and he was willing to pay so much for it so that he could have it for the battle itself, but that's not terribly important.

When it comes to the battle itself, it was (surprise surprise) quite a bit more tedious, like an actual boss battle. The groups were arranged by weapon type and defensive skill, with tanks and damage-dealers rotating on the boss itself and crowd control and miscellaneous (inc. Kirito's group) focusing on the mobs. This all went like clockwork until Kirito realized that it wasn't a talwar. Unlike in the episode, it wasn't Diabel alone attacking; instead, the entire front line got caught up in a massive twirling AOE attack and knocked back into the yellow. Kirito attacks to give them time to recover, and Asuna gets everone's attention by taking off her gender-concealing robe and starts directing the remaining groups alongside Kirito.

There's also a sequence where Kirito teaches Asuna that you can rent rooms in NPC houses cheaply, and Asuna has her first bath in three months. Oh yeah, and this is also the first chronological point to establish that Asuna had absolutely no experience with games before trying out her bro's new MMO on a lark.

Hope that helps fill in the cracks.

edited 14th Jul '12 7:01:14 PM by Savoie

In other words, they trimmed it down to fit into an episode, losing more minor plot points in the process, exactly like the writer's other work that's currently running in anime form.

Am I supposed to be surprised?

edited 14th Jul '12 6:58:55 PM by burnpsy

This episode was pretty rushed; it looks like Aria really couldn't be done in one episode. The amount of stuff that was cut amounted to a little less than half of the story. Diabel became a good guy, Argo doesn't exist, Kirito's and Asuna's first meeting was cut entirely, along with all of the associated character development and most importantly, Asuna's tsuntsun moments were all cut. At the rate we're going, I think the anime is pretty much going to speed through Aincrad to have enough airtime to squeeze in Fairy Dance =/

edited 14th Jul '12 7:02:50 PM by Thrombin

Given what's been said about Fairy Dance, I'd do that if I were in the anime studio's shoes, too. Sounds like the perfect place to stop.

Oh god please no fairy dance. It was good, but... no. No no no.

I'm mainly annoyed at how they removed all of Asuna's characterization at the beginning of the story. That one isn't exactly a minor point in terms of her character and relationship with Kirito.

Fiary Dance was okay but I'd really prefer an expanded Aincrad over rushing through both arcs and sacrificing the quality of the story. This episode already showed that the compressing the already patchwork story of Aincrad was not a good idea.

edited 14th Jul '12 7:06:34 PM by Thrombin

Reminds me of how they removed the not-so-minor piece of information that Chiyuri and Taumi broke up at the start of the second Accel World book.

Again, just the level of cutting I expected.

And, given how Aincrad ends, that would be a terrible, terrible place to end the season when you can't guarantee a second.

No, it's the perfect place to end a season. I don't know what you've heard, but it's not a cliffhanger in any sense.

It's not a cliffhanger, but... well, I can see both sides here, that's all I can say without crazy levels of spoilers.

What I heard was Kirito waking up with everyone else trapped in a different game, forcing him to go into that one to rescue Asuna, which I read directly off the trope page.

Looking at it from the perspective of an anime-only viewer, I'd rather it end with everyone safe.

edited 14th Jul '12 7:13:15 PM by burnpsy