Sword Art Online

OK, just watched EP 8.

Surely there are better ways to do an Uncomfortable Elevator Moment than ripping off NGE's Leave the Camera Running shot?

"Yup. That tasted purple."

I for one find it weirder how an MMORPG has something like an elevator room to begin with.

Anyway just watched 9.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PALE RIDERRRR

and thus the only contestant that could beat kirito is lost.

Anyway though I felt that the directing this episode was kind of poor, at least relatively speaking. The animation quality too, although not by enough to make it bad. Blue-haired Asuna still looks fantastic for one.

Also I'm playing the PS Vita SAO game right now, and apparently the reason why Sugu is in the game is because she put on a Nerve Gear with SAO installed already that she took from her friend(who hadn't worn it) in secret or something. Doesn't explain why she has an ALO avatar in it though. Even Sinon(who I have not seen such an explanation for yet) has her real life appearance in SAO. (Sinon should also still be having the issues with guns since it's impossible for Kirito to have been to GGO yet, along with Death Gun, especially since I'm pretty sure GGO doesn't even exist yet to provide her exposure therapy.)

MMORPGs are serious business.

Plus she's portrayed as using a bow, which don't exist in canon!SAO.

"Yup. That tasted purple."

I think that could be explained as something that was intended to be implemented that wasn't in the final release, which became available after the whole glitchy weirdness happened and the Cardinal System went whack.

I haven't actually reached the point where Sinon starts becoming able to use them though.

MMORPGs are serious business.

Episode 9:

• Pay close attention, SAO survivors. Y'all might catch on to some- Oh, Klein's on the ball! And Asuna's gonna have some words with director dude.
• The Pale Rider came for... The Pale Rider. A moment, please...
• It's hard to come up with names that are ultra different from your real name. Heck, Asuna uses her real name!
• Kirito and Sinon, the perfect tag team (for that world) has been born!
• ...Until DG had them punked. But why!? Of all the guns, Sinon's gonna be done in by the gun of her wildest nightmares!? Way to ruin her rehab, DG...

I'll just get this out of the way, too. Cait Sith Silica's just the cutest!

Noooo pale rider! Not that stopping the in-game bullet mattered anyway.

The poor guy fighting both sinon AND kirito at once, he had 2 (I presume) dead tags. (Also, that's one powerful sniper rifle)

Should have expected the first guess to be wrong, and talk about a bad choice (for sinon) of death gun's...gun.

Yay cliffhanger.

That's because it's this puppy. Its an anti-materiel rifle designed to take down vehicles and the like. Against an unarmoured target at such close range, overkill only begins to cover it.

hey guys i'm back and i'm going complain about SAO again nobody cares about me

Episode 8 Alright, why the hell did everyone in GGO mistaken Kirito as a women? Kirito clearly has a male voice! And I don't care it's based on a Light Novel! I don't care Sinon's explanation about most player in GGO are idiots either!

and so kirito did a cute pose for the players in ggo

So, the match begin. When Sinon tries to snipe on someone, Kirito suddenly appear and um... prevent her from shooting that cowboy guy. He tells Sinon why he is there because he swam from the river and put he temporarily put his item into his storage.

and then we got treated a picture of kirito swimming in the river naked...

All the sudden, Pale Rider came out of nowhere and killed that cowboy guy. Which leads Kirito thinking Pale Rider could be Death Gun from Laughing Muffin because of he's really agile. And then Death Gun appear and shoot with a stun gun. He then holds a gun aiming at the paralyzed Pale Rider. Kirito then tells Sinon to shoot immediately.

The episode ends with a cliffhanger.

Episode 9 (I'm actually surprised this episode doesn't have too much flashback.)

So, everyone in ALO watched the GGO tournament...... along with Klein. We can't forget about him. They talk about Death Gun and Kirito.

So Sinon didn't actually hit Death Gun and giving Death Gun a chance to kill Pale Rider. RIP Pale Rider. We may not know him that much, but he's a really cool player.

Also, I must be really dumb to know that Death Gun isn't his true name... ha ha...

so sinon and kirito chase death gun and on their way they meet another player blocking their way sinon didn't like this guy so she killed him.

They reached an empty building that has crows for some reason. Sinon then thought after dealing with Death Gun she will defeat Kirito in game, but then she got paralyzed by Death Gun. Then Death Gun show her a gun the gun that she used to kill that crazy man. Causing Sinon to have a breakdown and he pull his trigger.

The episode ends with yet another cliffhanger. Boo hoo.

God, now I dislike MMORPG that focusing on gun. It means the writer can take advantage at it and put rather cheap cliffhanger. The first cliffhanger wasn't that bad. As Pale Rider isn't the main character. Not so much with the second one, Since Sinon is a main character.

Did I mention I hate how SAO II overuse flashbacks? I mean seriously, why do they keep showing up ARGO?! DO THEY-

Gunner x vs Sterben. Why you no speak German Kirito/Sinon? It would have been obvious!

Pour y voir clair, il suffit souvent de changer la direction de son regard www.xkcd.com/386/

Well, thanks to people posting stuff above I think I know how this cliffhanger ends Honestly, it would probably annoy me otherwise DG can't kill Sinon without an IRL helper and he only targeted her bc of Kirito. He has to prep and coordinate to actually kill plays so she'll just lose when he shoots her. This probably allows Kirito to figure it out also, and he's safe due to the nurse

Up to episode 10 in the first season: Well, that escalated quickly. Kirito and Asuna went from BST to married soulmates in like 3 eps. I suppose it's a nice change from the normal animie relationship progress speed.

edited 31st Aug '14 12:04:31 PM by kiukiuclk

Death Gun has had Sinon targeted from the start. Remember earlier in the season, when he was listening to other people talk about him and he pulled up a list of targets that included the two dead guys (at that time) and Sinon?

Author of The Second Coming (NGE) and The Coin (Haruhi).

The anime hints at it when Kirito first enters GGO, when random guy tries to buy his avatar. Kirito wound up with the M9000 avatar which is specifically designed to look like one of the female avatar sets (the F4500 I think, but would have to double-check). And despite GGO (or at least the Japanese servers) being a complete and utter sausage party, the M9000 series is rare enough that most people would think its a an F4500 (or whatever number it is) unless they're told.

And most people don't hear him talk for any great amount of time.

GGO seems to have some voice-filtering going on - Kirito's VA speaks in a higher pitch for his GGO avatar (even before he notices its appearance), and Sinon's voice is deeper than Shino's. So even if his voice doesn't sound that convincingly female, you can apply Literary Agent Hypothesis and assume it's supposed to.

... so why not actually DO that in the show, so the audience doesn't get confused?

Voices in-game need not have any connection to real-life voices. It might actually be impossible to easily replicate, in every detail, a person's real life voice in-game. I personally think this is one reason why Suguha never recognizes her brother in Alfheim. In the anime adaptation, though, the range of the actors puts some constraint on how different the voices can be. Sawashiro definitely tries to make Sinon sound different from Shino. Kirito doesn't really, except when he's in trap mode. When Kirito is in his normal voice in Alfheim, I think it should be taken as a conceit that his voice might actually be different—-substantially so.

Author of The Second Coming (NGE) and The Coin (Haruhi).

Yeah, that was my guess. I mean, the nerve gear doesn't seem to have a microphone so the voices must be synthesized in some way since it's all direct neural connections. So it's pretty unlikely that someone would sound the same I think.

edited 31st Aug '14 5:51:27 PM by kiukiuclk

I vaguely recall voices being outright different for your player character in VRMM Os outside Sword Art Online in the light novel.

However, voices are fairly distinctive in anime, and they don't have to bother hiring new voice actors for the same character if they just have them use the same one. and there is no way in hell i'd have preferred a different voice actor in favor of what Kirito's voice actor pulled off in episode 4

You say that like it's not totally obvious what's going to happen in episode 10.

And I've too much experience with historical drama cliffhangers to think you would need guns for that.

Seems the reason why Sinon is in SAO:Infinity Moment/Hollow Fragment is because of a major thing revealed in Mother's Rosario.

edited 31st Aug '14 6:48:01 PM by YuukiAsuna

MMORPGs are serious business.

Episode 10:

• ...Yep, DG turned Sinon into Shinon. And he rides a horse. So, he really is... The Pale Rider- *pelted by tomatoes*
• Who would want to hold hands with a murderer? He would. Since he has killed before. Kuradeel, I'm talking about. The other LC goons are irrelevant to me. Well, Kuradeel's irrelevant to me as well.
• ...So DG is Sterben? Because Gunner Musketeer X is a female player. Shame she only had like four seconds of screen-time.

edited 7th Sep '14 12:00:52 AM by Diamite

One thing I only noticed after watching the anime is that it's weird for Kirito to be able to take Musketeer(which I am assuming is meant to be furigana above kanji) X's rifle and grenades, since weapons don't drop in the Bullet of Bullets tournament.

Either this means that it's going to go back to her inventory after the tournament is over but can otherwise be used by other people, or it's just inconsistent writing.

Also I just finished Volume 14 of the L Ns and oh my god what do you mean it's still not over, they just defeated the person hyped up to be the main antagonist and Kirito managed to go as far as finding a system console. Is Sword Art Online III going to be 70 episodes or something?

On the other hand web novel spoilers I've read tell me Asuna is going to show up to be with Kirito again...except this time she has actual competition? I'm honestly not sure what to think of that, mostly because Kirito being in the Underworld for over TEN YEARS and making a childhood friend out of Alice makes her an actually significant contestant for his affection, especially with how he seems to have had his memory damaged enough to forget the exact identity of Asuna for now. I think this is the first time I've become unable to predict how Kirito will act according to the situation. Still rooting for Kiriasu though.

MMORPGs are serious business.

(web novel spoilers) The situation gets...complex, but honestly I'm really rather tired of the harem antics in the series. Every member of Kirito's harem gets a chance to go see him in a coma and try to bring him out of it.

Oh and hah, random skinnydipping Kirito fanservice was unexpected but great◊.

Also, about Sterben and the protags not noticing anything about the name:

In case they haven't mentioned it, while Kirito and Sinon do indeed not know German, they also immediately assumed that the player behind Sterben just misspelt Steven. It's not like they can look it up in a dictionary in the middle of a match anyway.

edited 7th Sep '14 2:39:43 AM by HanabiraKage

Give the God Eater game thread some love!

Episode 10 is boring. It's just Kirito and Sinon talking to each other most of the time and talked about stuff the audience already knew. They could just abridged that. You wanted me to talk about Gunner X? She didn't really appear for that long anyway. But she looks like a character that could be unexpectedly popular.

Given how Musketeer X went out of her way to introduce herself(and probably corrected Kirito on how to say her name) in the novel, I'm guessing that she's kind of a chuunibyou, or at least a roleplayer before she is a tournament contestant.

Other thing I noticed from reading volume 14 is that the Sword Skills other than the ones we already knew were canon (i.e. Vertical Square, Starburst Stream, Flashing Penetrator, etc.) in the PS Vita game are probably made up by the dev team instead of being from the author himself. For instance, the most advanced Sword Skill for one handed straight swords in Volume 14 is mentioned as being Nova Ascension, but in the Vita game it's Phantom Rave.

does that somehow lead to how Asuna acts in There is but one ultimate way, in which she is so mind-blowingly out-of-character it's lower on the canon list than 16.5's details

MMORPGs are serious business.

But wasn't there established to be a guy who entered the tournament with no weapons and just looted them from defeated enemies?

So, if I understand the VN spoilers correctly, Kazuto was in a coma for TEN YEARS for some reason or another and this led to massive memory loss including almost completely forgetting about Asuna. Then there's this girl named Alice who actually is a serious contender for Kazuto's affections because the authors hates people who loves KazuAsu (seriously, that is the only conclusion I can draw from this). Lastly, the story is FINALLY going to stop being about Kazuto OR Asuna and finally be about Kazuto AND Asuna again? This is surely a sign of the end times.

Let the joy of love give you an answer! Check out my book!