Sword Art Online

(End of Alicization spoilers) I just realized how Hilarious in Hindsight Kyouji's rant at the Phantom Bullet climax is. Kyouji going on about being reincarnated in another world with Shino and starting a family there together is supposed to demonstrate that he's completely lost his mind, but then Kirito and Asuna proceed to do exactly that at the end of Alicization Lasting (even if the part about having kids is left ambiguous). It becomes even more hilarious when you remember that Kikuoka is willing to recruit criminals to Project Alicization and to erase people's memories when they dive into the Underworld. In short, Kikuoka, the man responsible for recruiting Kirito to investigate the Death Gun murders, could have given Kyouji his wildest fantasy and left everyone else none the wiser. I wonder what his reaction will be when he finds out about this.

Pretty much... Tho one of the 'issues' in Alicization was how they were trying to keep the A.I.s uncorrupted. It's even a thing later when they realize some of the programmers did corrupt stuff by accident.

So, considering he was nuts, probably not?

The entire point behind logging Kirito in as a child was to influence the A.I.s. They didn't want his memories from the real world, but they did want his personality to alter their growth. Kikuoka wasn't satisfied with the quality of AI the Underworld was producing and was unaware that Yanai was actively sabotaging the project, but that was because he wanted warriors, not saints. Make no mistake, he hired Kirito to be the serpent for his Garden of Eden, and he didn't tell Kirito this because he knew he would never agree if he knew the real reason he was being hired. When Kirito learns that rather than logging him into a test environment for ten days, they had logged him into the Underworld for ten years, he is livid, and it wasn't because they stole ten years of his life, but because of what that experiment did to Alice and Eugeo. The character page describes Kikuoka as morally gray, but that's not true in the slightest. He's Affibly Evil, the seductive kind of Satanic Archetype, who does favors for the protagonists to get them indebted to him so he can exploit them, but the atrocities he commits far surpass those of Kayaba. At best, he could be considered A Lighter Shade of Black compared to Gabriel Miller and Vassago Cassels.

For the record, the reason I harp on this so much is because the entire sci-fi genre is meant to be a warning about the dangers of misusing technology, but there are people out there who think Jurassic Park and Project Alicization are great ideas that should actually be implemented.

Edited by mythbuster on Jul 8th 2021 at 8:17:24 AM

s2e5: After all that hurry and taking the moped and all, they just casually stroll into the registration building? I would have thought that they would run in. I certainly would have run.

And the secret's out the bag. Sinon is NOT happy. At least they got it over with faster that the Sugu secretly crushing on her brother thing.

ep6: Not much to say about this one. I was wondering how the final would go, since obviously Kirito and Sinon can't both win, short of a Hunger Games style twist. All I can say is that match must have been really anti-climatic for the onlookers. Instead of fighting, all they got to see was two people talk for a while and then one resigns.

Also, it was cool getting a flashback to a story in SAO we didn't see before.

P.S. The opening song animation shows the characters in ALO, which makes me think there's more to the current story arc than it seems. I wonder how Asuna and ALO will become involved with the Sinon/Death Gun/GGO story arc.

Edited by storyyeller on Feb 12th 2020 at 12:46:56 PM

I want to ask something: does the series get better? I have hear people who tell me that unlike all other isekai who copy SAO, the seried and the writer kinda try to improve, I saw accel world and I would agree.

So what do you said?.

I've seen people who hated the first two seasons turn around to alicization so I'd think so.

Honestly I'm watching Alice on Toonami & I cannot notice a major difference between it & the previous seasons in terms of story execution or characters.

Its just more SAO, its the same as always.

That sounds more like a you problem.

I mean someone asked if the series genuinely improved & I just gave my honest opinion on if it did.

s2e7: Hey, Sugu still exists! I was beginning to think she'd phased out of existence at the end of ALO or something.

Sinon talking with her friend about going to a bar in GGO made me wonder if alcohol actually works in VR. Does it somehow simulate drunkenness in your brain?

I also wonder how the ALO characters are going to watch the match. Are they streaming video from GGO onto a screen in ALO? There's no reason that would be impossible, but it seems sort of weird. For that matter, people going into VR just to watch a simulated video screen is kind of weird too when you think about it. For that matter, they should have better spectating. If the whole world's simulated, there's no real reason the spectators couldn't float around the battlefield like ghosts or something.

No, the only thing VR alcohol does is simulate the taste. It's popular with teenagers because it's legal and you can drink all you want without getting drunk.

s2e8:

I still find it a little weird how much gets simulated inside the VR for no apparent reason. Like, they're all in a virtual world. There's no reason to have a simulated satellite. They could just show the player's locations no matter what is going on, since they're all in a game! Likewise, there's no real reason to simulate stuff like elevators. Especially since we already know they get teleported into the arena anyway.

Given that two of the three unknowns have names associated with death, the odds seem pretty high.

Kirito finally reveals everything... well a tiny bit anyway. Man, when are they finally going to clear up the secrets and team up instead of fighting each other pointlessly?

Given the way they're focusing on Pale Rider, must be him.

Hey, Pale Rider uses a sword and is really fast, just like Kirito. Maybe he trained his skills in SAO as well? He doesn't look at all like Death Gun, but Death Gun's kind of conspicuous. I was just thinking it would make sense for him to run multiple avatars anyway to avoid attracting notice.

Wait, did Kirito strip naked when going swimming? All those spectators must have gone crazy. Good thing the views available don't seem to zoom very much.

Maybe he's playing dead in hopes of ambushing whoever shot him.

Stun bullets? Sounds like Laughing Coffin.

Guess Death Bullet is using his normal avatar after all. Is he trying to kill off everyone for real now? Before it seemed like he was targeting specific people, not just whoever he happened to play against in a tournament.

Shooting Death Bullet is the logical course of interaction. He's a villain so he'll obviously dodge it somehow despite the fact that that should be impossible, but it would interrupt the RL execution. Although it seems a bit weird to me because we already know that however he's killing people isn't actually tied to his in game weapon, given that one of them happened when he shot a TV screen, rather than the player's actual avatar, who wasn't even in GGO at the time.

P.S. What do people think of the theme songs? So far, the ALO ending theme is my favorite, or at least the one that has stuck in my head the most. Speaking of which, I'm a little puzzled by the animation for the GGO ending theme. Is that Sinon hugging Asada? and Asada with her younger self?

Edited by storyyeller on Feb 14th 2020 at 11:35:48 AM

I believe the satellite is meant to add to the tactical nature of combat since it does not give a constant location of the target and the fact that you can also prevent yourself from being picked up. Kirito showed that it was possible to avoid the scan.

For elevators probably for those that don't want to waste teleport items since if my memory is accurate most of the time that is an item or the player being sent to an event.

I know GGO doesn't allow players to teleport under normal circumstances. The real question is why.

To be fair a lot of games still make you walk from point a to point B and even games with teleports have limited spots they go to and a pretty decent cool down period between them. At least I know with Old Republic you had limited teleports that only went to set locations not sure if other games work differently but most I have played make you walk most of the time.

s2e9: I thought that them shooting at Death Gun would be enough to interrupt the execution and save Pale Rider, but apparently it was all for naught.

Death Gun disappears behind a pillar. He probably has a way to teleport at will. I doubt he went swimming like they think. Actually, he's probably not even on the player list. He probably just hacked the system or something. After all, he must be doing something weird anyway if he's able to kill people IRL.

Sinon being the voice of reason for once. There really is no reason for them to split up.

Man, Kirito is absurdly fast and acrobatic when the animators feel like it. Not only does he manage to deflect ALL the bullets, but he doesn't even stand still while doing it. The whole time he's doing all sorts of random backflips and spins and stuff.

I'm not really sure what kind of cover a sniper can provide. They're not big on the whole suppressing fire thing.

So it's down to Jishu X and Sterben. I wonder who it could be. Maybe it's the one whose name literally means die?

Apparently, Jishu also means Death Gun backwards. So I guess all three of the newbies had death related names.

Well if they're going after Jishu X, it's definitely Sterben. Shame neither of them know any German.

Sinon is seriously still thinking about her vendetta against Kirito? She really needs to get her priorities straight. They're hunting down a freaking murderer. One wrong move and people might die for real.

Oh crap.

Waiting for Kirito to dash in at any moment to stop him, even though theoretically he should be elsewhere. I wonder how they'll explain it. Maybe he went back to check on Sinon? Maybe he did hear the scuffle?

I wonder if that's actually the gun. The way Sinon sees the dead bank robber's face makes me thing that it's a hallucination. Maybe the way Death Gun kills people is by giving them hallucinations to terrorize them to death.

Guess Sinon isn't going to heroically overcome her paralysis after all.

Well, I was thinking earlier about how a lot of the early s2 episodes didn't have cliffhangers, which left them feeling kind of inconclusive, but they definitely aren't skimping on the cliffhanger department now.

P.S. One thing that stood out to me was the references to Po H as the leader of the Laughing Coffin, since that name had never been mentioned before. I assumed it was a reference to something elaborated on in the novels.

Edited by storyyeller on Feb 15th 2020 at 12:37:37 PM

The character who's Death Gun showed up in that 'Ghost Story' episode with Kirito and Asuna in the Aincrad Arc.

Amusingly that bit was written AFTER Phantom Bullet, but ended up animated first.

Is that the one where the people were faking in-town murders and cornered the guy to get a confession on level 19, only to be ambushed by Laughing Coffin?

Yes, he was one of the Laughing Coffin members in that episode.

By the way, one thing that struck me about the last episode was how Asuna disappeared immediately after logging out from ALO. Maybe they have it set out so you can log out immediately when indoors, but it's weird after they made such a big deal about that last season. And then it occurred to me that the downside of Death Gun's showboating is that his would-be victims can just log out to avoid the real death. Presumably Pale Rider didn't believe the rumors and Sinon wasn't thinking straight, but if he keeps going and becomes better known, it seems like people would just start logging out when he catches them.

ALO allows immediate logout in safe areas. It's only in the field that your avatar persists for a time.

As for GGO, logging out is not permitted to contestants during the Bullet of Bullets. Given that Death Gun counted shooting a TV with Xexeed on it, it's not clear that taking out the target before Death Gun could would even help.

That's kind of weird come to think about it.

Feels like that should be mega illegal given what happened with SAO.

How does that mesh with the automatic logging out based on heart rate with the Amusphere?

What's this about auto logging out with the Amusphere?

Anyway, I was going to say they could just physically pull the plug, but I suppose the player themselves can't do that since they're in VR.

It's definitely mentioned in the light novels in the ALO arc.

I thought it was in the anime too.

The Amu Sphere monitors the heart rate ect of the user and logs you out automatically if the body shows signs of distress. Or if a user falls asleep.

Basically safety features as a result of the Nerve Gear.

Near as we can tell, the auto-logout still works, and would presumably lock the player out of the game for the duration of the tournament.