Sword Art Online

In the anime, there was a brief mention that the Amusphere had safety measures compared to the Nervegear, but it sounded like they just changed it so it could no longer emit lethal microwave pulses. They never mentioned anything about heartrate monitoring or auto log-out.

Well, it's mentioned in the Gun Gale spin-off books...

^ that's probably why I thought it was in the anime. It's a fairly important plot point there.

Speaking of, my copy of Vol 6 shipped a few days ago.

Edited by 32ndfreeze on Feb 17th 2020 at 1:38:14 AM

Oooh. I'll need to start checking my local shops. Really liking the books...

The option to automatically log a person out if the avatar begins to fall asleep is first mentioned in Sword Art Online Volume 4 and the safety log out if a person's condition becomes abnormal is first mentioned in Sword Art Online Volume 6.

Strange, Amazon says it's not being released until February 25. Also strange is the fact that Kawahara elected to put a soft limit on the number of GGO books because the Unital Ring arc means the end of Gun Gale Online. I say soft limit because Sigsawa could write prequels.

Or side stories set during the main arcs. The SAO cast doing a 'quest' in GGO? :D

It occurred to me that with 15 blocks and five single elimination rounds in the prelims, that meant only 480 people signed up for the Ba B 3. Seems a bit low for a prestigious tournament in the most popular MMO. And we know there weren't any qualifiers to winnow the field before that because Kirito was able to sign right up.

Anyway, on to s2e10.

I was puzzled for a moment when they said Jushi X was actually pronounced Muskeeter X until I remembered that her name was written in kanji and thus those are probably just alternate readings of the kanji. One of those things that doesn't really translate in the subtitles.

Wow, Death Gun must have been gloating for quite a while if Kirito had time to defeat Muskeeter X and come back to save Sinon.

It seems weird that you have to pay for the buggies inside the tournament arena!

For a moment I wondered why Kirito would tell her to destroy the horse until I realized the horse was probably faster and he didn't want Death Gun using it to chase them down. Naturally, that's exactly what happens.

Yet another way to avoid the satellite scan. At first it seemed like a bad design to me that the satellites can be so easily evaded, but I realized that it might be balanced by players who are hiding from the satellite not being able to consult it to see the others' positions. That way there's an actual strategy for players in whether to expose themselves or not.

So Death Gun hasn't hacked the system and isn't actually teleporting. He just has an ordinary invisibility cloak.

Nice that they point out that Kirito being afraid of death in battle is a new thing. SAO!Kirito was downright suicidal.

I'm not sure whether the "murderer" scene is meant to be a flashback to Asada's classmates bullying her. But it is interesting if so, since while kids can be bullied for any or no pretext, in the US, a kid that shot a bank robber in self defense would likely be seen as a hero by their classmates.

Apparently it was a post office, not a bank, and the media covered the whole thing up. So that was just Asada's imagination, not an actual memory.

Anyway, hopefully after that chat, they've got all the whininess out of their systems and can finally focus on stopping a serial killer on the lose.

s2e11: Well that explanation was much more mundane than I expected. My best guess was that he had some sort of virus which caused the players to see something so scary that they had a heart attack out of fright, and then liked the virus to the gun being fired for some reason.

Though it does make me wonder. This means that Death Gun's accomplice physically visited Pale Rider and then Sinon. They must have planned out a specific order he would kill the targets in so the accomplice could know where to head and when. With the invisibility cloak, Death Gun could avoid confrontations and sneak up on his target, but there's no guarantee that he would actually be able to find his targets inside the arena in time. The starting positions were random, right? And what if they got killed in a normal battle first?

Sinon gets a heart rate warning and Kirito talks about auto-log out, so I guess this is the auto-log out feature that another poster mentioned earlier. So it is technically mentioned in the anime. But it's never explained, just implied in a way that assumes the audience already knows about it. I'm surprised the anime didn't throw in a line of exposition about it earlier.

I see one major flaw with Kirito's plan. As he said in the previous episode, Sinon isn't good at close range and Death Gun has an invisibility cloak that makes it easy to sneak up on her. Any plan that involves her leaving the cave is a bad idea. Really, the safest option is for them to stick together at all times.

I thought the recording circle earlier was something Death Gun had summoned, but apparently they are just indications of the normal broadcast that automatically follow players around.

Edited by storyyeller on Feb 16th 2020 at 11:39:28 AM

Which is why we're supposed to agree with Kyouji's assessment that Shino is awesome. Even though he's a deranged lunatic, he's still right about this.

Something I didn't mention about the last episode - I really liked the mention about the SAO task force. I still find it implausible that they weren't able to do anything about the situation in two years, but at least it's nice to have an acknowledgement that the government wasn't just sitting on its hands for two years like it seemed from season 1.

It also occurred to me that Death Gun is probably done after this regardless of what else happens in the tournament. His first two murders seemed to have flown under the radar, and people didn't really believe it yet, but this time he livestreamed it during a high profile egames tournament, and people are already a lot more prepared to believe it this time due to the two previous apparent deaths.

Somehow, I really doubt that Pale Rider is sitting in his apartment undiscovered for three days like the others. Even if the task force didn't manage to get the players' info beforehand, it shouldn't take too long to get it from the tournament organizers when they're facing the threat of bad press for allowing a high profile murder to happen in their game. And if they can start the forensics soon enough, there's going to be enough physical evidence that the Death Guns will be in trouble.

Kikuoka has an agenda far different than simply rescuing the SAO players. That said, why they treated the Player Killers the same as the other survivors is never explained.

The P Kers weren't prosecuted because all the logs of what happened were erased when SAO (the game) ended. There was no proof of who killed who, other than witnesses in a VR environment.

So instead they forcibly medicate survivors irrespective of status. Given that the avatars are identical to the players' real life appearance (as of launch day, anyway), witness testimony should be able to tell them which players need psychiatric treatment, regardless of the ability to prosecute murderers and even if white hat P Kers like Kirito get caught up in it.

That SAO game with Persona 5 collag is happening right now. Not sure if that game has a thread for it.

x5 There's a side story called Sister's Prayer that was included in the limited edition Japanese version of volume nine of the DVD and Blu-Ray Disc sets for SAO II that mentions a plan by the SAO incident taskforce that there were plans to try and free the trapped players. But the plan was never executed because the game was cleared before it could be implemented.

It's mostly little background info for the meat of the side story. I believe it's one of the stories that will be a part of the side story collection Volume 22.

Edited by RussellStar5641 on Feb 18th 2020 at 4:14:10 AM

s2e12: It appears I was right and you do have to be outside to access the satellite map.

I wonder who the mysterious missing player is. No way that isn't going to be plot relevant.

Nice to see Kirito and Sinon finally working as a team without hesitation on the later's part.

I wasn't expecting Yamikaze to go down so easily after all the buildup they gave him.

The part where the two bullets passed each other in slow motion and destroyed each other's scopes was pretty silly.

Yui can apparently hack everything now. It must be nice having a kid that doubles as a remote control for everybody's TV.

Someone finally figured out that Sterben is German for "to die". I'm guessing the nurse is German or studied German or something.

Kirito points out most of what I've been saying. Death Gun naturally refuses to give up.

Apparently Death Gun is actually a better swordsman than Kirito? Or is it just that his sword is more powerful than the lightsaber or something?

Edited by storyyeller on Feb 18th 2020 at 12:28:13 PM

I believe it is less who is better and more Kirito is using a weapon he bought and death gun had to make that with material if I am remembering correctly. Generally earned loot and stuff you make with materials tends to be better than the store bought equipment.

Besides, Kirito only had the jackpot from the "Untouchable" game to spend. Death Gun is the Spoiled Brat son of a doctor, who has been shoveling tens of thousands of Yen into this game. It's called "Pay to Win" for a reason.

s2e13: I was a bit confused by Sinon's Phantom Bullet attack. What was that exactly? Did she fire at him so that the prediction line would distract him? Because it didn't look like any other prediction lines we've seen, and she didn't appear to ever actually fire.

A couple episodes ago, I was thinking about how much like The Hunger Games, with the two main characters hiding out in a cave while emotionally bonding. Luckily, the Ba B also allows co-winners, apparently.

Apparently the missing player was a bit of a red herring. They were killed by Death Gun and never became story relevant at the last moment.

Also, I definitely didn't see Shinkawa coming.

She pretty much spooked DG with the prediction line rather than actually fire a shot. Which is why it is called a phantom bullet.

Edited by Darthwyn on Feb 19th 2020 at 12:10:39 PM

Her Phantom Bullet bit was aiming at him so the bullet line appeared and he'd dodge out of the way but she didn't actually fire.

Edited by doineedaname on Feb 19th 2020 at 12:16:33 PM

I was confused because all the previous prediction lines in the show were only shown when someone fired, and were only visible to the target.

No, they appear when you put your finger on the trigger and allow the target circle to appear.

s2e14:

I was shocked when Kirito got syring'd, even though I knew there was absolutely no chance he would actually die. Still, I think getting stabbed in the heart monitor is probably the lamest copout in the series so far, and that's saying something. I was hoping that the solution would be to just rush Kirito to the hospital. Heck, they'd even still have his bed warm. Maybe the ambulance could take Shinkawa while they're at it.

Shinkawa apparently survived, somehow. Guess we can't have our main characters in a kids show be murderers, even if it was self defence. ... oh wait.

And now, time for Asada to stand up to the bullies. I guess almost getting murdered puts things in perspective.

... or not. Did that girl seriously just try to murder a classmate? And at school in broad daylight no less? At first I thought it was just a fake gun, but apparently it was a real gun and really loaded, it just had the safety on. Wow. I kind of feel like the bully needs to be locked up for attempted murder, though even just the armed robbery would put you away for quite a while.

Given the ping when she shot the can, I guess it's possible it was loaded with a fake bullet or it was a pellet gun or something, but you'd think Asada would have noticed that and remarked on it when talking about the gun. Overall this scene didn't make much sense.

And now for the epilogue narration. Apparently, one of the Death Guns got away. I was wondering what would happen now that the story is seemingly over with half the season still to go. Presumably the second half of season 2 will be about confronting the remaining Death Gun. I bet it will be considerably harder than the inspector seemed to think.

Asada gets welcomed into the Main Character club. I hope Asuna doesn't get jealous.

No Asada, sterben is not "a hospital word for death". It is literally German for "to die". It's an ordinary, everyday word. There's nothing medical about it. The only thing that could make that little subplot more surreal is if they had chosen English instead of German. Now that would have left the American audience rather perplexed!

I wonder how long that family was waiting back there. Did they have time for two slices of pie as well?

I recommend remembering that moment regarding the drug for later it is rather important.