Sword Art Online

The last member of Death Gun isn't confronted until the first episode of Season 3, set six months later. The rest of Season 2 is the Calibur side story and then the Mother's Rosary arc, in which you'll learn why I refer to Kirito X Asuna as Rosaryshipping.

What, the part where Kirito gets stabbed in the heart monitor?

One Death Gun accomplice is still at large with one syringe of sux. He evades capture for six months before being confronted by Kirito and Asuna at the start of Season 3.

Also, Kirito's birthday is October 7, the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.

Edited by mythbuster on Feb 21st 2020 at 9:08:07 AM

Less the getting stabbed part but that is rather important but more the drug itself since yes one accomplice is still at large and would have one injector on hand.

And on that note, I'd like to complain about the MC of the spinoff being Too Dumb to Live because she doesn't take the threat of someone killing those who die in the game seriously, even though it's only been two months since the Death Gun incident, one of the accomplices is still at large, and she is exactly the sort of person who'd be targeted by Death Gun.

But how popularized was the Death Gun anyway? The ONLY mention in the side series it gets is Kirito and Sinon teaming up in the Bo B. That's it.

No Asada, sterben is not "a hospital word for death". It is literally German for "to die". It's an ordinary, everyday word.

Apparently Japanese hospitals sometimes use German on charts/in conversation when talking about other patients incase people are around while they talk.

Huh, that's interesting. I assumed the nurse had just worked at a German hospital in the past or something.

Gratuitous German: It's not just in anime anymore.

Death Gun was treated as a joke on internet forums until the Bullet of Bullets, but then another two people died. Logically, the top GGO players should know about it.

Sorry. Unless my memory is really bad, it doesn't get referenced again.

So apparently I was wrong about the second half of season 2. Apparently, it's Mother's Rosary. I'm guessing this is when they finally get around to the Aincrad redo that was hinted at at the end of season 1. I was wondering when they were going to do it. I had assumed it had just happened offscreen prior to GGO. I also heard that a group of terminally ill players named the Sleeping Knights will show up at some point, so I'm guessing this is their arc.

I also noticed Netflix has something called GGO: Another Story. I've heard this is an alternate version of Mother's Rosario where the heroes fail, so I guess now I'm about to see the Good Timeline.

Also, the Not With the Safety On, You Won't entry clarified the thing with the bullies and the gun. Apparently, it was an airsoft gun that just looked like a real gun. That explains why it didn't make a normal firing noise when Asada shot the can. It also says that the gun actually had two safeties, which the bullies didn't realize. Presumably, this was all explained in the novels, as it definitely wasn't in the show.

Anyway, on to the back half of season 2:

s2e15: Huh, apparently the New Aincrad thing did happen offscreen after all. Looks like this arc will be about ALO again. Isn't Excalibur the sword that the bad guy tried to summon at the end?

Kirito has already forgotten that he invited Asada into the Hero Club. Luckily Sugu hasn't.

And now for the new opening theme. Based on the opening intro, looks like this is definitely going to be ALO centric, and involve all seven of the main characters, instead of just Sinon and Kirito. Speaking of which, I was surprised that the ALO crowd didn't become relevant in Phantom Bullet at all, since they were briefly shown in the opening theme, and Undyne!Asuna was even specifically shown swimming underwater, intercut with Death Gun. But she never even goes near water in the actual show and the ALO crowd don't do anything but sit there and occasionally comment on events. Not that opening animations need to be 100% accurate to the show, but I did find it a little weird.

I spotted a Cat Sith archer at the end, who will presumably be Sinon. Guess she likes to stick with long range weapons. There was also a shot of someone in a cage which caught my eye.

Asada converted to ALO offscreen. I was wondering about the Excalibur quest before because there's only one sword, so it seemed kind of unfair to everyone else. But it looks like they're going to go on quests to help everyone else find a legendary weapon later.

One thing that struck me is how low the stakes are. All the previous arcs have had a conflict that was a matter of life and death and/or being mind controlled and raped in the case of Fairy Dance. But this arc is basically just an ordinary MMO event, albeit a pretty epic sounding one. It also struck me as a bit weird during Urd's speech every time I remembered that someone programmed this all in. Putting in a quest telling players to inadvertently help the villain and not even get the promised reward just seems mean. I guess I could understand it if this is meant to be a multipart event with the main event being the Frost King invading the surface, and this would just get the players extra mad and ready to try to beat him, but it seems kind of convoluted. Though obviously, knowing the main characters, it's not actually going to come to that. If you put all that trouble into the event, why program it so it's even possible to avert the main part of the event?

Nobody programmed this. Kayaba programmed the Cardinal system to create quests endlessly, scouring the internet for inspiration. Which is why they now need to clear this Ragnarok quest to prevent ALO from destroying itself.

It was actually the Cardinal System that did it, not the designers.

As to low stakes, well... keep watching.

That sounds more like an alternative name for Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online which is a spin off focusing on Gun Gale Online. While Kirito and Sinon are mentioned no one from the main story actually appears and focuses on an entirely different characters.

Oops, you're right. It is called Alternative Gun Gale Online.

I thought it was going to be the timeline where they failed to stop the frost king and he invades the surface of ALO like the game designers some AI intended, but apparently not.

Edited by storyyeller on Feb 23rd 2020 at 9:42:54 AM

s2e16:

Well, that justifies the plot reasonably well. I would say the designers were incompetent for letting Cardinal do that, but ALO was originally designed by a guy who was mostly concerned with using it to trap SAO players and perform mind control experiments on them. He probably just copied SAO without understanding the code.

So apparently the stakes for this arc are "ALO might get deleted". Still not life or death like all the previous arcs, but more than it seemed at first. This arc does feel like a sort of Breather Episode after GGO though. Then again, GGO was almost a Bottle Episode as far as the arcs go, focusing only on Kirito and Asada and ignoring all the previous characters.

Klein is the voice of reason - why don't we just call the admins? But they're on vacation. Fair enough.

At first I was a bit confused about how the gold giant got its body bisected and still survived, multiple times. But then I remembered that it is immune to physical damage, so only the elemental components of those attacks were actually hurting it. Still, it's a bit comical to see its body physically separated into pieces and then back to normal a second later.

The black giant of course goes down instantly since it is immune to magic, rather than physical attacks. Presumably they included both so that all-mage parties would have a challenge too.

They seem to be going through this dungeon awfully fast given the number of episodes remaining in the season. I wonder what the complication will be this time.

Ahhh, here's the person in a cage that I spotted in the opening song animation. That was fast.

Everyone agrees that it's a trap, but of course she's going to be freed anyway.

Guess it wasn't a trap after all. With a name like Freyja, and a resemblance to Urd, she's probably on the good side.

She buffs the party before the final boss fight. If this were a human written quest, I guess that'd be a break to make the final boss somewhat more reasonable.

Edit: I took another peek at the list of arcs on the SAO wiki page. Apparently, there's a short story following Phantom Bullet named Caliber about the heroes trying to find Excalibur. So I'm guessing they decided to just adapt that into the first two or three episodes, and the rest of the season will be Mother's Rosario, whatever that is. Seems a little odd, but it will still be less disjoint than the original story arc, which was cobbled together out of a short story anthology.

Edited by storyyeller on Feb 23rd 2020 at 12:07:22 PM

It's another relatively low-stakes arc, about Asuna reconciling with her mother and helping some new friends (you'll find out soon enough why and with what).

s2e17: So apparently the only way to actually beat the boss is to find the hidden hammer. It's a really good thing they decided to free Freyja.

I assumed they would have to start digging in the floor, but I forgot that the room had mounds of treasure. So it's more like finding a needle in a stack of needles.

Wait a moment. Kirito is a Spriggan, and Spriggans are supposed to be good at treasure hunting magic. Maybe the seemingly useless throwaway line is going to turn out to be relevant after all.

Or not. Apparently, he used "thunder magic" to find the hammer. Huh? The hammer turns out to be Mjolnir, so I can sort of see why a thunder spell could locate it, but the whole thing really doesn't make much sense. Why did Yui even know to tell him to use a thunder spell? Why couldn't they have just have him use a treasure hunting spell, which would have made a lot more sense and serve as a nice Continuity Nod as well?

Anyway, Freyja transforms into Thor. At first I thought the hammer just turned her into Thor, but now I'm wondering if she was actually Thor in disguise all along and this is her true form.

I'm not sure why they're surprised the quest is still going. They've already seen Excalibur and they know that a) they haven't found it yet and b) it's in the very bottom most room, which they haven't gotten to yet.

So apparently Excalibur is too heavy so Kirito can't jump onto Tomby while holding it, so he decides to throw it into the pit instead, which means they'll have to go on another quest to find it again. I was wondering how the story was going to continue.

Never mind about that.

Well, this arc seems very definitely wrapped up. Guess it was just a short Breather Episode after GGO and prior to whatever Mother's Rosario is.

It's convenient that finishing the quest brought all the elephant spirits back to life, but that's standard videogame logic. I wonder what all the players who were on the ground slaughtering them thought about this whole thing.

Incidentally, I also wonder if we'll ever see Asuna, who is an Undyne, an aquatic race, ever go near water in this show.

The comment at the end about it being weird that the sword was named Excalibur instead of Calibur left me very confused. I've literally never seen it referred to as Calibur before. Is that some Japanese thing?

Definitely not only Japanese; that sword(s) has as many names as it's wielder.

Edited by Jaustin89* on Feb 25th 2020 at 12:35:17 PM

Ever since Kirito first logged into ALO, Yui has had access to the internet, and she is very curious. When Kirito and Asuna are both offline, her hobby is to sift through massive amounts of data. Norse mythology is simply one of many subjects she's studied in depth in her spare time. Yui also has admin credentials for the Cardinal System; indeed, she's functionally an incarnation of the Cardinal System.

I just remembered that "Freyja" used lightning magic to attack the Frost King prior to her transformation. I guess that was foreshadowing that she was secretly Thor all along. Incidentally, does this mean that the Frost King was gay?

Edited by storyyeller on Feb 25th 2020 at 12:37:35 PM

I don't believe it was tbe only way to defeat the boss it more ended up being the only way they could with their party set up with the amount of time they had left.

Also not sure a treasure hunting skill would distinguish between different treasure better than a lightning spell looking for a magic hammer.

And for some interesting news if I remember correctly Klien gives his hammer reward to Lizbeth and has to stop her from melting it down for materials.

That wasn't shown in the show (yet), but oddly enough I was thinking that he should give it to Lizbeth since he complained that his hammer skills were very low, and Lizbeth is the closest to a hammer user in the group.

Also not sure a treasure hunting skill would distinguish between different treasure better than a lightning spell looking for a magic hammer.

Surely treasure hunting magic could not only locate treasure, but also locate the most valuable treasure among less valuable junk? If a Spriggan can't do something like this, what are they even good for? This is supposed to be where they excel!

Edited by storyyeller on Feb 26th 2020 at 9:04:54 AM

Its based on a Norse story where Thor disguised himself as Freyja and went with Loki to steal back Mjolnir from the king of the giants as he'd only give it back in exchange for Freyja's hand in marriage. (Then killed all of them once he got it back)

s2e18: Mother's Rosario time.

No new opening theme? I assumed by the fact that the opening theme only showed Caliber related stuff that there would be a new one for the new arc, but maybe not.

Christmas Eve? Is this arc a flashback then? I wonder why they did Caliber first in that case. The timeline of this show can get pretty confusing, but this is the first time they've straight out done Anachronic Order.

Wait, so if I understood that correctly, Agli met his wife by playing non-SAO games, Then he got trapped in SAO for two years while his wife remotely ran the cafe and also caring for his husband who is in a coma in a different country? That must have taken incredible dedication!

Epic boss fight time. I think this is the first time we've seen ALO!Asuna actually get to fight seriously.

I was a bit confused when the furniture disappeared. I guess that was showing their memories of how it was in SAO, but the new house doesn't come with furniture.

Oh, apparently the flashback was just a couple of scenes to show them reclaiming the cabin. The rest will take place in January, the "present day".

Apparently, Asuna's home life sucks. I was wondering what kind of father would let a creep marry his daughter while she's in a coma no less. Though you think the stuck up rich types would be even more concerned about such matters. I guess if he thought the suitor was an "appropriate" upper class person he might allow it against all reason?

So apparently there's a new mysterious character named Zekken, who developed an 11 hit combo. The English subtitles are using all male pronouns to refer to them, but I've had a few spoilers here, and I'm guessing Zekken is actually a girl. I vaguely recall hearing something about a girl who developed an 11 hit combo and was the only one in the series to ever beat Kirito. I also heard something about a group of terminally ill players named The Sleeping Knights. I'm not sure if that's related, though probably not, since it seems like weird behavior in that case. I'm also curious what the Japanese is like. I think Japanese is mostly gender neutral, so they conveniently don't have to reveal Zekken's gender yet. Then again, the characters would be speaking based on their assumptions based on Zekken's ALO appearance anyway.

Asuna apparently has an alt account where she's a Slyph. This is actually the first time there's been any mention of a player having multiple accounts before. I had assumed that the VRMM Os just prevented that somehow.

Hey, new ending theme! I'm guessing that this is one of those transition episodes, where they show the new opening theme at the end of the first episode of the arc, and then the new ending theme debuts in the second episode. I think they did that with GGO as well.

This ending theme prominently features a short purple-haired girl, and I'm guessing it's not Kirito this time . It doesn't really look like she's the right size to fit the appearance of Zekken, so this is probably her real life form.

Edited by storyyeller on Feb 28th 2020 at 12:04:37 PM