Sword Art Online

New Progressive trailer with a release window planned for Autumn. As well as a new key visual.

Looks good!

Where's Argo, tho?

Yeah, I'm wondering that too. The movie looks having an original character but I do hope that they won't be cutting Argo out.

The more time passes, the more I see people using SAO as an instruction manual.

Edited by mythbuster on May 3rd 2021 at 8:47:52 AM

And what would the problem with that be? VRMMORP Gs actually seem pretty cool, and will probably happen eventually if technology advances far enough. The only problem with SAO was the death game aspect.

I am well aware of the fact that many of the fans took the wrong lesson from the Alicization Arc. There's no ambiguity to the fact that Project Alicization is evil.

The 50th Floor of Integral Factor was released today, and it sure is ironic. It's about the hubris of man creating artificial lifeforms for warfare which then cannot be controlled. This coming from a project that is implied to have been intended to create bottom-up AI.

Rising Steel is beginning to adapt the Moon Cradle Arc, and it gives us our first visual of Berche.

I mean, it DID give us an actual fantasy world. One with magic, AI waifus, swords and sorcery.

You could enter that world, marry a beautiful woman, then die peacefully surrounded by your family. All in the space of an afternoon.

It's a quantum leap ahead. Society (and indeed, humanity) has been changed for all time. It's sort of the logical extrapolation of virtual reality, but I don't think anyone thought through the implications. Never mind virtual brothels or murder simulators with 'real people', imagine sticking a dissident into a virtual prison for a (simulated) century. All in an eyeblink, mind you, and with no permanent harm to the body.

It would be a modern Tower of Babel, which is exactly Kawahara's point. To drive the point home, he had the serial killers lampshade how blasphemous this project is.

I mean, it's a serial killer. I wouldn't take his word on anything. Because he's a serial killer.

New Key visual and a release date: October 30

Except Asuna reached the same conclusions as soon as she learned about the project. Kirito was even more irate on account of how Kikuoka duped him into helping him.

So, The Day After gives us more insights into the virtual ghosts. The working hypothesis is that they are imprints on the Cardinal System from strong surges of emotion, a similar phenomenon to the memory imprints in the Underworld, which is not surprising considering that the Underworld was built from the Seed. It's compared to one's soul being laid bare. This makes the ghosts of Griselda and Sachi fundamentally different from Kayaba's, which is more a clone than an imprint, as he demonstrates a will of his own, which, while identical to the original, is not bound by decisions already made.

Sister's Prayer made me really want to see Clover's Regret get translated. I'm also left wondering what the nature of the rumors about Yuuki's condition were that it caused all her friends in school to abandon her, given that they should know HIV can't be spread through casual contact.

Edited by mythbuster on Jul 13th 2021 at 3:18:10 AM

Bit of trivia: Aiko and Yuuki were born on Pentecost.

So I have a theory on why the children of several prominent VR/AR innovators were chosen to receive copies of SAO: Kayaba knew that this crime would bankrupt Argus early on in the death game, so he wanted to make sure that the servers were maintained by another company by seeing to it that several technology executives had a personal interest in making sure the server kept operating. He figured that if the CEO's kid was one of the hostages, either RCT or Kamura would have to acquire and maintain the SAO server.

So I got to thinking: the collapse of New Aincrad during the transition to Unital Ring probably destroyed the Black Iron Palace. Does that mean the Sleeping Knights' quest to leave their mark on the world was All for Nothing?

Probably. Bleh... hopefully it gets restored once the arc ends.

Especially considering the Fridge Horror of Jun and Siune's condition: even though they recovered from this bout of cancer, it is very common for childhood cancer patients to get cancer again before old age. While they may outlive their guildmates, it's still a distinct possibility they'll both be dead by the time of Accel World.

I'm also curious as to the role Catholicism is going to play in the Unital Ring Arc. After all, the Sleeping Knights couldn't very well have expected to be reunited in the afterlife if they didn't have consistent beliefs about the afterlife, suggesting that all the Sleeping Knights are Catholics or catechumens.

The mobile game, Memory Defrag will be shutting down at the end of this month after 4 years. It's had quite a life span.

The 61st floor was released in Integral Factor today, and it is the big payoff for the Laughing Coffin arc. The Murder in the Safe Zone story is averted due to Laughing Coffin being captured sooner, but Po H is still at large. He seeks to exploit black magic to make himself immortal by killing other players and then the floor boss, in order to become a real demon in SAO. The problem is, that pretty soon, his own regeneration is wiping out his HP over and over, leaving him in a state no less hellish than being turned into a tree. So yeah, he got to be a demon- and got the damnation that comes with it. Meanwhile, Integral Factor is a title applied to the player.

Edited by mythbuster on Aug 25th 2021 at 8:25:54 AM

And things get even more suspicious in the boss rematch character quest. Not only are we no closer to solving the mystery of the respawning bosses, but Stilla knows about bosses on floors that haven't been unlocked yet.

So since Kirito and Asuna decided to stay in Japan after the Alicization Arc, maybe they'll buy Yuuki's house. After all, that's probably the only way to save it from being torn down, and raising a family in that house is a better way of keeping Yuuki's memory alive than anything in VR.