The rest of the Dark Emperor arc has been posted to Beater's Cafe in English.
I saw the new movie tonight. I certainly agreed with the Divided We Fall sentiment, as I have commented on the light novels as they came out. What I don't understand is why the protagonists are still willing to duel after that incident with Morte reminded Kirito that even if it's not a fight to the death, duels in SAO are still fought with deadly weapons, and even a friend can't guarantee he or she won't strike a fatal blow even in First Strike Mode, let alone in Half-Loss Mode. That Asuna challenged Mito to a duel to recruit her for the boss raid seems downright Out of Character.
Asuna's fight scene against KoH was also expanded - in the novel Asuna receiving help from Yuuki's ghost was more ambiguous and she never grew angel wings. But Kirito defeats KoH so quickly that dragging him out as some unstoppable enemy who can't be defeated even by Eleventh Hour Superpowers is just weird. It doesn't help that they cut the explanation of why Kirito is so much stronger (gained a ton of levels from defeating Administrator, plus his Incarnation is amplified because they connected him directly to the Main Visualiser to heal his mind).
Edited by Prime32 on Feb 8th 2023 at 3:03:26 PM
More like giant cherries
It doesn't help that they cut the explanation of why Kirito is so much stronger (gained a ton of levels from defeating Administrator, plus his Incarnation is amplified because they connected him directly to the Main Visualiser to heal his mind).
Huh, I didn't realize that the novels actually try to justify things. I always assumed it was just a show where people yell at each other and shoot flashy lights for a while and then Kirito always somehow wins.
Anyway, I just finished the anime on Netflix. That was certainly a weird ending. Also, it wasn't clear to me whether the pilots were supposed to be the apprentices that Kirito and Eugeo had in s3. If so, they must have frozen themselves and then coincidentally unfrozen right before the trio's return, right?
Alice's robot body plugging into an ordinary USB wall charger was hilarious though.
Edited by storyyeller on Feb 9th 2023 at 1:09:54 PM
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Edited by Prime32 on Feb 10th 2023 at 9:18:57 AM
Ace Pilot
The Progressive manga is also a good clear view of his dorky quirks along Asuna giving this line
"I wanna go back to the forest..."
"When I offered to make Norea my third back-up girlfriend she just glared at me and started throwing things at me.." Renee Costa
The Unital Ring Arc does reveal that Ronye and Tiese are still alive, though, having gone into stasis about ten years after the Underworld War. Who raised their kids and who Ronye married has not been revealed yet (at least in English).
More like giant cherries
One other thing I found really weird about the anime (not sure if this is handled better in the books) is that it makes a really big deal about Kirito and Asuna having to log out before the time acceleration starts or they'll be stuck for 200 years and their souls will die of old age or something, presumably so that there are stakes in order to maintain dramatic tension with the villians now defeated.
...except that Kirito decides to stay behind and he ends up completely fine anyway, with just a quick memory wipe needed to fix him up. So the whole thing comes across like a Cliffhanger Copout.
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It's not like Quinella and the early Integrity Knights weren't older than the so-called limit. They were able to withstand their long lives by sleeping a lot and/or deleting memories to preserve memory space. Personally, I attribute the so-called limit to the lifespan of the soul to philosophical materialism on the part of the Rath scientists. What they were actually measuring was the amount of information that can be stored in the human brain or a light cube designed to mimic a human brain. The soul, however, is immortal and immaterial, and the fluctlight is the soul's interface with the body, not the soul itself. Rath is messing around with things they don't remotely understand, and they think they know what they're doing, which makes them dangerous. Kirito, being a teenager with much more knowledge of technology than philosophy and spirituality, takes their words at face value, not recognizing them as blind leaders of the blind. To wit, Higa proves he's learned nothing from this whole fiasco by cloning Kirito, only considering after the fact that a fluctlight with 200 years' worth of memories, an agenda of his own, and the ability to withstand the knowledge that he's a clone is extremely dangerous and can't be controlled.
Neither should the extremes the Star King is liable to go to to save Underworld surprise them, considering that the population of Underworld after the war and the duration that Kirito and Asuna were logged in means it's entirely plausible that 10% of the Underworld population after the Maximum Acceleration Phase is descended from Kirito and Asuna. That the Star King would fight to preserve the lives of his descendants even at the cost of starting a world war is just Papa Wolf behavior, and something Rath should have foreseen. Nations have been known to build nuclear weapons because they fear they will be destroyed if they do not, and Israel even threatens the worldwide destruction of civilization if they are faced with annihilation. While the Star King doesn't have access to nukes, what he does potentially have access to is no less dangerous. Cyber terrorism can bring the global economy to a screeching halt and disable life-sustaining infrastructure. When you consider that most fatalities from a nuclear war are expected to come from starvation and infectious disease after the war, rather than from blast injuries, burns, and radiation sickness, you can see that it's no exaggeration to say that cyber weapons are potentially just as lethal as nuclear weapons.
The new update for Integral Factor brings some character development for Kline. After simping for an NPC again, he reaches the conclusion that regardless of his feelings, he can't ask her to bear his burdens, nor take her away from the hometown she loves.
Kikuoka is working on using the admin console in the Bonus Dungeon under the Black Iron Palace to log everyone out, but due to the damage caused by Aincrad partially being destroyed before the game clear sequence was overridden, the secret dungeon is difficult to navigate, and the Assault Team keeps hitting dead ends. It remains to be seen if it's even still possible to reach the admin console.
Volume 26 is out, and it's revealed that what the Underworlders thought was a moon is actually a planet half the size of Cardina. Also, it seems that somewhere along the way, Kirito and company learned how to use Adminstrator's life freezing and cold sleep arts, and for some reason, Kirito hid the secret to reversing the petrification on Admina, which is currently enemy territory.
Underworld's hard population limit of 200,000 came into play during the maximum acceleration phase. At this point, the birth and death rates are equal, but it's not entirely clear how this works. The most logical explanation is that you can't conceive a child unless there's room created by someone's death.
As for Unital Ring, it has yet to be revealed where the Sleeping Knights are and how many of them are left. They are wildcards in all of this, due to the diversity of their gaming experience and their desire to avoid factional infighting. Given that the Monument of Swordsmen was presumably destroyed when New Aincrad crashed at the launch of Unital Ring, they might well be interested in a new goal to ensure they're remembered. We don't even know what Nori, Teichi, and Talken's conditions are. We know so little about them that I've even speculated that one of them is Saffron Blossom's father or mother. We can infer that they're all Christians, though, since the entire notion of them reuniting in the afterlife presupposes their beliefs about the afterlife are consistent with each other. Whether a platonic version of Converting for Love will create any conflict remains to be seen, though life expectancy and narrative logic dictates that any such conflict would most likely involve Kirito and Asuna.
Edited by mythbuster on Apr 14th 2023 at 11:02:33 AM
There is some Fridge Sadness about Yuuki's gags. The reason for her A-Cup Angst and Big Eater tendencies is that her illness left her real body emaciated. The Medicuboid suppresses the pain of her illness, but she is subconsciously affected by the fact that she's malnourished due to various infections sapping her nutrients. It is noted that VR food can trick you into thinking you've actually eaten, which is its own Fridge Horror.
Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online Season 2
is being made.
While I do like the main anime, I always preferred the spinoff so I am happy to hear this.
Knowledge is Power, Guard it Well
King of Anime
Yeah this is nice to see. I don't like the original SAO but I thoroughly enjoyed the Gun Gale Online Alternative anime when it aired... 5 years ago?! Man it's been awhile. I haven't read the novels (Well, I own copies of the first 2 or 3 but I haven't read past the halfway point of olume 1.) so I'm looking forward to seeing what the new season has in store!
I also really enjoyed it.
I was reading the novels, but I stalled after 6. So I'll try to catch up prior to the next season airing!
Although I suppose it doesn't matter that much, since the first season was Volumes 1-3, I imagine the second will be 4-6.
"But if that happened, Melia might actually be happy. We can't have that." - Handsome Rob
Volume 27 is out, and it's mostly a setup novel. Alice and Selka revive Fanatio from her cold sleep, while Renly, Eydis, and six other knights we haven't met yet await their revival, only to be interrupted by an attack from the rebels from Admina. Kirito and Asuna get an emergency call to serve as reinforcements in the Underworld, forcing them to cut short their session progressing through Unital Ring.
Meanwhile, in Unital Ring, some players got the bright idea of kidnapping Yui to try to negotiate with the Dark Elves- apparently the same NP Cs that were on Floors 3-9 of Sword Art Online. Given Kirito and Asuna's reaction, they weren't included in New Aincrad. While Kirito and Asuna are excited about the prospect of reuniting with Kizmel, this does raise the question of what Kayaba and the Star King are up to if they're bringing in things from SAO that were never released onto the Seed. Also, the Sleeping Knights have yet to appear in Unital Ring, and they remain the biggest wild cards, as they've played several Seed games and don't have a clear loyalty to any of the factions.
Kikuoka is appearing in public again using the alias of a non-existent twin brother that Higa cooked up, and he's now pitching AI pets as a funding source for Rath. Asuna is suspicious of his schemes, but she accepts the robot cat anyway.
We have now caught up to the Japanese publication. No word yet on when the Japanese version of Volume 28 will be published, but it's been 11 months since Volume 27 came out in Japan, so I expect Volume 28 will be announced very soon.
Edited by mythbuster on Sep 14th 2023 at 10:27:22 AM
Okay, I started playing Last Recollection yesterday, and I'm left with a major question: Since when does anyone in the Underworld have Hebraic/Biblical names? Dorothy's middle name is Isaiah, and she's traveling with a girl named Sarai. That Dorothy is fair-skinned and has been dubbed the Child of Sin only raises more questions about what's really going on.
So, Dorothy's father is from the Human Empire. That still raises the question of how she was conceived: It's nigh impossible to conceive a child without being married in the Underworld, and Integrity Knights would arrest any denizen of the Human Empire who set foot in the Dark Territory, while the Axiom Church had a monopoly on performing marriages in the Human Empire and would never consent to one of their denizens marrying a woman from the Dark Territory.
There's a difference between random people trying to unplug it without knowing what they're doing and getting a crack team of engineers, hackers, etc. together to figure out how to safely remove or disable it.
By the way, I'm confused by the random Big-Lipped Alligator Moment appearance of Eiji and Yuuna in S4. They show up out of nowhere with no explanation, pose dramatically for a while, and then get unceremoniously killed off and the story continues as if it hadn't happened. It's very weird. And when I looked them up in the wiki, apparently they are characters in the movie and Yuuna already died, which just raises even more questions.
Edited by storyyeller on Feb 3rd 2023 at 1:50:45 PM
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