Why is Sinon playing this fantasy MMO she knows nothing about? Why wouldn’t she be committing herself to the hardcore MMO she has already invested herself in and knows very well? I mean, yeah, this is a minor point. At least she stayed somewhat within her character, although I’d have preferred a sort of role-reversal where she took on a male avatar in Alfheim-whatever-online.
Anyway, this episode was pretty boring. Mostly a setup with lots of exposition that made little sense and gave me no reason to care. There’s no more risk of death anymore, so why does anybody give a fuck about this random conflict in this passe MMO? It’s a raid. This is not a new and amazing thing. Did they just forget about that whole aspect of Sword Art Online, where it only works if there’s a lingering, contrived threat of death hanging above everyone’s heads? The answer is yes. They knew they already had enough of an audience to turn Sword Art Online into The Totally Platonic Adventures of Kirito Sue the Magnificent. Only it doesn’t fucking work. Why do I keep having to go back to this basic element of storytelling with everything I see these days? In all honesty, I would rather it be Kirito Sue and His Gals Make a Porno, as that might be slightly interesting, even though I’m gay and straight sex could not be less involving for me. How is this 16-year-old nubile male teenager surrounded by adoring nubile female teenagers not fucking each and every one one of them on a schedule scrawled out on a whiteboard in his room? That’s what any other male would be doing, not this shitty MMO crap. Far from being virtuous or noble, it just comes across as being both ridiculous and boring. And why is Asuna still calling Kirito “Kirito-kun”? The fuck? How creepy can this shit get?
Blah blah blah, some MMO raiders got a quest to go raid a dungeon. That’s it. That’s the entire plot of this next arc. What the fuck? Am I in some sort of nightmare of unending torment? Did Sauron the Deceiver kidnap me somewhere along the line and my whole life has been one cruel lie after another conjured for his amusement? No, that can’t be right. Sauron wouldn’t waste such an opportunity with something as dry and boorish as depicting a raiding harem. He had a much grander imagination than that.
You know what, fuck it. No more expectations. From this point forth, Sword Art Online II shall be blogged solely to lampoon it. Granted, that’s mostly what I’ve been doing anyway, but now I can just switch gears to full Apathy Mode. Cheers. Let me go pop some more popcorn. I always like mine slightly burnt.
ou went all out on the budget for this one. Two consecutive one-hour episodes of this shit already, all in gorgeous HD animation? Good stuff for the eyes, ladies and gentlemen.
er day and found myself baffled within the first three minutes. Then I realized this show is taking the whole “conform-or-be-crazy” trope to a whole new level: everyone who is not a protagonist is a violent, depraved serial killer. For variety’s sake, everyone who is a protagonist is also a violent, depraved serial killer. I guess everything is a matter of degree, right? So this whole series revolves around “Night Raid,” a series of assassins who are part of a revolutionary movement who want to bring about the end of a corrupt government by assassinating everyone they think is involved in said corruption, including people who have nothing to do with the government, because reasons. This revolutionary movement has yet to be explained; its goals, manifesto, ideals, etc., are left undescribed and unsaid. Instead, the writers beat it into the viewer’s head that the government is evil by whipping out every comical stereotype of evil they can think of, including literal mustache twirling, to avoid nuance and the concept of grey in this ridiculous black-and-white world. In the first episode, some young tween rich girl does a hilariously unbelievable personality switch on the turn of a dime, going from kind, compassionate, slightly-ditzy-and-shopping-obsessed-rich-girl to Murderess Level 10, going on some maniacal rant about how she tortured a girl to death because her hair was straight without any obvious effort. I thought maybe the series was saying these people were possessed by demons, but that was only metaphorical, it turns out. These people are actually all insane for no discernible reason.
in anime-Japan a complete sociopath? Even the bullies hounding Sinon are waving guns around and doing the most dickish things imaginable and laughing like maniacs all the while. The conformist message has to be starting to wear thin here even for the most unperceptive of viewers. ‘Tis entirely possible, anime writers, for people to fall outside typical behavioral norms without departing the sunny shores of sanity. One can not conform without wanting to rape everything. Well, except meme-Spiderman. That guy’s hopeless.
om, slightly isolated admirer of Sinon’s we haven’t seen in forever, is actually one of Death Gun’s cronies. Shocking. I will refer back to yon post here, 
eries is a complete piece of shit. Not even Yoko Kanno’s music could save it.
s of talk. It’s been three goddamn weeks. I nearly had a heart attack when something actually happened in this episode towards the end. Kind of. Did their animation budget run out and they decided to skimp on three episodes so they could animate the bullet-time stuff? Geez.
c penultimate episode, closing out some lingering plot lines and using characters to their fullest to create a dramatic connection with its viewers, all the while setting the stage for Le Finale Grande. I was truly impressed.
as worse than last week’s. I don’t know how, but it succeeded. There was even more Talk no Jutsu, followed by Kirito and Sinon making even more hilarious assumptions about who Death Gun is. By the way, some of the stuff Kirito finally surmised was pretty obvious, the first part being the fact that their Space Game Helmets can’t stop their hearts, given they’re not even connected to one’s heart in the first place. That doesn’t rule out brain damage and such from electrical shock, but again, a safer assumption is that manufacturers made sure these things were pretty damn safe. So if Death Gun can’t magically kill people from afar via computer code, then he’s somehow arranging their deaths in the real world. Makes sense.
V for Whatever 