Somehow this episode w
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.
Beyond that, though, everything Kirito and Sinon “figured out” about Death Gun while they were talking for twenty more minutes in slightly varied camera angles was the most contrived scenario I’ve seen in a while. His entire MO relies on this MMORPG requiring people to publicly display their personal information. That’s awfully convenient, you know. Why would any popular MMO do this? If it did, it certainly wouldn’t be popular.
Anyway, so Death Gun has an accomplice, right? The theory is that this accomplice incapacitates someone’s physical body while the in-game Death Gun gets ready to shoot them on screen and time their actions perfectly to create the illusion he has the power to execute people in-game. Right…so…first off, why isn’t there a way to temporarily disable the visual immersion of the Space Game Helmet so you can check your immediate surroundings? This seems like what any manufacturer of a VR device would do: make sure your connection to the real world is not so easily severed. Ignoring how people would demand this simple convenience, this sort of scenario with Death Gun would be the most obvious danger to the user. At the very least you should be able to access things like email and texting so you can keep in contact with people, right? Second, why does Kirito somehow think waking one’s self up to fight this accomplice is a bad idea? How do you even know he’s there at the time? Assuming they have a limited amount of whatever combinations of drugs that let them incapacitate people and cause cardiac arrest, they’re probably going to save this ritual until the very moment they’re sure they can pull it off. So the idea that Sinon is incapacitated in the real world at this very moment is absurd. Third, why does Kirito think the accomplice is injecting some sort of chemical into a person in order to incapacitate them when no medical evidence suggests this is the case? Even though bodies decompose, lacerations and injuries do not heal after people die. (Duh.) They’re pretty easy for coroners to find. Fourth, why doesn’t Kirito log-out or contact the fucking police so they get to Sinon’s address? Or the hospital where he’s at? In other words, why aren’t these people using their brains? Even if Sinon dies, they can still catch Death Gun’s accomplice with ease.
By the way, I wonder what “Sterben” means. Apparently Google doesn’t exist in the future, considering it took me three seconds to answer this question. What, does GGO not have an in-game browser at the very least? How lame is this “hardcore” MMO? It makes you put in your personally identifiable information in public, but it doesn’t have an in-game browser. Fucking EVE has that.
Maybe something will happen next week. Maybe they’ll all die.
non somehow has enough psychological composure in the face of utter panic to spout cliche philosophical ramblings on the meaning of fighting that every Shounen Anime has regurgitated a billion times before.
d Sinon. You sure bought first-class tickets on Assumption Airlines. No wonder you fell into an extremely obvious trap. You don’t know any of the things you said you did. You don’t know he’ll show up on the satellite scan; he might have a cloaking device. You don’t know he’ll head for the abandoned city because “he’s a sniper”; you just observed him using close-quarter ambush tactics to stun and execute someone. And how retarded can you be to stand around in wide open spaces talking about your plans when you have assumed your enemy is a precision sniper capable of literally killing people in a video game? You might want to take cover and obfuscate your moves as you approach the city. I dunno. Something intelligent, I guess. And I’m getting really tired of these semi-omniscient moments these characters have. People do not have the reaction time to dodge bullets like that.
e entire status of Kirito and Asuna’s relationship. It’s been seven episodes and I still don’t know why these two attractive young teenagers aren’t fucking like rabbits in a meadow. It probably has something to do with Japanese culture and its severe, crippling allergy to all things mildly related to realistic physical and emotional intimacy between people, opting instead to harp on the same three or four tired lines we’ve all heard before. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away: Sinon, you might want to kinda give the guy who obviously really cares about you a mature answer. No, you don’t have to like him back, but you could at least address the elephant in the room head on instead of doing what every other female anime protagonist has ever done, i.e., brush it off with an embarrassed chuckle. You don’t have many friends; it’s probably not a good idea to treat your most dedicated one like crap. Can’t you hear the red alert sirens going off? This is going to come back and bite you in the ass. The anime you’re in isn’t exactly pushing the bounds of creativity here. Jilted companion + mysterious group of villains = bad mojo.
Magnificent is the biggest cheater on the face of the planet.
de was not as bad as last week’s, but it wasn’t as good as the three before that either. Only the abrupt resolution of the gender confusion subplot, something no experienced online gamer would find shocking in the slightest, surprised me. I had thought they would drag that out for a good while longer. In retrospect, this ruined the episode for me, as it just wasn’t believable that Sinon was so naive about guys using female avatars. This would be like being astounded at finding out that online gamers cuss or something. The nerve!
Just dodge the damn telegraphs, Sinon. Haven’t you played Wildstar? Anyway, I really don’t have too much to say about this episode, other than it’s the worst of the season so far. Kirito did some bullshit because reasons, while Sinon stood around explaining gameplay mechanics that aren’t likely to ever play any significant role again. This is what I don’t like about SAO: the writing is far too lazy. Instead of using the gameplay mechanics it goes out of its way to demonstrate and establish in order to create compelling constraints for the characters to overcome, the series just plays the Deus Ex Machina card as much as it can. It felt like they copy-pasted an episode from season 1. Likewise, I hate how Kirito doesn’t have to worry about the stat mechanics and shit in this “hardcore” game. You might want to withdraw that adjective, as no “hardcore” game I know of allows that kind of nonsense. Whatever.
Well, this episode entertained me much more than I expected. We’re only three episodes into the season and I find myself enjoying this one far more than the previous iteration of SAO. In fact, I had to eat some of my own words on character development. This week the writers took a break from all online vidya game action and plunged headlong into the mind of Sinon, our new heroine, an surprising and successful attempt, I might add. Although the pace of that character development was too quick for my tastes–they could have drawn it out into the rest of her character arc had they played their cards right–it was nice to see Sinon possess depth to her character, as opposed to just being a token member of Kirito’s Harem. This girl is playing this game for a very good reason that resonates with her psychology and experiences as a human being? Lies! Someone must have gotten drunk in the writer’s room one night.
V for Whatever 