Sword Art Online 2 – Episode 15

And Sword Art Online returns. My post on ANN is relatively polite about this episode – it’s slow and boring and basically meaningless, but I keep it civil. To get the real story of my thoughts on this episode, you really have to head to twitter. So let’s actually run this episode down:

24 thoughts on “Sword Art Online 2 – Episode 15

  1. You know, it’s good to know that there’s someone out there willing to take one for the team.

  2. Oh geez. I actually like SAO (well, sometimes), and even I found this episode a chore. I honestly couldn’t even bring myself to laugh much.

  3. “At this point, a day where I will no longer have to write about SAO actually seems within reach. Ten more episodes, now?” — Oh silly Bobduh. Are you forgetting Seasons 3 and 4? (which will come out without a doubt, and probably be announced this or next year)

  4. They stretched one chapter into 2+ episodes oh Haruhi they stretched one goddamned chapter into two plus episodes what tge F is wrong with you people.

    Also, tugging catgirls’ tails is fun.

    • Well for the second episode of season 1, they compress almost half a book in to 1 episode. I’m glad they’re not cutting out all content from the story anymore, but it does seem like they are going about it the wrong way. I think Itou just really love his ass and tits.

      • Well, the length of Chapters in SAO is pretty inconsistent. As an example, in the latest arc, most of the “Chapters” are the length of most of the book. So it’s not really fair to go by that standard.
        That said, going by page-count should be a better way to show a scale. This Caliber story, and the Murder Case story (episode 5 and 6) were in the same book. Murder Case was 208 pages (speaking strictly of the Japanese version of the book) and Caliber was 137 pages.

        So yeah, it does seem like they’re stretching out Caliber a lot. Then again, the Murder Case story had tons of content cut from the anime, because of all the “exposition” on how SAO’s inventory system worked, in great detail.

  5. This episode was the very definition of ‘tedious’. Even hardcore SAO fanboys had to admit this was bad.

    • And yet, people on the ANN board are still tutting over the review, the less scathing version, as unwarranted.

      • After reading your reply I checked it out. I wonder what they would write if our dear Bobduh really wrote a critical piece. Sometimes I wonder which fandom takes worse to criticism, SAO or Fate?

      • While I was having the impression that Bobduh was way, way too lenient on SAO S2 I took a look at those (awfully designed) ANN forums and the SAO thread discussion and got my mind blown as Nick was apparently still too critical for that kind of audience.

        Can’t imagine he’s having the most fun writing for that kind of audience. It’s his job so he’s getting his compensation but when he keeps pointing out that he restrains himself to more polite writeups on the especially awful episodes…meh.

        On top of that we no longer get the funny minute-by-minute, pictured writeups we were used to before. Or well, apparently we now get some horrible twitter aberration of just that :/

      • Eh..? Well, yeah, there are those on the forum with negative opinions of these reviews (first week, someone accused Bobduh of Hate-watching SAO), but I didn’t get the impression that opinion was the majority. There are those who agree and disagree, which is how it should be, no?

    • As others have said, the ANN forums kinda demonstrate that hardcore SAO fanboys are perfectly capable of thinking this is good.

  6. …and here I thought Log Horizon was unstimulating and insipid. I hadn’t seen a more uninspired start to a new arc/show for quite a while.

  7. They made the wierd choice to resume in a flashback the more interresting part of the episode and then fully develop the boring part.

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