54 thoughts on “Sword Art Online II – Episode 3”

1. I was kinda weirded out by the reaction Shinon’s mother had to what happened.

   In fact, I’m still sorta amazed she lived through that. Not that I’m complaining, its just…not how those things usually go.

   • Yeah, I kinda figured that last shot was going to hit her mother. This might actually be more interesting, though, depending on where they go with it.

     • I’m afraid the last shot hitting her mother would have made Sinon an “angsty teenager” (for good reason, but I still really dislike that stereotype)

     • Err…she is an angsty teenager.

     • Ehhhhhhh, I think she is an angry teenager

2. I really enjoy your reviews, they help me view the show from a different and often times more thought out perspective then my own.

   I don’t look too deep into the themes and messages of anime, I tend to acknowledge anime as a story telling medium more then anything.

   Anyways, I just want to say thank you for working so hard on this blog.

   • Thank you!

3. This almost feels like if a completely different author took over and the original died or something. Well, I guess that´s not the case, but we can all dream. At least keep the hopes this won´t be an exception with the rest of the season!

   • Yeah, two episodes in a row is something to be celebrated. Though we still haven’t had Kirito and Sinon meet, so the biggest hurdle is yet to come.

4. I don’t think Shinkawa is Recon, I think he’s Death Gun. There’s a part in the OP where they dissolve from a shot of him to a shot of Death Gun, and after I saw that everything he said sounded like “I am Death Gun” to me. I could be wrong, and there probably wasn’t enough information in this episode to decide that, but my gut tells me to call it now that he’s Death Gun.

   • I don’t think the two are necessarily mutually exclusive.

     • That’s true. I guess it wouldn’t be too surprising if it panned out that way.

   • All his whining about “agility points” in this episode, plus how Death Gun was introduced by shooting a guy who said, “AGILITY POINTS ARE USELESS” certainly points to something…

     • Sounds like a motive!
       (Seriously, I hope this is not actually the motive. This type of lunacy only really works in South Park .-.)

     • There are lots of things you could point towards him being DEATH GUN, to be honest.

       He’s a weak player and has invested his stats poorly after being lied to. He saw his friend advance much faster than him. He might have to quit playing games because of studies. And at the end, when we see DEATH GUN look at Sinon’s picture in a… certainly special way.

       His motive would be something along the lines of wanting to become a pro and cheating his way up to top due to an inferiority complex or something.

       Either way, hopefully SAO hasn’t made the mystery this easy.

   • Aw dang, Death Gun’s gonna be the one other new real-world character? Now that you’ve mentioned it, that seems kinda inevitable. Ah well.

     • I have no idea why, but I’m pretty sure they might have purposely spoiled who DESU-GUN is outright. They list his username on the computer screen which may or may not be one of the character names…

5. the best thing about this episode (read: dumbest) was how during the whole chat bit at the end where they’re staking out their ~next target~ you can see the person’s username in the top of the screen and it’s just their actual name, thus spoiling the goddamn villain of the arc.

   good job, SAO

   • It seems A-1 just doesn’t care that much about spoiling the twist this arc (see: the OP) That said, his full name hasn’t even been said yet, soooo…

   • Everyone has read the novels already, duh.

   • WELP. I guess that means it’s not actually supposed to be a mystery, then.

     • No, it’s a story that focuses on Sinon and Kirito’s “wounds”. The “plot” is just a vehicle to drive that along.

6. We appear to have re-rolled our author. I am okay with this.

   • Yeah, his new character’s stat distribution is a huge upgrade.

7. Quite a meaty episode (I even got my speculations on who the villain is and with actual motives). It really feels like a different author this time around. We still got a long way to go, but even the other arcs tripped after their pilot episodes. GGO has been stellar for three episodes in a row. Even if it just ends up as a standard action flick, I must say it’s interesting to see Kawahara grow as a writer.

   I’m not sure I understood why you thought the climax was too much, though. I didn’t find it as self-parodying as Titan could be, so I’m not really following your line of thought.

   Also… uh, I’ve seen this tossed around a bit, but many seems to have reacted to the fact the robber could survive multiple shots. I thought he was drugged, cleverly shown by him drooling as he entered the bank.

   • I thought it was overblatant where it was trying to say “This Is A Very Traumatic Event For Sinon!”

     For me, it was the shot of the guy dead, with the bullet hole right in the center of his forehead, that made me think “they’re trying way too hard to make this gruesome and horrific”. They COULD have made the sufficient impact without all of the theatrics.

   • The direction just oversold it, I thought. Red filter + shaky cam + pounding soundtrack + long scream is just too much – the scene sold itself through the way it had been earned by the flashback, it didn’t need to convince us it was intense with clumsy stuff like that.

8. One thing I’ve realized: after the events in ALO, I don’t understand how anyone has any real doubts that an Amusphere can be used to kill. We were told outright that setting the Pain Aborber level to zero had (bad) physical effects, plus there’s all the mental manipulation they were doing to their captive experimental subjects. Sure, the Amusphere likely has safeguards now, but if you hack your way past the safeguards there you go.

   (Kirito may not realize this, but the government sure ought to know all of this stuff. Of course they may well have been manipulating Kirito to get him to do stuff for them. I’m not sure the writer is this smart, but it’s my justification for the whole crazy scene in the first episode.)

   • The problem is that the HARDWARE doesn’t allow the AmuSphere to do as much as what the NerveGear did. It’s explained that the experiments done on the 300 players CAN’T be replicated by the hardware of the Amusphere. Thus someone would have to directly tamper with your Amusphere to get it to kill you.

     If somehow the AmuSphere was in fact hacked, then it would be more likely for the damage to be neurological, instead of a heart attack.

     That said, they’re just sending Kirito in to see if “Death Gun” isn’t just a rumor.

   • I guess Kirito was sort of being tricked in the first arc, when the villain was hiding among them, but yeah, that’s not the same as him being used as a tool the entire story. That certainly would make more sense of this whole situation, though.

   • At very least, it can no longer literally fry peoples brains.

9. Goddammit, SAO, spoiling your own twist. Goddammit comments, making me realize what the twist is. I don’t even get the satisfaction of feeling smart from finding it out ;_;
   Sinon for main character. She is easily the best character ever in SAO, and she made this very clear in the span of a mere two episodes.
   I’m almost 100% OK with Kirito being harassed. I’m only scared of the fanfiction .-.
   And, to be frank, I think the name Death Gun+the last scene pretty much established [spoilers] as a lonely, flamboyant and ridiculous (DEATH GUN) troll, who just happens to be a sociopathic cold-blooded killer.

   • Haha yeah, my comment section is merciless. Nothing gets past these guys!

10. Haha, the fact that SAO actually bothered to give a character a backstory and some personal motivations is something to celebrate! Come to think of it, I don’t think any character in SAO I got a reasonable backstory…Kirito and his cousin had the “We’re not really siblings” angst but they took maybe 30 seconds on that…Three episodes in and Sinon is already more realized than any veteran character!

    • Yeah, I was gonna say, Sinon’s already far surpassed Kirito as a full person. I guess it’s nice to see this author becoming a better writer, but I’m still not sure if I should be impressed or disappointed.

11. I told you this arc would be almost kind of okay! Well, maybe I didn’t, but I certainly told someone.

    That said, I’m not a fan of the directing very much. As you’ve noted, they’re very big on overselling dramatic scenes almost to the point of parody. This happened last episode too, where there was a big fuss in the comments about Dyne overreacting to the losing battle. Frankly, you could read the exact same lines in a calmer voice and it just sounds like your average whiny ragequitter.

    These sorts of moments don’t kill the series or anything, but I’d call them weaknesses anyway.

    • It’s a shame, too, because outside of those melodramatic moments, the production here is actually quite solid. I get the feeling they’re actually an intentional choice – considering the style and success of the first season, maybe they’re deliberately steering away from subtlety for the big moments.

12. I just realized something this episode. I was watching the OP thinking “why haven’t we seen Kirito’s character in the OP?” then I realized the girl with the light saber IS Kirito. She has his face and fashion sense. It’s pretty obvious in retrospect but I certainly wasn’t looking for it before. He’s going to have a female Avatar in GGO. I wonder how that will effect his agency stealing powers. Maybe Sinon isn’t going to be a love interest at all. I’m curious to see where they take this. For the first time I’m actually looking forward to more SAO.

    • Unfortunately Kirito doesn’t turn into a girl, he is just becoming very very feminine somehow.

    • Not female, just a very androgenous-looking male avatar.

13. Ahhhh, you’re so hopeful about this show that I almost regret what I’ve written up until now. I get so caught up on the execution in each episode that I forget to mention how this arc sets up stakes a lot better than the previous season. Shino is miles ahead as an interesting character (mostly because of the increased screentime) and while I don’t appreciate EVERY step taken to explain her trauma I respect that the story is about her, with Kirito sort of taking a support role for now. My pessimism says the focus is going to change back to Kirito being Digital Jesus Qui-Gon Jinn, so perhaps I should be enjoying these episodes while they last.

    I wish I could be as positive about this show as you are, but my confirmation bias and S1 trauma is just too strong.

    • For the record, all rational accounts of people who have read the LN have told me that it remains fairly strong to the end.

    • Yeah, they could very easily make Sinon’s story just an accessory to Kirito’s – if they’re actually exploring the “consequences” of his time in the first season, his arc could be something like “learning to be a healthy person so he can fix Sinon,” or something equally disappointing. But I’ll be disappointed by that when we come to it, I guess.

14. @8:50 I think I’ve written already that Every Love Interest In SAO Must Get An Obligatory Lingerie Scene. I really think it’s there in author’s/animators’ contract somewhere.

    • This one actually wasn’t bad! She wasn’t “performing” for the camera at all, and the camera wasn’t learing at her – it was actually just an unhappy, private scene with a character. Huuuge improvement over the Sugu scenes.

    • There was still no reason for her to take off her skirt.

15. I don’t understand why Sinon removed her skirt and jacket only for the camera to not peer lecherously at her- don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing, but the camera has stared at the Nurse’s boobs and Sinon’s own in-game ass, so the scene (besides the obvious trauma thing) feels like an attempt to convey to the audience the idea that Sinon isn’t going to be sexualised this season. That’s a good thing… I guess? But it seems rather cynical.

    Again, the camera still looks at other places, and Sinon still pleads for someone to ‘save her’ before cutting to Kirito. I’m worried that buying into the scene’s lack of sexualisation will be the equivalent of flying into a venus fly trap.

    • I thought the camera panning across Shino’s shirt and underwear appearance were quite tame in comparison to how the camera quite clearly zoomed in on Sugu’s cleavage in multiple instances last season. Besides, I’d imagine wearing a skirt and blazer in the privacy and leisure of your own home to be very uncomfortable.

      • Oh, I agree whole-heartedly, it is tame and it’s a great improvement over Sugu’s scenes and such.

        If only to spark discussion however, I’m looking at the worst case scenario, and questioning if the reason Sinon removed her skirt to begin with was to draw the attention of critics who will note that the scene didn’t sexualise her character in order to seem more feminist. I can’t think of it otherwise- having her remove her clothes immediately plants the idea of ‘fanservice’ in your head as you watch, and we’re already comparing the scene to Sugu’s scene in particular. The scene would have played out the same is she was fully clothed, or even if she had undressed off screen.

        I’m not really concerned about the realism of the scene, I’m sure lots of people are less clothed indoors. But I feel that every choice made in the animation and writing usually has a greater purpose to it than just conveying a sense of realism.

        • Nakedness, even in anime, can mean more things than just fanservice. Let’s take the best case scenario, for instance. You could argue that the purpose of undressing was because she was preparing herself to hold the light gun. Why does she have to undress to do this? Because she wouldn’t know for sure how far she’s progressed with her self-imposed therapy otherwise unless she lays her state of mind, and her self, bare. It is a ritual of sorts to disarm herself both physically and mentally.

          Also because if she were to vomit on her school uniform it would be kind of gross.

      • She was still wearing her school shirt so it would still be bad. Still regardless of whether it might be practical “in story”, I think the writers must have put it in for some reason. Perhaps it was, as alberenza says, an attempt to show how they aren’t doing all the excess fanservicey stuff they were doing last season.

      • True, that reasoning makes sense, but it’s simply speculation, as nothing is directly stated by the show.

        Even if the show did offer an explanation, I fail to see how that conveys anything to the audience other than context, it’s just details. By ‘purpose’ I mainly refer to what the animators want the audience to be thinking as they watch. In anime, when a girl (or boy, if we’re talking about a show such as free) removes her clothes, they want the reaction to be ‘oh, she’s removing her clothes. I’ll get to see some bare skin, which I find attractive’.

        She doesn’t remove her skirt and blazer so that the camera can leer at her, so why did the animators and writers choose for her to remove her skirt? Other than simply details, which can be written any which way and justified however, it doesn’t matter. I’m offering the idea that I outlined above as a possible reading.

        After last season, I’m not ready to say that the author has somehow completely dropped all the old habits and bad narrative choices that got his LNs and adaptions popular to begin with.

        • I’m offering the idea that I outlined above as a possible reading.

          As did I. Neither of us are really saying that SAO II is somehow going to be a good anime with good directing decisions. My point is that both scenarios we’ve outlined don’t have enough evidence to be the “correct” interpretation and the both of us are just speculating based on the past failings and qualifications of the author and animators.

          However, I’m personally against the idea that, in anime, characters undress/appear naked solely for the purpose of fanservice. Especially when the motive is kept in the dark as it was in this scene. My definition of “purpose” is more closely in line with the narrative while yours is more focused on the animation. That’s where we differ.

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