Another episode! I know, it’s crazy – actually timely updates on this wild ride. Last week started off with a nice bit of slice of life before being derailed entirely by a nonsensical Cute Thing, which is a new and interesting method of SAO self-sabotage. Having Kirito and Asuna adopt a child-minded girl they found in the woods certainly wouldn’t have been my first choice, but hey, I guess we’re rolling with it. We have graduated from a series of unlinked vignettes to… a series of incoherent narrative twists. This is progress.

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Alright, I can do this. I can do this. It’s just a stupid cartoon, it can’t hurt me. I gotta keep this together – can’t already be losing faith, I’m not even halfway done yet. If I have to retreat into sarcasm already, I’ll never make it to the end.

OKAY. Hey everybody, time for another episode of Sword Art Online. Last episode was basically the absolute worst, and I’ve been told it actually gets worse from here, and I don’t really know how to process that information. That’s fine! I sincerely hope “cackling villain torture-porn” is just a thing the show decided to do that one time, and that now we’ll put that stuff behind us and get on to some reasonably peaceful slice of digital life. In the last post, I basically kept being astonished by how little the characters seemed affected by the absolute madness of the central scene – but at this point, I’d actually be perfectly happy to do what they’re doing, and pretend none of that ever happened. And if that’s how we’re playing this, then we could be getting something very rare and very appreciated here – a slice of life romance thing where the characters have actually already admitted their feelings for each other.

That by itself isn’t actually worth much, granted. For stuff like this to be meaningful, the writing has to be there as well, and this is Sword Art Online we’re talking about. But still, this show is always at its best in the little moments, and it seems like we’re about to enter a sort of “calm before the storm” phase, and that could actually turn out okay.

I have to hope, goddamnit. Hope is all I’ve got left.

Alright, let’s get to this.

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Holy shit it’s Sword Art Online. This episode promises to be terrible, what with it literally starting with Kirito fighting to earn Asuna the right to take a vacation from a guild that she is the goddamn vice-commander of holy shit I can’t believe I even typed that goddamnit Sword Art Online. That’s cool though, because once we get through Kirito saving the day, we might actually emerge into some normal banter between the two of them.

I’ve very often complained about this show never getting around to exploring its central conflict, but last episode proved that might actually be for the best. Sword Art Online’s biggest problem remains Kirito, and Kirito is always at his worst when the show presents an actual conflict. When it’s just adventuring or slice of life, he can interact with other people normally – but when there’s a dragon to slay, suddenly everyone else is useless, and Big Man Kirito takes the stage. It’s the show at its most transparently pandering, and as someone who’s not really getting his rocks off on how awesome Kirito is, it has me checking my watch basically every time it happens. Even this might be forgivable if those action scenes were good, but last episode’s climactic fight just wasn’t particularly well-designed, either. I enjoyed it because it was very silly, but it was not a quality piece of entertainment.

That’s cool though, because if actions scenes tend to demonstrate this show at its worst, then the non-action Kirito-Asuna scenes are clearly the show at its best. Asuna’s actually a reasonable character, and Kirito can interact more or less like a normal person when he’s not required to be Captain Hero. If Building a Better SAO requires kind of ignoring the actual plot, then so be it. Let’s get through this dickwaving contest and on to some much-earned vacation time.

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