This episode’s girl of the week is based around a murder mystery: she once was a member of a guild. One member of that guild is currently killing off its other members. Again, the interesting part of this is the setting: it’s established that SAO is a well designed game, and allowing powers that would enable people to kill each other in save places would be unfair, yet an item like that exists. Why would the designers have put that in the game? This game seems to be balanced on the idea that it’s an MMORPG: such a power in an MMORPG would be complete suicide that would utterly destroy the balance or any kind of social interaction people can have. This arc will probably shed some more insight into the minds of the creators.
Meanwhile this episode introduced a few more flaws for the two main leads (yes, the female lead has appeared again). The guy really once again established that he is this hardcore gamer who has started to see the NPCs as actual characters: he’s actually starting to sympathize with them, even though they can technically be used in a plan to take out bosses. With the girl, I’m having trouble why she became a squad leader of the top guild around. Mostly because in the first minute we see her handing out orders, only to leave and never do anything leadership-ish again and instead going on a date with the male lead while everyone was fighting. Also, does she have to be a tsundere?
The acting also was a bit wonky at the end of the episode. I mean, I understand being paranoid and all, but these guys completely lost it and started sprouting nonsense. Another thing that really is starting to irk me is that this series is trying to populate its setting, yet completely failing. With that, I mean that it shows crowds, but these crowds completely lack any sort of life. Everyone just stands there, nobody responds, and you can spot the important character amongst them by looking at who has cute character designs.
Apparently people are able to change their hair colors in this game. Why do only the characters who are important to the story use this feature?
Rating: 3.5/8 (Enjoyable)
I do not understand why they are not following the source material (the novels) for this anime adaptation.. They’re basically ruining the plot by adding these annoying side stories at the very beginning, leaving the much more interesting part for later.. especially if this series is just 12 episodes long.
If you saw the first ep. and thought “oh nice setting, I’d love an intriguing story based on that” you should read the novels (1,3,4), already available with enlish translation..
they’re following the source material in chronological order
this boring mystery arc is part of volume 8 of the light novel, silica’s arc, sachi’s arc.
1st floor boss arc is also a side story.
It looks like there’s still 1 more side story until we get to the main story in the 1st LN volume
“especially if this series is just 12 episodes long.”
Because it’s NOT 12 episodes long? It’s 24. They’re taking their time because they can. Plenty of good stories take their time in establishing their setting. The only unfortunate bit here is in the adaption.
“If you saw the first ep. and thought “oh nice setting, I’d love an intriguing story based on that” you should read the novels (1,3,4), already available with enlish translation..”
Agreed, except 100% of the SAO novels that were released prior to the anime airing have already been translated. That’s 9 volumes, and a fistful of side stories and shorts.
Asuna’s leadership seems to be what made her go around investigating the murder. She won’t fight every hour every day either, that’d be a death sentence.
@an: IIRC, this will be a 2-cour series. I agree tough that they should have left the Side Stories for later… Side Stories are only worth something if you know and care about the story.
I saw a comment in the original story that only special items can change hair color and they were rare to come by. So I guess only the people who have fought a lot of monsters (ie, are important to the story) do it?
“This arc will probably shed some more insight into the minds of the creators.”
I will just say it now. Nope. This is just a side story murder mystery. You will learn nothing about the main plot. It does develop Kirito and Asuna’s friendship a bit but other than that nope. And I do believe Kirito pointed one that an item that allows player to kill within a safe zone would break the rules so it’s pretty much impossible.
Anyway I say at least the Kirito Asuna duo are fun to watch. The mystery was just poorly handled…much like the second/third episodes were poorly handled. However in this case I read the original side story and found it nothing too special either. And those clearly suspicious shaking eye shots. Thank you, can we make it more obvious please? And yep…adding in that stuff from the original material manga’s but leaving out the reason Kirito wanted to save the NPC’s…sigh. Kirito may not have much of a personality in the books but I am amazed at how A-1 managed to twist his logic to make him look like a complete idiot.
It’s not that important for the main plot but next episode Laughing Coffin is going to be introduced.
I agree they could have done a better job including Kirito’s emotional argument instead of just letting him look as someone without any arguments at all.
And worse, as I checked the novel when I saw this episode, this arc seems quite big…
I wonder if they will take more than next episode to finish it.
Really, it was interesting to see the christmas story, but if they don’t start the main story soon, it will get boring.
I quite enjoy the relationship between Kirito and Asuna before they go all romantic with each other (not that I hate it after). I don’t like this sidestory so much and the side characters were quite overreacting but next episode should introduce some things I’m waiting for. I really want them to get back to volume 1 main story but that probably won’t happen until the episode of the 25th of the month.
I cant get the pacing of this series, Not sure if they’ll end it at the story of SAO or will they get into ALO and GGO stories.
I’m also starting to wonder if they’re going to adapt ALO, the story would be left in something like a cliffhanger if they only cover SAO. Anything can happen with this pacing.
No, I think it’s possible to end this series just with the ending of Volume 1, which is what I suspect will happen, given the current pacing. A “leave it to the audience to fill the blanks”.
and leave the plot hanging on you know who still in the game? That’s probably get some internet outcries if it does happen
They weren’t being paranoid, the girl felt guilty and just snapped, specially with the pressure of death and all, they are being hunted and all that. Basic human nature, I didn’t find too much wrong with it. As for the female lead, her character is odd, she was all quite and first and junk and now shes hot headed
having read the novel i’ll tell you right now the writing is absymal. I can’t believe such a crap can be popular in Japan. They must have some really unique taste over there. My grade two niece can write better stories than SOA, well, except 16.5
Any Middle Schooler can probably write ch16.5, it’s pretty vanilla actually
not only in Japan my friend.
To be fair to the author it was initially self published on the web.
Unless your grade 2 niece is an incredibly talented writer for her age, I wouldn’t say that this series is THAT bad. Writing a good story is hard, you know? It’s not just a matter of fitting everything in, you also have to worry about correctly describing your characters and actions and how you deliver them.
well grade 2 might be an exaggeration but my point still stands.
Grade two is an exxageration, but my 14 years old self can write better story while playing Ragnarok Online and RF Online. Seriously.
I enjoyed the start of SAO but as the show has gone on unfortunately it’s lost its spark. Mainly I think because the author struggles to write characters that are more than just some ‘paint by numbers’ character. To those that have read the LN and say ‘but the good bit hasn’t come yet!’, well I read Novel 1 and the good bit wasn’t that good.
Unfortunately after the great start I think this is going to be the disappointment of the season, especially if they do novels 3&4 which has the lamest bad guy I’ve read (well .. maybe the current bad guy in Accel World beats him)
I think the one of the reason this author sell well is that he comes up with interesting premises and settings, and he writes fast. He’s produced 22 volumes of work combined in 4 years. That’s pretty darn prolific. He’s no Hikaru Sugii, but he sure can write a ton
A lot of the stories were written long ago for his website and then only published recently. It’s the case for the Murder story.
The newer SAO stories such as Aria are much better.
It’s probably because it’s been edited by an editor. I think the same is probably going to happen to The Irregular at Magic High School by Satou Tsutomu. That may get popular enough to get an anime next
I agree that he does interesting worlds and builds those nicely, it’s just his characters that let him down. And yes to be fair to the author the first? (or was it more?) was self published on the web initially before being put out in book form.
Hopefully he gets as good at building character as his world .. but he’s doing pretty well without it! 2 anime’s + a shite load of LN sales 🙂
He’s probably going to lean on the money maker for a while, much like the author of To aru no Majutsu index, which I still think beat both Accel and SAO by leaps and bounds
Sorry but i have to laugth about some post. “having read the novel i’ll tell you right now the writing is absymal. I can’t believe such a crap can be popular in Japan. They must have some really unique taste over there. My grade two niece can write better stories than SOA, well, except 16.5” O yeah, well meaby. But i only say one thing, big talk is easy men, do things is in other hand, hard. I dont know why is so popular, but the autor put a great effort to public and express this novel, and actually is succesefull, well done for the autor. I only want to enyoi his novels in the anime form, is only i cant pass this class of post that degrade the autor efforts.
With regard to criticism of the writing – I gave the novels a shot, and found the writing poor – but I know I was only reading a fan translation into English!
So, if the writing is criticized, I’d like to know: is the critique applicable to the original Japanese, or is the problem just a flat English translation?
I’d like to know: is the critique applicable to the original Japanese, or is the problem just a flat English translation?
I’d like to know that too. I’ve yet to find a good translation of a LN, even those translated by professionals have a very lacking translation. Translating a manga and translating a novel are two different things.
Before you guys go criticizing the work of the novel translation, I suggest you guys try giving some translation work a go. Try a japanese news article or something, just to have a taste of how hard it is, especially with limited skills. Better yet, try getting your hands on even a single volume of the novel. Personally, I’m pretty grateful to even have a translation, albeit an imperfect one, because I know how incredibly difficult it is to pull off even little phrases. I think the gist of the story is basically there but if you have any familiarity with the japanese language, you’ll know that you’re going to find some phrases that just don’t translate well into english. Dibs to a translation theme that can fully capture the author’s original intentions and form. Don’t expect it to happen often, even from professional translators. I’ve sadly paid for professionally translated manga from reputable publishers that really disappointed me. (They even left blank speech bubbles for stuff they couldn’t translate. >.>;)
Just look at this episode. Find me one fansubber who successfully called Asuna the “Demon of Game Clearing” that Kirito called her.
For the past 16 months, she’s basically been obsessed with clearing the game, neglecting sleep in order to grind her levels and work on organizing the clearing teams and treating talented players who slack off with contempt. Up to the nap scene, at least. There’s a lot of significance to that little scene: kind of like the bread scene way back in episode 2 16 months ago that will have a big effect on her character, although it’s not fully revealed yet. I’m pretty happy they let didn’t cut it.
And as for the novel itself, it’s a light novel aimed at younger readers (shounen) who perhaps happen to be MMO enthusiasts. Don’t expect Tolkien or even Hyouka quality. Personally, I wonder if the anime might be working really hard to satisfy viewers like you guys. I find the anime to have a pretty heavy feel, significantly more serious than the novel. Asuna’s explanation about Sleep PK felt kind of dry and a little unnatural, a rather obvious exposition for the audience and not what I would have expected as interplay between two veteran players. I think a mental explanation by Kirito with flashbacks might have worked better. I feel like the anime may have difficulty capturing another aspect of the novels that I felt, a sense of wonder and even awe at the sheer complexity and detail that went into this fictional game world. Death game aspect aside, it would be incredible to be able to experience something like that in reality.
erm.. I was not criticizing the particular novel, I was just curious how is the translation and whenever 祈是条母狗 was referring to the original version or the translation.
As for Japanese novels I’ve read some of Haruki Murakami works and some of Yasunari Kawabata and in comparison the translations of LN “reek” of Japanese (very often the sentence structures and the choice of words are very japanese). Of course light novels are light for a reason, but still…
Ah, no. I’m not specifically replying to you, boo but to this thread as a whole.
I do feel dissatisfaction whenever I spot discrepancies but that’s usually whenever I have access to the original material to use as a reference. In this case, I don’t think we’re in a position to criticize the work of the translators.
But she trained her cooking skill to expert level. Is it important to clear the game?
Pretty sure those strange hair colors are their normal hair color. Don’t forget that their appearances (head) were changed to their real life ones. So it’s just typical anime.
The reason not everyone has pretty design is specifically that. You don’t waste time designing each character in the background – unfortunately, not for SAO anyway.
The quality of guest-characters-of-the-week is in decline. Sachi was the most interesting as someone doomed to fail in SAO, followed by the little girl Silica, and now we have irrational spazzes just waiting to be killed off.
We were also irked by how instantly Asuna is reintroduced into the series. It would have been nice to see how/why they met back up, but instead we get a mystery sidequest where they instantly become a buddy-cop duo.
I wonder if you ever noticed the time skip after the opening sequence. Is not that Asuna left the people fighting the boss of the level and left. The boss they were planning to defeat was in Lv 56 if I’m not mistaken, the sequence where Kirito is enjoying the summer weather is already in Lv 59. Which means that this happened at least a few days after they had the Lv 56 battle.
he’s actually starting to sympathize with them, even though they can technically be used in a plan to take out bosses.
I kind of can see why. It’s not sympathy, but it could be about him not wanting to cultivate insensitivity and apathy toward death and generally desensitizing players. The NPC look like players/humans after all and so far all the monsters that they kill look like well…. monsters. In such game after killing 100 NPC who look pretty real (I’m assuming the technology is creating fairly realistic replicas without going into uncanny valley) how many would get used to it and would not hesitate to actually kill anymore?
I’m kind of curious are the novels as focused on in-game death and its consequences as the show? So far all episodes had this as underlying theme.
Actually, I’m pretty curious about the first scene too. Ordinarily, Asuna’s stance about considering the NPCs to be simple game objects in the world to be pretty fair and using them to help save real human lives seems appropriate. It’s not even clear if NPCs can even be harmed by mobs. Wouldn’t the village be considered a safe zone too? Actually, don’t the bosses have a fixed lair and can’t be lured out of it?
I didn’t come across this scene in the novels so I’m not sure what to make of it. It would be nice if there was some additional explanation to Kirito’s behavior. I’m reminded of a scene in Vol 4 of the novels where Kirito was pretty dumbfounded himself about having to deal with game mobs so I’m sensing some weird retcon here.
It’s not even clear if NPCs can even be harmed by mobs.
I think they mention how the NPC reappear sometime after if killed
Yeah, the repop (repopulate) effect. Although I suspect it’s only Asuna’s assumption at that point. I’m not sure if they’ve come across any situation where NPCs have been set upon by mobs.
It is basic game design to loop through all important characters and recreate those in case they were killed of, because you do not, as a game designer, want to spend time on a quest and then suddenly a key piece dies off, breaking the chain. There is no real benefit in having permanent death for NPCs. The player characters, sure, hardcore mode, I can understand that.
Of course SAO is somewhat different, but I do not think it would be different in this regards. Not as far as I remember, as far as anime and LN are concerned. It is however possible that the dynamic system of SAO would adapt, but I can’t really get into that too much, since it might be even a (very) small spoiler. But I might have forgotten stuff, it was some time since I read them.