Here, we're at a whole new floor of stupid.
Well, people, we're here. This is one of the many points where this series really bottoms out and decides to ramp up the suckitude to a whole new level. It's the episode where this series hits lower lows that have us beg to get higher highs.
Let's not delay.
We open up with a party negotiating the distribution of healing crystals. Oh, goodie. A new healing resource who we'll no doubt never have the source explained or how one procures them. Fantastic.
Being accosted to spare these healing crystals is this almost-certainly-a-minor Loli here named Silica.
... Given my history with Lolis, there's no way this is ending well.
Loli chick is apparently a Beast Tamer that has a magical Dragon that also heals her in battle.
Well, either a dragon or some kind of bird cat thing.
Anywho, she gets pissed off at her old party members and storms off by herself, deciding to keep all of her healing crystals that she apparently has and that she worked very hard for.
Or just found them on the ground one day. Who knows? Certainly not the audience! What kind of story would this be if the audience understood how things happened in it?
Anywho, she runs into a forest that turns out to be near San Francisco and she stumbles upon a city of Gorillas who engage in a hunt to cull the numbers of humans– Wait, I'm thinking of the wrong franchise. Still, I really wish I was watching Planet of the Apes right now.
Beware the Beast Loli, for she is the Devil's pawn.
So, during the attack by the Gorilla Hunting Party, her Dragon Pina gets killed. Oh no. The grief. The travesty. The horror.
LIVE DAMMIT LIVE
YOU NEVER GAVE UP ON ANYTHING BEFORE IN YOUR LIFE
DON'T YOU FADE OUT ON ME. DON'T YOU DARE–
... SON OF A BITCH.
So, because he's met his quota of at least one living being dying before doing anything, Kirito swoops in to save the weeping Loli from the Ape Hunting party, savagely murdering these noble simians simply protecting their homes from those who'd make a desert of them. Rest in Peace, you majestic bipeds.
I'd better be careful not to overdo this– so many die senselessly here.
So Kirito comes upon the weeping Loli (okay, her name is Silica, but let's face it, she's the Loli), who is holding the... Heart of Pina? I was unaware that Dragon's Hearts looked like FEATHERS.
So... That's a dragon heart, huh?
I thought it'd be, you know, more edible.
So at this point, it becomes painfully, horribly clear that Pina is dead, and that the Loli is really upset about it. Kirito tells her that there might be a way to bring back the dragon. Oh, oh good. The flower MacGuffin that has a name I forgot that supposedly means this game has lore. Fantastic, I can't wait for it to never be explained!
Thousands of people have died, but hey, at least you can bring your DRAGON back to life.
Follow the Foggy Brick Road!
Kirito offers to help her find this place and get there safely, and when asked why he is willing to help her, he said it's because the Loli kid reminds him of his sister.
MUST NOT LET EDGINESS DULL.
For some reason, Loli kid finds this hilarious.
So they go into town, where, predictably, Loli kid is being harassed by people. The first set are a pair of dudes who are hoping to make her their orgytastic waifu– I mean, um, Mascot. Yeah. That's it. Kirito's there to cockblock them, thank God.
An underage girl? BE MY WAIFU
WAIFU THIEF! HOW DARE YOU DISRUPT OUR SEXUAL DEVIANCY!
Because the harassment isn't quite over yet, we meet up with Loli girl's old party members. The red-haired woman with the spear seems to be under the impression that Loli girl has been manipulating Kirito into helping her out. She hears about their journey to get the Flower MacGuffin, and Ginger McBitch expresses doubt that she'd be able to survive there alone.
Band of Bitches.
I'm attractive and look like I'm of legal age, so I'm clearly evil.
When Kirito mentions that it'll be a cakewalk because he's going to assist Loli Girl with his EDGY LONER POWERS, Ginger McBitch makes some comment about Loli girl being manipulative and I'm trying so hard to care right now.
So Loli girl insists that they get some cheesecake in town, and believe me, there's plenty of that, and it's not on the table.
Ah, yes, an underage girl's butt in my face. Thanks, animoo.
But, what they were actually talking about is whether this is Loli girl's first MMO, and later, Kirito starts going into an exposition about Player Killers being in Sword Art Online.
Kirito says that sometimes, people's personalities change in the game and they sometimes like being the bad guys, and they like killing other players because... Well... Because they're assholes. That's not really what he says, but that's basically the only justification we're really going to get.
Remember when I started reviewing Sword Art Online and I said I was giving it credit for not trying to be some kind of half-assed treatise on the human condition? Yeah, it was pushing the limits on episodes 2 and 3, but here's where it really sinks to the bottom. You'll see more of that later.
Anyway, Loli girl says that Kirito seems like a nice person with his incredible edgy blandness, and thinks he'll protect her. She then grabs his hands, starts blushing, and runs off to her room where OH DEAR GOD
Oh me, oh my.
I do declare, I must've come down with the vapors!
WHAT!? OH DEAR GOD, UNDIES SHOT OF THE MINOR. NO. NO, THIS IS WRONG.
Kirito knocks on the door, where she very nearly answers it in her undies and
OH, FOR GOD'S SAKE, LITTLE GIRL, PUT SOME CLOTHES ON! WHY DID YOU EVEN TAKE THEM OFF?!
That's better.
So Kirito comes in and starts going over their travel plan, discussing the route they're going to take to get to the Flower MacGuffin that will bring her Dargun back from the dead. However, the briefing is interrupted by a dude trying to peep in on the loli– I mean, eavesdropping!
So, in this instance, they actually bother to explain that there's some kind of mechanic where the rooms actually block out all sound from any passersby, but people with the sufficiently high... Listening... Skill can hear past the door block.
So how does the game register when you're listening hard enough to build up a skill for it? Do you allocate skill points when you level up? Well, that can't be it, the show has said that the skills increase with practice. Does the skill go up when you're just carrying a conversation, or do you have to make a movement like pressing an ear to the door? How would that increase your skill if you'd normally never hear anything anyway? Are the skills more like spells that you activate when you want to use them? Is the "Listening" skill connected to an attribute like Perception and is only awarded when you get that attribute to a certain level? Are there even attributes like Perception? How would attributes work in this game? Do the players choose the distribution, are they randomly generated, or is there some sort of Effort Value system?
If you think for even a second that any of these questions will be answered, you've forgotten what show you're watching.
So, the next day, they head over to the floor with the Flower MacGuffin, and wouldn't you know it, it's covered in flowers!
And compulsion to write girl doing girly things... Now.
Boy, it sure is pretty here in Flower Floor, but then, suddenly, Loli Girl catches a glimpse of... COUPLES.
PUBERTY STRIKES WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT.
Uh-oh, she's blushing again. KEEP YOUR CLOTHES ON.
Kirito gives her a teleport crystal to beam her out just in case things go south. While they make their way to find the Flower MacGuffin, the little underage child gets... Snatched up... By a plant monster.
With Tentacles.
... Classy, guys. Really. Fucking. Classy.
When Kirito tells her that it's not that strong a monster and she can dispatch of it pretty easily, it becomes painfully clear that this was supposed to be a fanservice shot. This show's idea of fanservice is really, really creepy.
So, after that no doubt pleasant bit of pleasantness, she asks Kirito why she reminds him of his sister, and what she's like. He then kind of explains that the sister he referred to was actually his cousin, though he thinks of her as a sister. Long story short, his grandpa was really strict, but his cousin stuck up for him. He feels like, by helping Loli Girl, he's paying her back somehow.
This was actually a pretty nice bit of character development. We finally learn a bit about Kirito's life on the outside, and a teensy bit about his motivations. Kudos.
And then this happens.
Isn't it great how this show can instantly destroy any merit it has within seconds of generating it?
Seriously, guys?! Tentacles on the underaged girl AGAIN?! THIS IS REALLY FUCKED UP.
Kirito predictably dispatches the tentacle monster, rather quickly, too. They now get up to the Flower MacGuffin! Yay!
They elect not to revive the Dragon where he can be instantly killed by a sufficiently powerful monster, and Kirito starts leading Loli Girl back to the inn.
But suddenly, while crossing the bridge, Kirito stops her, and tells her to keep a teleport crystal he gave to her handy. He calls out to whoever is hiding on the other side, and it's Ginger McBitch! Zohmahgawd!
She comments that Kirito's detection skill must've been higher than her hide skill, and... How exactly do either of those work? How does the system detect when you're detecting? How does it detect hiding? How does it register either of these and increase skill levels appropriately?
Whatever, so Ginger McBitch decides to rob them, demanding that they hand over the MacGuffin or else they'll die! Ginger McBitch and her party are revealed to be Player Killers!
The 2-dimensionally evil douchebags then go try to fight Kirito, but something's wrong as they don't seem to be making a dent in his HP. It turns out that his Battle Healing Skill is so high, and his level is so ludicrously huge (78) that they could be here all day and never make a dent in him.
It's at this point that I've got to start talking about the Player Killer concept itself, because I've been told by many that they think this is the stupidest concept in Sword Art Online, and honestly, I completely see why.
There's a few things that Ginger McBitch says about killing players that kind of sticks out, and it's basically the only hint we have to their motivations.
She has said that she kills people for their money, even licks her lips when she even thinks about possessing that money. She also says that there's no solid evidence that people who die in game die in real life.
Part of this phenomenon that Kirito mentions earlier about gamers' personalities changing has to do with the anonymity one has on the internet. A lot of people will feel bolder when they realize that they can do a lot without any serious repercussions, and greater douchery is a symptom of anonymity.
Probem: Because their avatars now reflect their real life selves, THAT ANONYMITY IS GONE. Sure, they can make up a name, but their real faces and body types are now laid bare for all to see. Their behavior would more likely default to the kind of behavior they'd have in real life. The author barely understands why it happens the way it does and why people on the internet think they can get away with this sort of thing. It no longer applies here. Now, their real faces are shown. Now, there are consequences for their actions. Don't try and tell me this is a recent phenomenon, the game has been going on for 2 years, according to those annoying time skips.
Kirito says he was sent by a guild leader whose entire guild was killed by Ginger McBitch's group, and she mentions that they were the ones who didn't have any money. This by itself already strikes a blow against the premise of being a player killer group. Add on top of that the whole possibility of player death. If this commentary is to be believed, Player Killers are all greedy sociopaths who would murder real-life people because it's fun and will ignore all evidence that what they're doing is actually detrimental, or don't even recognize how inefficient and stupid their methods are. The fact that they've killed people and their victims had nothing to take is proof.
Hell, with the 2-dimensionally evil greedy bitch thing, I think this image would've made for a more appropriate character design.
I feel like Quark would've tried a few things BEFORE murder, though.
Also, no clear evidence that anyone will die? I think the word of the GAME'S CREATOR is pretty solid reason for concern. Seriously, Douche McBag told you flat out in the first episode. Plus, you're using this to prove a negative– because you can't log out to check if the people who die in game die in real life, that means people don't die in real life? You don't know how to logic.
The only assumption that can be made here is that people who die in game die in real life, not only because of the word of the Game's Creator, but also because of the fact that everyone in this game now looks exactly the way they do in real life– therefore, if people were able to come back to the game and start over again, they would look the same. You would recognize them. You never see anyone who's died ever again, therefore you can only assume that they are out of the game, which, as the Game's Creator has told you, means they're dead. Besides, any person who gets killed in a video game isn't just going to take it lying down. They're going to want to get back at your ass one way or another, so it raises the question of "Why didn't they do it by now?"
But, let's put all of that aside, because the answers, at this point, would be pure speculation, because none of this will ever really be touched on. Let's get down to the core of what this is– this is yet another attempt to artificially inject tension into this setting. There being player killers in a death game is another attempt by the writer to add another dosage of tension and of conflict to a story that's already rife with it. The trouble is that they just haven't been making use of these other conflicts, though, and just seem to forget about them and just time skip them away. They never address any of the issues on screen, they just sort of go away, and then new ones have to be made to take their place.
The worst part of this is the whole social commentary this seems to be trying to make about gamers, which truly comes to its head at the end of the episode. Suffice it to say, though, that the author doesn't really know what they're doing with this. The motivation for what they're doing is flimsy because the rewards rely on chance, and that aspect of it is never really explored. All this really leads up to is Kirito sort of teleporting them away to a prison (Who runs this prison? How is it guarded? What laws are there that would be enforced and earn a prison sentence?) after making his "badass" proclamation that none of these idiots would ever be able to do anything to him, and honestly, the existence of people who are able to solo and take people on by themselves, and the chance that the person they kill has no money makes the whole player killer thing just a stupid idea, and just a cheap attempt to stir up more conflict because they were too lazy to resolve any of the other ones.
The worst part is that I can think of an easy way to solve this issue with the Player Killers. You ready for this?
Make it so player characters, when killed, drop an item that allows you to skip to the next floor and gain all the experience you need to be a high enough level to get to it.
Suddenly, there's a lot more to killing other players than just being an asshole. Suddenly, it's a choice between the quick and easy route or about doing the right thing. Suddenly, Player Killers aren't just the dicks they are in every other game, they're now desperate, scared human beings that want to get out of the death game as soon as possible. There's now more dimension to this problem than just there being douchebags who don't grasp that this is a death game– this is now about people who are all too aware that their lives are at stake.
What? Oh, right. The ending, getting to that.
Kirito and Loli Chick go home and get ready to revive the Dragon, and they kind of talk about how Kirito's really strong and stuff, and then... Then Kirito decides to state a few "revelations" that he's had.
He basically says that the levels in this MMO are just numbers, despite him saying not even a few hours ago that numbers basically made him invincible here. He says that the strength that you have here is only an illusion... Which would be more true if they weren't stuck in a death game... And then he says that he would want to meet Loli Chick in real life.
So Loli Chick gets her dragon back. The end.
This is awful. The introduction of the player killers and the attempt at social commentary that comes with them really falls flat because of the weakness of the premise. Sword Art Online is suffering from the same old problems over and over again– it never really explains enough of what's going on or how things work for us to really be able to just get immersed in the story, because every time they bring something up, it raises way too many questions for it to really survive on its own merits. Just at moments it starts to have merit, it's destroyed immediately either by really creepy fanservice or just a few minutes of thinking about what just happened.
In a universe that's different from ours in any way, the story needs to spend time walking us through HOW exactly this universe is different. If the way things work in this other world is never explored and never explained, suspension of disbelief is essentially shattered because now we're forced to look at the real world for a source of information, since we know next to nothing about what's going on in this fictional universe and no source of information from the canon.
Sword Art Online fails at this horribly. It just throws new plot elements at us and expects us to take its word for it, hoping its audience is stupid enough not to ask any questions. This is, frankly, the worst attitude you could take toward your audience, not only because of the obvious insult, but because the whole point of telling a story is to COMMUNICATE, and now there is a gap in the proverbial dialogue between audience and storyteller. I'm asking tons of questions and the narrative isn't giving me any answers, and it's not even that my asking questions is inherently a bad thing. In a good story, the questions I would be asking are how this story relates to philosophical questions concerning the narrative and the characters– and I'd be able to draw enough information from the narrative and the characters to reach what I think the author's conclusions would've been. In this story, I'm asking basic questions about how all of these systems and mechanics in-universe work because they're not explained to me, and frankly, the characters and narrative aren't compelling enough to draw my attention away from them.
I know that there's got to be something stupider later on, but really, this feels like rock bottom. This feels like the point where it becomes really clear to you that the author has no idea what they're doing, nor do they really have any idea how to handle the setting of an MMO or have any grasp on how human beings really work. I will continue looking through this series, because soon will come the point where there will be a story arc to judge... I hope. These irritating time skips and the horrid pacing has made it thus far impossible to review more than one episode at a time.
Timere Defectum, everybody.
Sword Art Online belongs to Reki Kawahara. Planet of the Apes is property of 20th Century Fox. Star Trek, Quark, the Ferengi, and Deep Space Nine are all property of Paramount.
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