Sword Art Online– Ep. 2

The faces of those trying to figure this out.

So if you've been keeping up with my Attack on Titan reviews, you're aware that I'm looking at those in whole chunks at a time because of its awkward pacing. It's for this same reason that I'm going to start off looking at each of the Sword Art Online episodes one at a time– of the 3 I've seen, it's so disjointed and so disconnected after each episode that you can't really look at them in any way but separately. If what I've heard about this series is any indication, this isn't something that's going to let up any time soon.

So it's been a whole month after the first episode. Yeah. The only reason I can imagine that they had a whole month skipped was that Kirito was grinding the whole time. You'll find that in episode 3, they don't really have such an excuse. Anyway, in this month, a bunch of people are permanently dead now.

So there's this meeting going on between bunches of people, and we get introduced to the man behind the meeting, who opens the meeting with a joke by saying that, in his own mind, he's a Knight, despite the game's lack of a job system.

This is Diabel. He is now my favorite character, because he's the dude that actually has the good sense to get together a raid party to take on the boss. Oh, that's what's happening here. They're getting a raid party to take down the boss that artificially blocks passage to the next region– pardon, FLOOR– and are even prepared with tactics to take it down.

People start forming parties, because they made friends throughout the game and many of them were actually sensible enough to form groups to solve problems– you know, how MMOs tend to work. Kirito, however, has not had this same amount of sense, and has proceeded to take the douchey route of trying to go all out by himself, using his super duper special awesome Beta Tester knowledge to acquire loots and XPs, even though his super duper special awesome Beta Tester knowledge didn't reveal where the boss was, despite him having completed 8 floors.

Anyway, he decides to pair up with the girl that's about as bland as he is.

 

The girl is named Asuna. They party up because they're the last two without a party, and they're used to being EDGY LONERS in the month that they've been featured in. Naturally, I guess being an EDGY LONER means that they're automatically the best players in the game. More on that later.

In the meantime, obligatory guy with a stupid haircut!

This is... Um... You know, I forgot his name. I don't really care, either.

So Stupid McHaircut comes in to introduce another conflict. Just when I thought the whole "Advance through the region through towers and floors" thing was artificial, we get this dude demanding reparations from any beta testers for the deaths of the players that bit the dust because they had to go do the harder things. It does raise a few questions.

Fortunately, one of them is answered by this black guy here.

Helpful Black Guy has pointed out that there was a free guidebook compiled by all the information gathered by the Beta Testers that's available at the starting town... So, sad as it is to say, the people that died bit the dust because they didn't take advantage of their resources. Oops.

But given what we hear about the whole limited resources BS and what Kirito says about going it alone, it raises the question, once again, of why they don't just all band together and cooperate? Sure, it'll take a while to level up in a party, but like I mentioned earlier, with 100 bosses, there's no way they're going to complete this in a reasonable amount of time anyway. They might as well do it right and make sure they minimize the chance of death. Of course, few people are thinking in this MMO, including the person writing about it.

Hell, there's so much wrong with this, like the fact that, when Diabel concludes the meeting, he said that the XP would only go to the party that slays the boss, and whatever drops they find, they get to keep. Shouldn't the XP be distributed equally as well as the gold? In most games, the Raid Group is considered a singular entity. I mean, everyone wants to get out just as badly as everyone else.

Eh, screw it. Kirito and Asuna go to some place in the town and are eating bread. This is pretty dull and not a lot happens other than Asuna confessing that she doesn't want to die, and WHAT IN THE HELL IS THAT?!

DID THAT BUTTER JUST COME OUT OF HER FINGER?!

DOES THAT MAKE HER A LITERAL BUTTERFINGERS?!

WHY DOES THE BUTTER LOOK LIKE A MAXI PAD MADE OF SEMEN?!

Okay, because I need to segue as far from this mental image as humanly possible, we skip to the raid, which has a boss being a Kobold Lord and his 3 Minions.

The fight is divided into two phases, the first with the axe and the shield, and the second with a talwar. The whole raid party charges into battle and things happen. Kirito notices that Asuna is kind of good at this game, clearly getting her skills from EDGY LONER POWERS.

So they get the Kobold down to his second stage, but what's this?!

THAT'S NOT A TALWAR! COULD IT BE THAT BETA TESTERS DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW EVERYTHING THAT'S GOING TO BE IN THE GAME?! THAT'S SUCH A SHOCKING REVELATION THAT WE ALREADY KNEW!

Unfortunately, Diabel charges in all Leeroy Jenkins and tries to take the thing on by himself. He gets the snot smacked out of him because he didn't dodge in time.

His HP is really low, but it looks salvageable. He'll be okay, right? TELL ME HE'LL BE OKAY, ANIMOOS!

TAKE THE POTION, YOU FUCKER

DON'T YOU DARE FUCKING DIE ON ME

Diabel refuses treatment, and says that he was going in to take on the Kobold Lord to get the Final Blow Bonus, which includes a special item drop. In so admitting, he had admitted to being a Beta Tester, though he wanted to use his knowledge to help other people. Hell, he shared all the information he knew at the meeting, and the whole thing about the finders keepers loot policy.  Diabel, being the majestic, noble pinnacle of a man that he is, tells Kirito that he has to win for everyone else, and to keep everybody alive.

We salute you, Diabel. Truly, you were the most Chivalrous of Knights.

The episode isn't over yet, so we have the fight go on a little longer, and then Kirito gets the killing blow on the Kobold Lord. Hooray.

He gets the super special loots, and then people congratulate him, but it's not quite over, as Stupid McHaircut has something to say!

He and a few other intrepid morons have decided to accuse Kirito of being an ex-Beta Tester, because he knew all the attack patterns (except he didn't– the whole "Not a Talwar" thing was proof enough), and that he didn't divulge any of this information to everyone else, which is kind of a blatant lie, because that information was openly available in a guidebook and WHY'S THIS MORON STILL TALKING?!

J'ACCUSE! YOUR CRIME IS BEING INTELLIGENT, AND IT WON'T BE TOLERATED HERE!

What we get next is this really weird turnaround from Kirito, where he suddenly starts making these grandiose claims of having been further along in the game than any Beta Tester has, and that he would not be associated with those noobs. This draws Stupid McHaircut to the conclusion that Kirito is a cheater.

It's at this point that people in the crowd go, I'm not even kidding,

"He's a Beta Tester AND a Cheater!"

"He's a Beater!"

...

And then Kirito is okay with this.

Look at that smug smile, this dude is so okay with being given such a stupid nickname. Beater? Seriously? Japan, let me give you a pro-tip: SMASHING NAMES TOGETHER DOES NOT MAKE COOL WORDS. It's like if I took the words "Warrior," and "Thinker," and mashed them together to make "Wanker."

So he puts on his phat lewt, a black trenchcoat that increases his Edginess by +3!

And then he walks off.

What the hell was all that about? Why did he have to put on that big of a show? Why did he have to validate this hatred of Beta Testers? Why did he have to make himself into a massive jackass to everyone there? Isn't that a great way to get him alienated from other future raids? He just snatches the loot and the final kill and "So long, suckers!" I'm starting to dislike this guy. I wouldn't invite him to a raid. What prompted the necessity of looking like a complete asshole? Seriously, what the hell is going on?

Asuna then stops him, and asks how he knew her name, not knowing about the heads-up display that shows the names of your party members. She then says what we're all thinking– that she's kind of stupid for not noticing. Kirito tells her that she should join a guild, since it'd be far more effective for her to work in a group than to work solo, despite finding a damn good way to alienate himself for good.

I... I really don't get this. What the hell happened? Why'd he go to jackass mode as soon as someone brought up him being a Beta Tester? Why this artificial need to create tension between the Beta Testers and the new players when there's really no need for it? The conflict in this game is dumb.

I'll be going over the next installment of this series, and boy, just when you thought it stopped being stupid, it takes yet another nosedive. Timere Defectum, everybody.

Sword Art Online belongs to Reki Kawahara. Attack on Titan belongs to Hajime Isayama.