So, we're going to get Rin-translation sooner than expected, too?


As for the latest episode, I was disappointed by the fight with the guardians.
With all the awesome and tense fights, it's already the second time someone fights guardians and it looks rather uninspired. Even more, the second

Spoiler

Kirito gets a second sword, I was expecting something interesting, but in a sense - I must have known - they were already killing guardians in one hit, and two swords wouldn't have changed that. Still - I hoped for a lot of furious strikes and not this.. Whatever that two sword magical beam was.

And the reinforcements... Everyone was using ranged attacks but for Kirito and Leafa, honestly, and this is the game that prides on swordplay almost as much as its magic?

Also, I don't really remember anyone riding dragons from the novel. Then again - not 100% sure on this bit.

How can you ruin the fights that should be chilling and important, so much?
Almost every fight inside SAO was good and interesting. Here, we have Aelfheim that's full of flying disappointment.
It seems that giving people an ability to fight while flying ruined everything the crew know about sword fights and tense battles.

 

It's pretty ridiculous how Kirito lowers the villain's skill levels to one and then acts like he's a boss for owning him.

 

What are you talking about? He never lowered Suguo's skill levels to one. He lowered his administrator access levels to one. So Suguo couldn't cheat by using God-mode. And ended up giving him the most powerful weapon in the game regardless.

 

That was not clearly articulated in the translation I watched. But even I felt that whole scene was gross. From the molestation to the torture, only Asuna walked away from that with some moral dignity.

 

Dunno what translation you watched, but the UTW-GotWoots translated was:

"Change system administrator privaleges. Set ID "Oberon" to Level 1."

Whatever subbing group you watch must be pretty horrid to somehow make that unclear. Change to a better one.

And I'm surprised you find it disgusting that Kirito wanted to a cause a bit of pain to the douchebag who was molesting and attempting to rape his wife in front him, after he trapped her for a period of time and was cheerfully talking about how he'd do it again in the real world too. It wasn't even like it was cold hearted torture - Kirito chopped him up in the heat of a battle (albeit one he was confident he'd win).

 

Is Suguo dead now? I seem to remember that if the pain threshold was lowered below three there would be consequences in the physical world.

 

He isn't dead but he sure as hell feels like he had his arm chopped off, was slashed in half and was stabbed through the head.

 

What he said. It wasn't clear. I think it was "Enable system administrator privileges. Set ID "Oberon" to Level 1." I thought he was accessing his own admin powers and then changing Oberon's level.

 

I did find it disgusting. It was full of Righteous Fury and poetic justice and all sorts of "he had it coming" but still disgusting. I mention it only becuase it is causing a cognitive dissonance for me.

On the one hand, the bastard had it coming. He was raping Asuna. He had tortured him and others. On the other hand, he had been so effectively neutered that any attack would have been enough. Part of me after being set to level 1 wanted to say "enough"; another part cheered for blood. Kirito chose blood, and I was fairly OK with that, initially.
Then he plays with him, a light cut across the cheek, then cutting off his wrist, then bisecting him. At that point, I was fully in mindset that he had done enough. What he did to the remaining head was overkill and gratuitous.

What initially set me off was that he looked over at Asuna, his wife in chains with his enemy beaten and broken in front of him, and instead of freeing Asuna, or killing Sugou and then freeing Asuna, he decides to torture Sugou first. Why?

 

After Evangelion 3.0 I wanted something more uplifting. What little I knew about SAO suggested that at least anime has a happy ending.

Then I watched the third episode.

But the series was great. Especially the relationship between two main characters. I liked that it was progressing instead of constantly stalling as in other anime. They even got a "kid".

Other than that I enjoyed a focus on game stuff like leveling up and similar. That's what other similar anime hack//SIGN (at least its first series, I'm unfamiliar with the rest) was missing in my opinion.

 

Oh, ye thread of old, rise from the ashes of forgetfulness and let SAO II redeem the flaws of the SAO I second arch!


Anywho, the SAO II is currently running, so I figure I'd use that skill of thread necromancy for once. After all, learning a forbidden art is fun only if you get to use it.



I started watching the new season with high expectations. Higher than I should have had, I'd like to add, since what I found wasn't an intense plot, lightsabers and inclusion of Kirito in his own harem, but rather a heavy focus on Shinon.

Such a heavy focus on Shinon, that she was the feature of the first episode's teaser, and got two following episodes solely focused on her after that.

It's a bit disappointing, since she was never that interesting of a character for me, and now she feels both a lot more broken than in the novel, and has that feeling of slow pacing that I have to adjust to. It's not badly done, and I even like some bits, but I expected something more.

If I had waited for the season to end, and watched the start in one sitting, I don't think I'd be complaining about slowness and pacing, but since now I have to wait a week between every episode, it feels a lot slower, and the relaxed pacing on top of it makes me twitch.

Sadly, I am not too patient of a man.



On positive things, I liked the way trace lines were not explained, but rather shown and I liked the whole Fallout feeling of the GGO, which was not what I imagined when I was reading the translation of the light novel. This novelty was interesting, if slightly overused in other media.


All in all, a decent, if slow start, but I keep expecting it to get better. Like, a lot better, and in the next episode.


And it needs more lightsabers. Now. And there's not enough Kirito.


p.s. Lately, it seems no one can resist adding lightsabers.

Spoiler

Jim

did it for one, and come to think of it,

Spoiler

Hiccup had one

in the latest movie as well.

 

I don't mind the pacing too much. Sinon is more or less a main character in the GGO arc, and while we've had an entire 26 episodes to get to know Kirito, we've never seen her before. So it's pretty understandable that they devoted so much time to introducing her and establishing her backstory in the first few episodes. I suspect the pace will pick up a bit starting with the next ep.

 

I actually like it quite a bit. I've never read the lightnovel, so I didn't know about Sinon. But I like her as a character quite a bit right now. And if there's one thing that's great, is the animation is amazing. I was really really surprised but how nice everything look and the huge budget SAO must've gotten.

 

IIRC, I actually liked Sinon more than Asuna when I read the LN (though that isn't saying much, since I didn't like Asuna much at all), and I enjoyed the GGO arc more than the one in fairyland, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it plays out in the anime.

 

GGO is infinitely superior to ALO.

 

I'd forgotten how frigging slow this show is. I think I'm just going to wait till the new season is finished and then binge.

 

Well, this one was better. I seemingly blinked and the episode was over, and I was sitting there, hoping that it would last longer.

It made me laugh at right places, and while the game machine was silly and hammy with it's use of English, I thought it was rather fitting.

So yeah, now to wait for another episode.

 

So finally got around to getting up to date in SAO II.

I'm actually loving this so far. Zero expectations after the disappointment from the mess that was the first season (and that is the reason I only now caught up on the last 3 episodes) and the premise of the GGO arc didn't attract me all that much either (which is why I started and then dropped the GGO light novel before it really got into it), but unlike season 1, season 2 has so far been executed really well.

Loving Sinon. Was expecting her to be another 1 dimensional harem addition, but I'm actually enjoying her character and she has a pretty interesting back story.

GGO as a cyberpunk setting in the anime is interesting me a lot more than what I did end up visualizing from what I read in the light novel too.

Let's hope it maintains this quality!

 

So, I kinda want to read this because I liked accel world but.. How do I start? From what I have gathered it seems theres a lot of different titled mangas and a light novel series. Should I go straight for the novels?

 

Just watch the anime.

The novels have been taken down from Baka-Tsuki (which is what I'd have recommended) so you'd have to buy them and the mangas don't look worth a damn.