Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld Episode 4 Discussion

What did you think of this episode?

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Dec 27, 2022 1:22 PM

#251

AwesomeAli2832

Offline

May 2022

449

good episode, but damn things got dark. This creepy, psychopath Gabriel/Miller killed their childhood friend just to see their soul and devoured Lipia's soul. This guy indeed doesn't know what human life is, and what love is, Shasta is right. Not even Shasta could avenge Lipia, that creep just devoured his soul like it was nothing. Both Shasta and Lipia desired peace with the Human Empire. This episode did a good job establishing the antagonist, and soon enough this creep will crumble and suffer.

Jan 19, 2023 6:23 PM

#252

MxS7HGS

Offline

Nov 2010

6127

Damn, he murdered Alicia. His thoughts are an example of what goes on in a serial killer's head in real life.
Vixur's rage & final attack looked cool! Too bad it didn't do anything against the Emperor.

Feb 5, 2023 11:29 AM

#253

Unkrowned

Offline

Jul 2015

9999

Seeing his past, Gabriel legit has some issues which is kinda disappointing to see yet another psycho villain as I was kinda hyped for having a mercenary as antagonist that didn't went too far in being evil.

Mar 5, 2023 4:10 PM

#254

lanadelslay

Offline

Apr 2019

Lipia and Shasta should have just fled to the human realm, Bercoli might have offered them asylum or something...

Dec 16, 2023 6:17 PM

#255

removed-user

Offline

Jul 2018

561912

Well gahhdan, Gabriel is weird

Feb 5, 6:45 AM

#256

Alvie48xi

Offline

Oct 2021

1641

NSA made a mistake choosing this guy for their job lol, Gabriel is a total psychopath since his first day.

Killing your childhood sweetheart friend for the sake of his sick desire to see souls from that early days is pure insanity, his obsession for soul probably make him hallucinate after killing his friend and now seeing the fluctlight living the body in virtual underworld is definitely gonna make his delusion come to true.

Also considering the fact Gabriel's childhood friend name is alicia, I can see where this is about to go.......not in a good way （ ´Д｀）

That Dark Knight lipia on her nightgown looks extremely hot, because of those armour I didn't realise how much of a juicy meatball she was stacking up on her chest but now she's dead, and she died in such a cruel way which makes me sad. What a waste of a hot waifu design. （ ´,_ゝ`)

That Knight commander took down 2 goblin leader and assassin leader in his berserk form which is impressive, judging by the shocked reaction of other tribe leader its pretty understandable cause these type of feat is normal because he was the dark territory Knight commander

Feb 22, 8:55 PM

#257

ElDoRado1239

Offline

Oct 2014

This get even weirder.

Alice's eye is actually healed up. Making a big deal out of her eye when Eugeo got his eye healed from a minor character matter-of-factly was weird, but Alice instead got some sort of upgraded eye or whatever. Why would anything respect the world's logic...

A lot of post-fact exposition to make us feel more. Not working for me at all. Pacing is just pure convenience, especially considering the in-game world is running 1000 times faster. From the time Kirito got electrocuted, years should have passed... but that's the least of the anime's problems at this point.

The leader of ogres is a wolf, OK. The only two interesting characters introduced so far already died, reminds me of SAO's worst part, the first half of S1. One during a lame assassination attempt, the other by using his willpower to overcome the entire VR system and become first a tornado, then a Nude Flying Man which entered the hardware storing the villain. But it turns out he has no soul, so a sword cannot kill him. OK.

We learn that this rapist villain gets off on murdering girls because he eats their souls. Whether he imaged that, or whether the reality is actually a simulation now, we don't know yet. His first victim was also a blonde girl called Alice (Alicia), because when did the author shy away from a convenient "coincidence". Of course, it makes everything even more dumb.

And then we get a glympse of a gate marked with big text "THIS WILL BE DESTROYED IN THE FINAL PHASE" for some comedic relief. I mean, it was supposed to be ridiculous, right...?

Urgh.

First of all, this is exactly why I hated the idea of combining a soul, consciousness and physical copy of a brain into a single concept called "soul", or "fluctlight". It never made sense, and it was bad even as technobabble. And now it naturally evolves into garbage when nobody really knows what a "soul" really means here. It's whatever suits the script, a "soul" of a butterfly distributed all over its body (it probably meant a "nervous system" in this case), a "soul" as in someone's personality, a "soul" as in someone's memories ("soul" is even used in concepts like memory storage, "my soul is full" supposedly means memory capacity saturation), and now also a "soul" as the literal soul you imagine when hearing the world "soul", the usual spiritual meaning. They also often throw in "love" or "true love" for some reason, almost implying that love can be copied or written-in which feels like the opposite of what they were trying to do. This is the worst written concept in the entire SAO universe.

The villain claims to be able to eat souls. It would be fine if this was his hallucination, but he actually eats souls (spiritual sense) apparently, which gives him a glimpse of the dead owner's memories. Apparently, this also happens in real world. Not only memories, he also enjoys how these souls "taste".

No matter how many fans will try to defend this, it absolutely has sexual undertones. Sure, it can be the anime's fault, I haven't read the LNs, but whether someone rapes a girl or murders her and "eats her soul", it's all the same - taking control of a girl, using her, making her his plaything, enjoying her and consuming her. He even makes the same facial expressions like all those rapists before him, it's all the same thing. And it's extremely tiresome. That one guy yelling "it's not rape we saw no penetration" is both hillarious and disturbing.

So far, this season has no redeemable qualities whatsoever. Everything happens for stupid reasons, all you can do is accept it without questioning and just enjoy the audiovisuals, which are still great. I have no idea how could this ever be salvaged, and I was never so close to dropping an anime, but there's one extra thing I can gain from watching this - I can learn from their mistakes, and hopefully avoid them when I will try making my own stories.

ElDoRado1239Feb 22, 9:10 PM

Apr 4, 12:31 AM

#258

WolfWood37

Offline

Jul 2008

11534

Oh great we have another creep as the main villain.

Apr 19, 2:50 PM

#259

Rahul_101

Offline

Jun 2017

134

Conceptually speaking, maybe SAO really has gotten its growth. Though, for pete's sake, aren't all those villain charas who came after Kayaba (except Eiji, he was decent enough) are just straight up one dimensional psychos and trashes. why can't the author just write a well grounded antagonist for once, instead of creating those self-indulgent psychotic hedonists? A major letdown, sigh.

How many times has winter given away to spring?

—Ryokan

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