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Aug 29, 2020 6:46 PM

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Oct 2017
2699
Windman said:
Its honestly sad seeing people spam that SAO has garbage writing, have you read the novels, no so shut it, it has garbage directors that leave out unexplained stuff in the anime adaptation. Thats not even Reki's fault. A1 is just printing money while removing key stuff and adding their own spin on things as well as needlessly prolonging questionable tentacle scenes and somehow everyone is bashing the author lol. Whenever the story goes as Reki intended you people cry about it being slow and shit and whenever A1 skips stuff to make room for over the top action scenes, you cry about things not making sense. Make up your mind already!


Lmao , the "have you read the novel? No so shut up" argument came up lolz.
This is the anime version so ofc it's going to use anime only as standard, not your precious masterpiece novel lol..

If Tokyo Ghoul anime is going to adapt poorly , it is going to be criticized base on the anime not manga, simple as that, so the rest are completely irrelevant and should not be used as excuse to defend it.

I gave Karakuri Circus manga a 10 but the anime adaption a 1 even though Karakuri Circus is one of my favourite manga of all time. I can separate myself from the source and the anime adaptation, so why can't you?

At this point not surprised on how low SAO fan can go anymore, just like the show itself.
Ventus_SAug 29, 2020 6:50 PM
Aug 29, 2020 6:53 PM

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Jan 2009
100390
that spirit bomb though Kirito with the Goku moves

and lol at Gabrile looking like the Anti-Spiral on Gurren Lagann but the Anti-Spiral is a much better villain than his simple eat or be eaten animal mindset

Kirito and Asuna gonna live for 200 years in the Underworld eh, they gonna make babies right? lol
Aug 29, 2020 6:54 PM

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Nov 2008
10508
Ventus_S said:
Lmao , the "have you read the novel? No so shut up" argument came up lolz.
This is the anime version so ofc it's going to use anime only as standard, not your precious masterpiece novel lol...


Windman's point is everyone bashes Kawahara's writing even though he didn't write the anime and I agree that it's totally unfair.

Kawahara is actually a pretty good writer, as one who has read his books.



Aug 29, 2020 6:59 PM

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Oct 2017
2699
Chiibi said:
Ventus_S said:
Lmao , the "have you read the novel? No so shut up" argument came up lolz.
This is the anime version so ofc it's going to use anime only as standard, not your precious masterpiece novel lol...


Windman's point is everyone bashes Kawahara's writing even though he didn't write the anime and I agree that it's totally unfair.

Kawahara is actually a pretty good writer, as one who has read his books.


As far as I see, no-one here shout about : Jesus, the source is soooo bad it make no sense.

All I hear from people is the battle/ story / plot doesn't make sense, they didn't mention anything about the source.
Aug 29, 2020 7:03 PM

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Jul 2015
12174
Chiibi said:

HE IS NOT A MARY-SUE FOR FUK'S SAKE.

LOL @ people calling him "OP" when he needed the help of literally everyone in Underworld to beat Gabriel.

Do you know what terms mean before you throw them around like that?

@sfj4u

Yeah um....guess you didn't know this but ghosts are still dead.


Yes, he is by the very definition and you have to deal with it.
And shoehorned "power of friendship" doesn't mean shit, especially since Gabriel himself got his powers completely out of nowhere, which overall is terrible writing.

Aug 29, 2020 7:08 PM
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Apr 2018
14
I have a feeling that it is Alice in Asuna's avatar
Aug 29, 2020 7:08 PM

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Jan 2009
100390
Piromysl said:
especially since Gabriel himself got his powers completely out of nowhere


isnt that just how incarnation works? willpower overrides or bends reality? its the same concept in Accel World and both this novel and that has the same author
Aug 29, 2020 7:31 PM

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Nov 2008
10508
Piromysl said:


Yes, he is by the very definition and you have to deal with it.


Lol, this should be good; what's your definition of a Mary-Sue?



Aug 29, 2020 7:33 PM

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Mar 2014
267
Best episode ever, the fight was good, could have been epic, it's borderline epic battle, but it could have been better.
They simplified it too much, still loved it, one of the better fight scene for this season.
Aug 29, 2020 7:41 PM

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Jul 2015
12174
Chiibi said:
Piromysl said:


Yes, he is by the very definition and you have to deal with it.


Lol, this should be good; what's your definition of a Mary-Sue?


Geez. You really want to go down that road?
Anyway, it's a flawless, perfect character, over which everything revolves.
It fits, because Kirito does not have any flaw within the story context.
At this point there is no room for character development, do writer thinks he can replace it with getting more powers, but that will not work.

Aug 29, 2020 7:46 PM

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Nov 2008
10508
Piromysl said:
Chiibi said:


Lol, this should be good; what's your definition of a Mary-Sue?


Geez. You really want to go down that road?
Anyway, it's a flawless, perfect character, over which everything revolves.
It fits, because Kirito does not have any flaw within the story context.
At this point there is no room for character development, do writer thinks he can replace it with getting more powers, but that will not work.


FALSE!!!

Kirito is a goddamn mess of a broken boy who can barely function without the support of others.

If you do not see that you REALLY don't pay attention to his character.

It's pretty damn obvious.



Aug 29, 2020 7:54 PM

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Sep 2016
1394
So basically Gabriel turned into anti spiral guy LOL

That colorful animation of Kirito's attack is one of the best scenes I have ever seen.
6/5 episode solely for that.


In any case, something tells me they won't be stuck there for that long.
Someone is going to pull them out.
The question is, how much? Hours (because acceleration didn't go up that much?)? Few years?
We'll see.
Also Alice is outside, but how? As an unconscious cube? How will they interface her to real world?
Also, without Kirito or Asuna, she doesn't have anyone she can trust out there as a reference point to have some confrontation with the guys outside.
bruh
Aug 29, 2020 8:07 PM
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Jul 2019
11
I am legitimately gonna lose my mind watching this show. It all looks and sounds wonderful but it just doesn't make any sense to me. Alicization started out with such a good world system, solid rules to form the foundation, and interesting weapon variety and meanings. At this point all the rules have been thrown out of the window; we don't know why Kirito can do any of the things he can do, we don't know why all of a sudden people's ghosts suddenly started appearing out of thin air, we don't know why Gabriel is able to transform or why he has the powers he has. Like watching that fight, as cool as it looked, was completely uninteresting because I don't even know WHAT any of the characters can do at this point. It feels like they just take random abilities that didn't exist and tack them on every second that passes. Turning people into trees? Sure. Reversing the time of two dragons? Yeah, why not. Somehow logging out every hostile player as soon as he opens his eyes? Yup. Turning the sky dark and making people's wishes for him to win turn into stars because somehow they know he caused it? Slap it in there. It's incomprehensible at this point and it makes me mad.
Aug 29, 2020 8:38 PM

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Jul 2015
12174
Chiibi said:
Piromysl said:


Geez. You really want to go down that road?
Anyway, it's a flawless, perfect character, over which everything revolves.
It fits, because Kirito does not have any flaw within the story context.
At this point there is no room for character development, do writer thinks he can replace it with getting more powers, but that will not work.


FALSE!!!

Kirito is a goddamn mess of a broken boy who can barely function without the support of others.

If you do not see that you REALLY don't pay attention to his character.

It's pretty damn obvious.


You mean those irrelevant characters shoehorned for no reason, except maybe Asuna who is no better written?

Anyway, if you refer to him having issues with killing few Laughing Coffin thugs, cannot be considered a "flaw", because it all comes down to him bring "too kind" or "too merciful", which is like the very basic Mary Sue trait.
For me, it was just him bring too whimpy and soft, because culling few murderers is nothing to be upset about end his simps having to go to such lengths to tell him that he did nothing wrong is laughable.

Aug 29, 2020 8:39 PM
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Mar 2020
1
Sword Art Online is my favorite anime but this episode was one of the worst. Kirito x Gabriel fight was supposed to be super cool and stuff but instead it was just really dramatic with kirito remembering about his friends all the time and i couldn't pay attention to it because it had so many lights and stuff, it's disgusting in my opinion. It would be 100x better if we had more minutes for the real fight and Gabriel hadn't changed to that luminous and weird stuff for no reason.

Sorry for any grammar mistakes, english is not my first language :d.
Aug 29, 2020 8:53 PM

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Sep 2015
148
OceanicBlues said:
I am legitimately gonna lose my mind watching this show. It all looks and sounds wonderful but it just doesn't make any sense to me. Alicization started out with such a good world system, solid rules to form the foundation, and interesting weapon variety and meanings. At this point all the rules have been thrown out of the window; we don't know why Kirito can do any of the things he can do, we don't know why all of a sudden people's ghosts suddenly started appearing out of thin air, we don't know why Gabriel is able to transform or why he has the powers he has. Like watching that fight, as cool as it looked, was completely uninteresting because I don't even know WHAT any of the characters can do at this point. It feels like they just take random abilities that didn't exist and tack them on every second that passes. Turning people into trees? Sure. Reversing the time of two dragons? Yeah, why not. Somehow logging out every hostile player as soon as he opens his eyes? Yup. Turning the sky dark and making people's wishes for him to win turn into stars because somehow they know he caused it? Slap it in there. It's incomprehensible at this point and it makes me mad.


A short explanation to all of this would be the following:

They are inside a virtual world created by a quantum computer. Since the whole thing operates by using the human souls (and those souls are interconnected with each other), it's basically like a lucid dream. Once you're aware you can warp reality AND when you feel confident about it - you're free to fuck shit up effortlessly, especially when you've got a lot of System Authority (Kirito got +EXP boost after killing off the Administrator; don't forget that she was a hugely over-leveled "god" of this world).

Anime does a pretty bad job explaining it. They did mention "power of imagination" at some point - but nobody took that seriously, it seems.
Aug 29, 2020 8:59 PM

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Oct 2017
2699
Chiibi said:
Piromysl said:


Yes, he is by the very definition and you have to deal with it.


Lol, this should be good; what's your definition of a Mary-Sue?




Change the gender of the video using male perspective.
Kirito fits 90% of it :)
Aug 29, 2020 8:59 PM

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Feb 2015
1103
Good lord man. SAO should have stayed SAO and never left the Aincard arc. Whoever directed this episode and this season needs to be shot, out of a cannon, into a wall of decently written and directed fiction of all mediums and types.
Aug 29, 2020 9:05 PM

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Sep 2015
148
Yautja said:
Good lord man. SAO should have stayed SAO and never left the Aincard arc. Whoever directed this episode and this season needs to be shot, out of a cannon, into a wall of decently written and directed fiction of all mediums and types.


This particular episode was directed by https://myanimelist.net/people/14217/Masakazu_Obara
Aug 29, 2020 9:25 PM

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Nov 2008
10508
Piromysl said:
Chiibi said:


FALSE!!!

Kirito is a goddamn mess of a broken boy who can barely function without the support of others.

If you do not see that you REALLY don't pay attention to his character.

It's pretty damn obvious.


You mean those irrelevant characters shoehorned for no reason, except maybe Asuna who is no better written?

Anyway, if you refer to him having issues with killing few Laughing Coffin thugs, cannot be considered a "flaw", because it all comes down to him bring "too kind" or "too merciful", which is like the very basic Mary Sue trait.
For me, it was just him bring too whimpy and soft, because culling few murderers is nothing to be upset about end his simps having to go to such lengths to tell him that he did nothing wrong is laughable.


He's NOT 'merciful' at all; he killed three people. Plenty of shounen heroes suffer from that untaintable ' I must never kill under any circumstances ever 'purity' that kinda makes me wanna gag. He is not one of them.

How the fuk would you know 'that's nothing to be upset about' like did you kill three people yourself?

Uh, I doubt it. But people who HAVE killed IRL suffer from PTSD and Kirito suffers from it as well. It is a normal human reaction.

In fact, NOT suffering from it would be abnormal.

@Ventus_S

Really? "I'm too freaking lazy to type my own words so here's a youtube video to watch?"

I'm not clicking that, fool. :D You can shove that type of response up your butt!

Unlike you, I DO write things. This is why he isn't a Mary-Sue.

https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1809730
ChiibiAug 29, 2020 9:30 PM



Aug 29, 2020 9:54 PM
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Dec 2019
342
Everyone gangsta till WoU pt2. I've got to admit everything was amazing until the fight with PoH. This episode was animated beautifully but it made no sense and everything felt rushed, like he just ran out of ideas and made Kirito op just because.
DesmondusAug 29, 2020 10:03 PM
Aug 29, 2020 10:01 PM

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Oct 2009
64
This episode was everything I had hoped for in the light novel adaptation. Starburst Stream is Kirito's iconic finisher and good job on Reki for sparingly using it - there'd be a lot less impact if Kirito used that move at every boss fight (eg: vs PoH).

Eugeo keeps popping back in Kirito's memories because Reki is bringing up the idea that Kirito learnt what true friendship was in the Underworld, and Eugeo was (if I remember the LN correctly) his "only true friend". There was nothing short of spectacular seeing Eugeo appear and give the last hit from Starburst Stream.

Yes I know all the magical beams of light makes everything in this season less believable now (since these last few fights have really been a buildup of everyone's "imagination"); but again, this is all part of Reki's decision to build Underworld to have different "rules" to the other games the characters have been featuring in - Underworld is not limited to system constraints but to each individual's potential. Sounds cheesy but would you rather have another game where Kirito just cheeses the system?

At the end of the day if you're hating on this anime I don't blame you, it's been very difficult to adapt the Light Novel into animation - the fight scenes are amazing, but you lose of a lot of the interior monologue which builds up the character (I guess that suggests Reki isn't that good at "showing" us his story, rather than just "telling" it).

But for someone like me who has read the LN, it's been an amazing journey (not much exciting left for the rest of the season now - well, there's one more interesting scene) and I do hope we get a 2nd movie and an announcing on Moon Cradle adaptation next year or something like that.
Aug 29, 2020 10:12 PM

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Jan 2016
21
Genkidama LUL

Very disappointing episode.
Aug 29, 2020 10:18 PM

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Jun 2016
749
Chiibi said:
Piromysl said:


You mean those irrelevant characters shoehorned for no reason, except maybe Asuna who is no better written?

Anyway, if you refer to him having issues with killing few Laughing Coffin thugs, cannot be considered a "flaw", because it all comes down to him bring "too kind" or "too merciful", which is like the very basic Mary Sue trait.
For me, it was just him bring too whimpy and soft, because culling few murderers is nothing to be upset about end his simps having to go to such lengths to tell him that he did nothing wrong is laughable.


He's NOT 'merciful' at all; he killed three people. Plenty of shounen heroes suffer from that untaintable ' I must never kill under any circumstances ever 'purity' that kinda makes me wanna gag. He is not one of them.

How the fuk would you know 'that's nothing to be upset about' like did you kill three people yourself?

Uh, I doubt it. But people who HAVE killed IRL suffer from PTSD and Kirito suffers from it as well. It is a normal human reaction.

In fact, NOT suffering from it would be abnormal.

@Ventus_S

Really? "I'm too freaking lazy to type my own words so here's a youtube video to watch?"

I'm not clicking that, fool. :D You can shove that type of response up your butt!

Unlike you, I DO write things. This is why he isn't a Mary-Sue.

https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1809730


How about Kirito's character in the context of the anime? A-1's brilliant inclusion to include 1. Saving his wife from being raped by Oberon and 2. Saving Sinon + GGO players from Death Gun onto his list of regrets?

Just with that alone, I feel like they basically fucking bamboozled all the anime viewers about Kirito's character.
InorichiAug 29, 2020 10:45 PM
Aug 29, 2020 10:39 PM

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Nov 2008
10508
Inorichi said:
How about Kirito's character in the context of the anime? A-1's brilliant inclusion do include 1. Saving his wife from being raped by Oberon


Which he wouldn't have been able to do without the help of Leafa and the other members of Alfheim and Asuna herself AND KAYABA'S GHOST.


and 2. Saving Sinon + GGO players from Death Gun onto his list of regrets?


Again, he did not accomplish this on his own. He had to still rely on Sinon in the game and Shinkawa was beating the shit outta Kazuto IRL until Shino clocked the guy in the head with a....I forget. Something heavy. Lol.

divineiniquity is correct about losing the inner monologue when the story is converted to anime though. That's the biggest downfall. It just brings much more depth to the characters and you can understand their actions way better.



Aug 29, 2020 10:39 PM
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Dec 2018
28
So in this episode, we see everyone else log out INCLUDING ALICE? Why did Alice logout? Isn't she part of the Underworld? I'm struggling to understand why Alice is so important to the story so if someone could explain it to me, that would be greatly appreciated
Aug 29, 2020 10:49 PM
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Jul 2019
11
Aelyn said:
OceanicBlues said:
I am legitimately gonna lose my mind watching this show. It all looks and sounds wonderful but it just doesn't make any sense to me. Alicization started out with such a good world system, solid rules to form the foundation, and interesting weapon variety and meanings. At this point all the rules have been thrown out of the window; we don't know why Kirito can do any of the things he can do, we don't know why all of a sudden people's ghosts suddenly started appearing out of thin air, we don't know why Gabriel is able to transform or why he has the powers he has. Like watching that fight, as cool as it looked, was completely uninteresting because I don't even know WHAT any of the characters can do at this point. It feels like they just take random abilities that didn't exist and tack them on every second that passes. Turning people into trees? Sure. Reversing the time of two dragons? Yeah, why not. Somehow logging out every hostile player as soon as he opens his eyes? Yup. Turning the sky dark and making people's wishes for him to win turn into stars because somehow they know he caused it? Slap it in there. It's incomprehensible at this point and it makes me mad.


A short explanation to all of this would be the following:

They are inside a virtual world created by a quantum computer. Since the whole thing operates by using the human souls (and those souls are interconnected with each other), it's basically like a lucid dream. Once you're aware you can warp reality AND when you feel confident about it - you're free to fuck shit up effortlessly, especially when you've got a lot of System Authority (Kirito got +EXP boost after killing off the Administrator; don't forget that she was a hugely over-leveled "god" of this world).

Anime does a pretty bad job explaining it. They did mention "power of imagination" at some point - but nobody took that seriously, it seems.

That makes the slightest bit more sense, but in the end it just feels like Kirito showed up and saved the day again regardless of most outside factors. In SAO it's all about him getting obscene powers from any possible place thinkable and using them to save his harem. It was nice to see Best Girl Eugeo again though, I think he and Yuuki from Mother's Rosario are the only characters that I'd consider well written. It's the strangest thing; I have consumed every piece of SAO animated media to date and even though I don't like most of it I just can't stop watching. It's my guilty pleasure I guess. I want it to live up to its potential so badly.
Aug 29, 2020 10:52 PM
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Jul 2019
11
Marty_McFlew said:
So in this episode, we see everyone else log out INCLUDING ALICE? Why did Alice logout? Isn't she part of the Underworld? I'm struggling to understand why Alice is so important to the story so if someone could explain it to me, that would be greatly appreciated

Alice is logged out because she is taken to World's End Altar where her Fluctlight is ejected from the system. Her Fluctlight holds all of her data it seems. Her importance is that this company is trying to create AI that can think entirely autonomously, which she is the first example of. To what end I'm not entirely sure; now that I think about it this is just giving birth to a human but with extra steps. Like surely if it's an entirely autonomously thinking AI they'd be given rights like any other human, and so could not be used as slaves to operate machinery... right? So why else would you need one?
Aug 29, 2020 10:58 PM

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Feb 2014
1079
The return of starburst stream attack, It's been years since we last saw it.

The anime seems to be overusing Eugeo so much. I'm pretty disappointedthat the anime cut out the scene I was actually hoping to see on the Gabrielle vs Kirito fight.

Aug 29, 2020 11:05 PM
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Oct 2019
34
Ronye: Now I can have Kirito-senpai for the rest of my life.
Sortiliena: Oye oye!... what're you talking about while I'm here.

(Asuna smiles)
Aug 29, 2020 11:13 PM

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Sep 2015
148
OceanicBlues said:

That makes the slightest bit more sense, but in the end it just feels like Kirito showed up and saved the day again regardless of most outside factors. In SAO it's all about him getting obscene powers from any possible place thinkable and using them to save his harem. It was nice to see Best Girl Eugeo again though, I think he and Yuuki from Mother's Rosario are the only characters that I'd consider well written. It's the strangest thing; I have consumed every piece of SAO animated media to date and even though I don't like most of it I just can't stop watching. It's my guilty pleasure I guess. I want it to live up to its potential so badly.


Frankly speaking, it's not even the biggest issue here. What really makes it all seem pathetic is that the anime continuously tells you "Hey, it's gonna be fine. Kirito will win this" in an indirect but very obvious way.

Of course there's Time Acceleration problem and a potential threat to Kirito's soul... However, we also know there's 0 chance for him to die. And given that Asuna has also stayed with him inside the Underworld, no real danger to spice up the story is present at this moment.

Properly created tension is a crucial part of any fictional story. When you take it away completely (or when you sacrifice it for the sake of making your hero transcend to truly unimaginable levels of power), there's a good chance that at least some of your readers/viewers won't be able to enjoy the story. And that's exactly what's happening right now with SAO.
Aug 29, 2020 11:39 PM

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Dec 2010
853
avc_alonso said:
Can someone explain how Gabriel is so powerful in the Underworld with his personal avatar? I’m so lost. This second half of this season is losing me


It's because he (unconsciously?) knows how the world works.
The stronger your belief in something the stronger you get basically.


I don't normally enjoy SAO episode but this hit mt like a truck when Bercoulli and Quinella appeared.

Also, best girl Eugeo (Nobunaga) saves the day.

And as expected, Asuna stays behind.
Aug 29, 2020 11:52 PM

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Jun 2016
749
Ironically, the one episode with majority negative reaction is the one I thought was decent. I'm actually so relieved that Kirito vs Gabriel didn't look like a giant flaming pile of scoobydoo snacks (like PoH's fight). Jesus that was beyond bad. 0% fighting, 20% running, 20% decoy bamboozles, 60% shouting Ahh while trying to break each others swords with body weight.

Still can't stop myself from complaining about the few things, however, the damage in this episode isn't irreparable, so respect for that.

I have to ask though, how come nobody talks about the art? Is everyone else just munching away on snacks half paying attention?

First Scene



Almost Cringeworthy. I actually had to get up and prepare to be disappointed when they blasted the iconic ost with the most depressing backside I've ever seen. Still, it was only one scene, but definitely not the best way to start off the climax of the franchise.


Anything and Everything Zoomed Out




I genuinely can not understand how anyone thinks WOU P2 looks remotely good, with the exception of the 1 battle in this episode. The backgrounds look brilliant yes, (when the anime has a background other than red, red, red). But overall, I feel like the quality of these far off shots have been dropping with every episode.

I also don't understand why they feel the need to 'zoom' or show such a far off shot for scenes like Alice & Asuna running up stairs. Adds nothing, I'd much rather see Alice and Asuna's faces. Only explanation is the fact that it's significantly easier drawing tiny faceless and minimally detailed characters, than a close up detailed character in a run cycle. The far off Kirito pov backshot of Asuna and Alice looked fine, these two are exactly what I mean. The detailed background with Kirito and the flowers is almost funny. There's actually quite a few of these shots in every episode, so yeah...

Flowers have more details than the main characters face. Who would have thought.

Ninja Alice
Even as a light novel reader, I got lost when Alice shot a golden shuriken from her hand. A large golden star in the night sky would have been better imo. Was genuinely confused since it actually looks like a shuriken.

Rainbow superman Kirito attack
The generate all elements attack. It just did not look right. I can agree that it'd be a waste of staff to detail balls flying at the enemy, however, since they had 0 detail other than being balls of color, in the colors of the rainbow, in a rainbow arc, it literally felt like a powerrangers attack.



Genitalless, Legless Kirito

No specific complaints, I just personally thought it looked more stupid than horrifying with Kirito just floating there without the lower half of his body, and the scene was actually a lot longer than I expected. Kirito wasn't really in pain, nor did he seem to care too much, the longer you saw him floating without legs, it just felt more and more, well stupid.


NULL NULL NULL!!!!!!
Gabriels dialogue for the entire last half of the fight made no sense. He literally screams null while getting rag dolled. He had absolutely no other voice lines other than "Null" Not even grunting or shouting, just "Null"... Imo, they should have reduced the amount of nulls, since as you saw in Ordinal Scale, a silent boss (well with a screech) getting demolished is still pretty epic.


Classic 'big 3 Shounen Staredown'
Kirito and Gabriel looks at each other blankly, faces change to anger, then they shout 'AHHH!' at each other for 3 seconds before starting to fight. Bit unnecessary at this stage in the fight.


Bit more 'Fighting'
The fight looked good. However, it was less of a fight and more of - Kirito gets ragdolled first half. - Gabriel gets ragdolled second half.




3 minute death scenes
If we go back to S1 and S2 or even Ordinal Scale. A lot of them get sliced in half, a few get stabbed, all of them 'die' in the virtual world. Oberon and Death Gun do no laugh maniacally and have a conversation after being sliced in half.

My biggest fault with this scene is the fact that they had the 'iconic ost' playing after Gabriel is sliced in half and the only thing on screen is a conversation at the peak of the battle music.


Worshipping Kirito
To be fair, I don't remember every detail from this scene and I wont go back to check. However, due to the length and the amount of characters shown just looking up and praying to the heavens for no reason was just weird. Lisbeth and Silica were fine. So was Klein. Sheyta and Iskahn were fine too, it felt more like a symbol of respect and not every character in their scene was being spirit bomb fuel. But I just don't understand why everyone at the academy started holding their hands together in prayer.

However, I can say this at the very least "Thank the fucking lords the goblins and ogres didn't hold hands and sing kumbayah."


Final Complaint, the Climax Zoom Out


This one actually made me sad. That climax would have been perfect, if this scene was just altered or removed. They wanted to portray the power of his sword swings, etc - but this sudden hyper zoom out of the final battle was unnecessary. Not like a character was launched, just in the middle of swinging, suddenly the perspective is super far away. Not to mention, both characters were covered in very rainbow-y incarnations so suddenly the screen is quite literally black and white with the exception of 2 colored slits.
Basically, it ruined the immersion for me, could have been done better so it wouldn't have.

Note: I'm not saying it's terrible. Just Unnecessary*****. For an SAO comparison, Look at this Ordinal Scale gif - Heavy / powerful strikes, zoom out, looks fine.







Everything they finally did right


Jesus the art, finally looks fucking GOOD, in a battle scene. They just made good decisions. Blue rose sword - has details even though it's blurred to be shown out of focus. The blood has details, while it's partially blurred to give depth perception. Kirito's eyes are not just 2 dots, his face has detail, his hair is shaded. Just this one scene, thank you for that.

They included the twins from the Tournament which they cut from Cour 1! Yay!

The Star Scene. The fact that they decided to have every single star in the night sky represent someone and have every single one of them move. I was genuinely surprised when the stars on screen peeled off and moved towards Kirito, since I thought for sure, they'd just keep the star background and then add in shooting stars on top of that. Just how the stars peeled away to expose the blank night sky. This is what an anime adaptation should do - show a picture, or a scene, that tells a thousand words. Can respect that.

Alice and Asuna running to the Altar. Zoomed off Scene. If you look at the spoiler image, you can actually see the white underneath Alice's dress armor. The movements weren't choppy and everything looked good in this scene, even though it was zoomed out, it has a point, it's necessary. It portrays the distance Alice and Asuna have left to the Altar, it shows how long and large this staircase actually is, it portrays a lot of things and it looks good.


Real World Scenes. Honestly, those were fucking great. The backgrounds were a bit lackluster, but the characters worked. There was no one looked better than the other. Both looked good, and there was some creativity and personality to those shots. Anyone notice the porn mag under Kleins Table? Or that he finally got his pizza delivered? Klein Finally Got His Pizza. After Many Many Years... He's rubbing the wrong arm. Eiji broke your other arm my dude. Also Klein thinks Ps>Xbox.

Jesus christ, I complain about a lot of things and I haven't praised it nearly as much. But,

It was a Great Episode
4.5/5 - Several scenes which looked quite bad, but were short and not extremely relevant. Everything that 'built up' or failed to do so to this ep, probably ruined it for a lot of people, but looking at this episode alone, I thought it was quite good.

I FINALLY REALIZED. Everyone's too busy with the subs to notice anything wrong with the art.



tl;dr, What am I doing with my life. Klein finally got his pizza. GGs
InorichiAug 30, 2020 12:06 AM
Aug 30, 2020 12:01 AM
♡( •ॢ◡-ॢ)✧˖° ♡

Offline
Dec 2014
20466
Ah yes,
Kirito's stand 『E U G E O』, saved the day again.

just leave it to his automatic stand 『E U G E O』to win the battle.

...and stop crying so much when there's nothing sad...gosh.



(っ◔◡◔)っ 𝓘 𝔀𝓲𝓼𝓱 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓪𝓵𝓵 𝓱𝓪𝓿𝓮 𝓪 𝔀𝓸𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻𝓯𝓾𝓵 𝓭𝓪𝔂 ♥
Aug 30, 2020 12:03 AM

Offline
Jun 2016
749
Chiibi said:
Inorichi said:
How about Kirito's character in the context of the anime? A-1's brilliant inclusion do include 1. Saving his wife from being raped by Oberon


Which he wouldn't have been able to do without the help of Leafa and the other members of Alfheim and Asuna herself AND KAYABA'S GHOST.


and 2. Saving Sinon + GGO players from Death Gun onto his list of regrets?


Again, he did not accomplish this on his own. He had to still rely on Sinon in the game and Shinkawa was beating the shit outta Kazuto IRL until Shino clocked the guy in the head with a....I forget. Something heavy. Lol.

divineiniquity is correct about losing the inner monologue when the story is converted to anime though. That's the biggest downfall. It just brings much more depth to the characters and you can understand their actions way better.


Not what I'm saying. Afaik, neither of those were in his nightmares in the light novel.

1. Kirito ignored his beta tester friend IRL when they were being bullied. And 2. Kirito regrets not being able to save Cooper? I think was his name, when he tried Monster Pking Kirito after he gets a rare item first but dies in the process.

A-1 didn't just not adapt those scenes, they added random flashbacks to his regrets for no reason.

Why would Kirito regret saving his wife from being raped? Why would he regret saving sinon from death gun? He didn't in the novels (afaik), and it just makes no sense. The adaptation made his character so weak he regrets beating people in a virtual world or saving his wife? Neither belonged in the nightmare scene and it probably confused a lot of anime viewers about Kirito's character, is what I was trying to say.
Aug 30, 2020 12:16 AM

Offline
Feb 2017
74
Inorichi said:
Ironically, the one episode with majority negative reaction is the one I thought was decent. I'm actually so relieved that Kirito vs Gabriel didn't look like a giant flaming pile of scoobydoo snacks (like PoH's fight). Jesus that was beyond bad. 0% fighting, 20% running, 20% decoy bamboozles, 60% shouting Ahh while trying to break each others swords with body weight.

Still can't stop myself from complaining about the few things, however, the damage in this episode isn't irreparable, so respect for that.

I have to ask though, how come nobody talks about the art? Is everyone else just munching away on snacks half paying attention?

First Scene



Almost Cringeworthy. I actually had to get up and prepare to be disappointed when they blasted the iconic ost with the most depressing backside I've ever seen. Still, it was only one scene, but definitely not the best way to start off the climax of the franchise.


Anything and Everything Zoomed Out




I genuinely can not understand how anyone thinks WOU P2 looks remotely good, with the exception of the 1 battle in this episode. The backgrounds look brilliant yes, (when the anime has a background other than red, red, red). But overall, I feel like the quality of these far off shots have been dropping with every episode.

I also don't understand why they feel the need to 'zoom' or show such a far off shot for scenes like Alice & Asuna running up stairs. Adds nothing, I'd much rather see Alice and Asuna's faces. Only explanation is the fact that it's significantly easier drawing tiny faceless and minimally detailed characters, than a close up detailed character in a run cycle. The far off Kirito pov backshot looked fine, these two are exactly what I mean. The detailed background with Kirito and the flowers is almost funny. There's actually quite a few of these shots in every episode, so yeah...

Flowers have more details than the main characters face. Who would have thought.

Ninja Alice
Even as a light novel reader, I got lost when Alice shot a golden shuriken from her hand. A large golden star in the night sky would have been better imo. Was genuinely confused since it actually looks like a shuriken.

Rainbow superman Kirito attack
The generate all elements attack. It just did not look right. I can agree that it'd be a waste of staff to detail balls flying at the enemy, however, since they had 0 detail other than being balls of color, in the colors of the rainbow, in a rainbow arc, it literally felt like a powerrangers attack.



Genitalless, Legless Kirito

No specific complaints, I just personally thought it looked more stupid than horrifying with Kirito just floating there without the lower half of his body, and the scene was actually a lot longer than I expected. Kirito wasn't really in pain, nor did he seem to care too much, the longer you saw him floating without legs, it just felt more and more, well stupid.


NULL NULL NULL!!!!!!
Gabriels dialogue for the entire last half of the fight made no sense. He literally screams null while getting rag dolled. He had absolutely no other voice lines other than "Null" Not even grunting or shouting, just "Null"... Imo, they should have reduced the amount of nulls, since as you saw in Ordinal Scale, a silent boss (well with a screech) getting demolished is still pretty epic.


Classic 'big 3 Shounen Staredown'
Kirito and Gabriel looks at each other blankly, faces change to anger, then they shout 'AHHH!' at each other for 3 seconds before starting to fight. Bit unnecessary at this stage in the fight.


Bit more 'Fighting'
The fight looked good. However, it was less of a fight and more of - Kirito gets ragdolled first half. - Gabriel gets ragdolled second half.




3 minute death scenes
If we go back to S1 and S2 or even Ordinal Scale. A lot of them get sliced in half, a few get stabbed, all of them 'die' in the virtual world. Oberon and Death Gun do no laugh maniacally and have a conversation after being sliced in half.

My biggest fault with this scene is the fact that they had the 'iconic ost' playing after Gabriel is sliced in half and the only thing on screen is a conversation at the peak of the battle music.


Worshipping Kirito
To be fair, I don't remember every detail from this scene and I wont go back to check. However, due to the length and the amount of characters shown just looking up and praying to the heavens for no reason was just weird. Lisbeth and Silica were fine. So was Klein. Sheyta and Iskahn were fine too, it felt more like a symbol of respect and not every character in their scene was being spirit bomb fuel. But I just don't understand why everyone at the academy started holding their hands together in prayer.

However, I can say this at the very least "Thank the fucking lords the goblins and ogres didn't hold hands and sing kumbayah."


Final Complaint, the Climax Zoom Out


This one actually made me sad. That climax would have been perfect, if this scene was just altered or removed. They wanted to portray the power of his sword swings, etc - but this sudden hyper zoom out of the final battle was unnecessary. Not like a character was launched, just in the middle of swinging, suddenly the perspective is super far away. Not to mention, both characters were covered in very rainbow-y incarnations so suddenly the screen is quite literally black and white with the exception of 2 colored slits.
Basically, it ruined the immersion for me, could have been done better so it wouldn't have.

Note: I'm not saying it's terrible. Just Unnecessary*****. For an SAO comparison, Look at this Ordinal Scale gif - Heavy / powerful strikes, zoom out, looks fine.







Everything they finally did right


Jesus the art, finally looks fucking GOOD, in a battle scene. They just made good decisions. Blue rose sword - has details even though it's blurred to be shown out of focus. The blood has details, while it's partially blurred to give depth perception. Kirito's eyes are not just 2 dots, his face has detail, his hair is shaded. Just this one scene, thank you for that.

They included the twins from the Tournament which they cut from Cour 1! Yay!

The Star Scene. The fact that they decided to have every single star in the night sky represent someone and have every single one of them move. I was genuinely surprised when the stars on screen peeled off and moved towards Kirito, since I thought for sure, they'd just keep the star background and then add in shooting stars on top of that. Just how the stars peeled away to expose the blank night sky. This is what an anime adaptation should do - show a picture, or a scene, that tells a thousand words. Can respect that.

Alice and Asuna running to the Altar. Zoomed off Scene. If you look at the spoiler image, you can actually see the white underneath Alice's dress armor. The movements weren't choppy and everything looked good in this scene, even though it was zoomed out, it has a point, it's necessary. It portrays the distance Alice and Asuna have left to the Altar, it shows how long and large this staircase actually is, it portrays a lot of things and it looks good.


Real World Scenes. Honestly, those were fucking great. The backgrounds were a bit lackluster, but the characters worked. There was no one looked better than the other. Both looked good, and there was some creativity and personality to those shots. Anyone notice the porn mag under Kleins Table? Or that he finally got his pizza delivered? Klein Finally Got His Pizza. After Many Many Years... He's rubbing the wrong arm. Eiji broke your other arm my dude. Also Klein thinks Ps>Xbox.

Jesus christ, I complain about a lot of things and I haven't praised it nearly as much. But,

It was a Great Episode
4.5/5 - Several scenes which looked quite bad, but were short and not extremely relevant. Everything that 'built up' or failed to do so to this ep, probably ruined it for a lot of people, but looking at this episode alone, I thought it was quite good.

I FINALLY REALIZED. Everyone's too busy with the subs to notice anything wrong with the art.



tl;dr, What am I doing with my life. Klein finally got his pizza. GGs


Remember last time I tell you that A1 save the budgets from previous episode to make this episode? Now It’s seem that I’m wrong and you are right. A1 just did a bad job in managing their budget to make a good animation. This fight isn’t that good and no way near epic level, surely the animation is pretty decent in some scenes, but the pacing and the explanation of what is happening are just make it overall an average uninteresting fight, even anime like HxH or Gintama that has much lower budget and have more episode can make a better fight scene than this, not even talking about OPM season 1.
Aug 30, 2020 12:28 AM

Offline
Jun 2016
749
kanthorn said:
Inorichi said:
Ironically, the one episode with majority negative reaction is the one I thought was decent. I'm actually so relieved that Kirito vs Gabriel didn't look like a giant flaming pile of scoobydoo snacks (like PoH's fight). Jesus that was beyond bad. 0% fighting, 20% running, 20% decoy bamboozles, 60% shouting Ahh while trying to break each others swords with body weight.

Still can't stop myself from complaining about the few things, however, the damage in this episode isn't irreparable, so respect for that.

I have to ask though, how come nobody talks about the art? Is everyone else just munching away on snacks half paying attention?

First Scene



Almost Cringeworthy. I actually had to get up and prepare to be disappointed when they blasted the iconic ost with the most depressing backside I've ever seen. Still, it was only one scene, but definitely not the best way to start off the climax of the franchise.


Anything and Everything Zoomed Out




I genuinely can not understand how anyone thinks WOU P2 looks remotely good, with the exception of the 1 battle in this episode. The backgrounds look brilliant yes, (when the anime has a background other than red, red, red). But overall, I feel like the quality of these far off shots have been dropping with every episode.

I also don't understand why they feel the need to 'zoom' or show such a far off shot for scenes like Alice & Asuna running up stairs. Adds nothing, I'd much rather see Alice and Asuna's faces. Only explanation is the fact that it's significantly easier drawing tiny faceless and minimally detailed characters, than a close up detailed character in a run cycle. The far off Kirito pov backshot looked fine, these two are exactly what I mean. The detailed background with Kirito and the flowers is almost funny. There's actually quite a few of these shots in every episode, so yeah...

Flowers have more details than the main characters face. Who would have thought.

Ninja Alice
Even as a light novel reader, I got lost when Alice shot a golden shuriken from her hand. A large golden star in the night sky would have been better imo. Was genuinely confused since it actually looks like a shuriken.

Rainbow superman Kirito attack
The generate all elements attack. It just did not look right. I can agree that it'd be a waste of staff to detail balls flying at the enemy, however, since they had 0 detail other than being balls of color, in the colors of the rainbow, in a rainbow arc, it literally felt like a powerrangers attack.



Genitalless, Legless Kirito

No specific complaints, I just personally thought it looked more stupid than horrifying with Kirito just floating there without the lower half of his body, and the scene was actually a lot longer than I expected. Kirito wasn't really in pain, nor did he seem to care too much, the longer you saw him floating without legs, it just felt more and more, well stupid.


NULL NULL NULL!!!!!!
Gabriels dialogue for the entire last half of the fight made no sense. He literally screams null while getting rag dolled. He had absolutely no other voice lines other than "Null" Not even grunting or shouting, just "Null"... Imo, they should have reduced the amount of nulls, since as you saw in Ordinal Scale, a silent boss (well with a screech) getting demolished is still pretty epic.


Classic 'big 3 Shounen Staredown'
Kirito and Gabriel looks at each other blankly, faces change to anger, then they shout 'AHHH!' at each other for 3 seconds before starting to fight. Bit unnecessary at this stage in the fight.


Bit more 'Fighting'
The fight looked good. However, it was less of a fight and more of - Kirito gets ragdolled first half. - Gabriel gets ragdolled second half.




3 minute death scenes
If we go back to S1 and S2 or even Ordinal Scale. A lot of them get sliced in half, a few get stabbed, all of them 'die' in the virtual world. Oberon and Death Gun do no laugh maniacally and have a conversation after being sliced in half.

My biggest fault with this scene is the fact that they had the 'iconic ost' playing after Gabriel is sliced in half and the only thing on screen is a conversation at the peak of the battle music.


Worshipping Kirito
To be fair, I don't remember every detail from this scene and I wont go back to check. However, due to the length and the amount of characters shown just looking up and praying to the heavens for no reason was just weird. Lisbeth and Silica were fine. So was Klein. Sheyta and Iskahn were fine too, it felt more like a symbol of respect and not every character in their scene was being spirit bomb fuel. But I just don't understand why everyone at the academy started holding their hands together in prayer.

However, I can say this at the very least "Thank the fucking lords the goblins and ogres didn't hold hands and sing kumbayah."


Final Complaint, the Climax Zoom Out


This one actually made me sad. That climax would have been perfect, if this scene was just altered or removed. They wanted to portray the power of his sword swings, etc - but this sudden hyper zoom out of the final battle was unnecessary. Not like a character was launched, just in the middle of swinging, suddenly the perspective is super far away. Not to mention, both characters were covered in very rainbow-y incarnations so suddenly the screen is quite literally black and white with the exception of 2 colored slits.
Basically, it ruined the immersion for me, could have been done better so it wouldn't have.

Note: I'm not saying it's terrible. Just Unnecessary*****. For an SAO comparison, Look at this Ordinal Scale gif - Heavy / powerful strikes, zoom out, looks fine.







Everything they finally did right


Jesus the art, finally looks fucking GOOD, in a battle scene. They just made good decisions. Blue rose sword - has details even though it's blurred to be shown out of focus. The blood has details, while it's partially blurred to give depth perception. Kirito's eyes are not just 2 dots, his face has detail, his hair is shaded. Just this one scene, thank you for that.

They included the twins from the Tournament which they cut from Cour 1! Yay!

The Star Scene. The fact that they decided to have every single star in the night sky represent someone and have every single one of them move. I was genuinely surprised when the stars on screen peeled off and moved towards Kirito, since I thought for sure, they'd just keep the star background and then add in shooting stars on top of that. Just how the stars peeled away to expose the blank night sky. This is what an anime adaptation should do - show a picture, or a scene, that tells a thousand words. Can respect that.

Alice and Asuna running to the Altar. Zoomed off Scene. If you look at the spoiler image, you can actually see the white underneath Alice's dress armor. The movements weren't choppy and everything looked good in this scene, even though it was zoomed out, it has a point, it's necessary. It portrays the distance Alice and Asuna have left to the Altar, it shows how long and large this staircase actually is, it portrays a lot of things and it looks good.


Real World Scenes. Honestly, those were fucking great. The backgrounds were a bit lackluster, but the characters worked. There was no one looked better than the other. Both looked good, and there was some creativity and personality to those shots. Anyone notice the porn mag under Kleins Table? Or that he finally got his pizza delivered? Klein Finally Got His Pizza. After Many Many Years... He's rubbing the wrong arm. Eiji broke your other arm my dude. Also Klein thinks Ps>Xbox.

Jesus christ, I complain about a lot of things and I haven't praised it nearly as much. But,

It was a Great Episode
4.5/5 - Several scenes which looked quite bad, but were short and not extremely relevant. Everything that 'built up' or failed to do so to this ep, probably ruined it for a lot of people, but looking at this episode alone, I thought it was quite good.

I FINALLY REALIZED. Everyone's too busy with the subs to notice anything wrong with the art.



tl;dr, What am I doing with my life. Klein finally got his pizza. GGs


Remember last time I tell you that A1 save the budgets from previous episode to make this episode? Now It’s seem that I’m wrong and you are right. A1 just did a bad job in managing their budget to make a good animation. This fight isn’t that good and no way near epic level, surely the animation is pretty decent in some scenes, but the pacing and the explanation of what is happening are just make it overall an average uninteresting fight, even anime like HxH or Gintama that has much lower budget and have more episode can make a better fight scene than this, not even talking about OPM season 1.


I do remember that, though I'd say you were right in that sense and I was wrong.

I'm purely speaking from an artistic standpoint. The art and animations (animations as in animated drawings / art) were quite good in the final fight like the Blue Rose Sword shot in my above post. I will agree this fight wasn't near an 'epic level' or didn't give me the 'chills' or 'shivers' or what not, personally, I'd say a large factor is due to the odd placement of music behind certain scenes - Build up music during fight - Battle music during conversation, however, it did look visually appealing and that's all I hoped for.

I'm not denying that what going on probably makes absolutely no sense to a viewer. The pacing and explanations lost is probably an issue of every episode before this one, not exactly this specific episode.

Though, I agree that A-1 did a bad job managing their budget, or time, or whatever. Since there's still quite a lot I have issues with lol.
Aug 30, 2020 12:39 AM

Offline
Nov 2019
718
Inorichi said:
Ironically, the one episode with majority negative reaction is the one I thought was decent. I'm actually so relieved that Kirito vs Gabriel didn't look like a giant flaming pile of scoobydoo snacks (like PoH's fight). Jesus that was beyond bad. 0% fighting, 20% running, 20% decoy bamboozles, 60% shouting Ahh while trying to break each others swords with body weight.

Still can't stop myself from complaining about the few things, however, the damage in this episode isn't irreparable, so respect for that.

I have to ask though, how come nobody talks about the art? Is everyone else just munching away on snacks half paying attention?

First Scene



Almost Cringeworthy. I actually had to get up and prepare to be disappointed when they blasted the iconic ost with the most depressing backside I've ever seen. Still, it was only one scene, but definitely not the best way to start off the climax of the franchise.


Anything and Everything Zoomed Out




I genuinely can not understand how anyone thinks WOU P2 looks remotely good, with the exception of the 1 battle in this episode. The backgrounds look brilliant yes, (when the anime has a background other than red, red, red). But overall, I feel like the quality of these far off shots have been dropping with every episode.

I also don't understand why they feel the need to 'zoom' or show such a far off shot for scenes like Alice & Asuna running up stairs. Adds nothing, I'd much rather see Alice and Asuna's faces. Only explanation is the fact that it's significantly easier drawing tiny faceless and minimally detailed characters, than a close up detailed character in a run cycle. The far off Kirito pov backshot of Asuna and Alice looked fine, these two are exactly what I mean. The detailed background with Kirito and the flowers is almost funny. There's actually quite a few of these shots in every episode, so yeah...

Flowers have more details than the main characters face. Who would have thought.

Ninja Alice
Even as a light novel reader, I got lost when Alice shot a golden shuriken from her hand. A large golden star in the night sky would have been better imo. Was genuinely confused since it actually looks like a shuriken.

Rainbow superman Kirito attack
The generate all elements attack. It just did not look right. I can agree that it'd be a waste of staff to detail balls flying at the enemy, however, since they had 0 detail other than being balls of color, in the colors of the rainbow, in a rainbow arc, it literally felt like a powerrangers attack.



Genitalless, Legless Kirito

No specific complaints, I just personally thought it looked more stupid than horrifying with Kirito just floating there without the lower half of his body, and the scene was actually a lot longer than I expected. Kirito wasn't really in pain, nor did he seem to care too much, the longer you saw him floating without legs, it just felt more and more, well stupid.


NULL NULL NULL!!!!!!
Gabriels dialogue for the entire last half of the fight made no sense. He literally screams null while getting rag dolled. He had absolutely no other voice lines other than "Null" Not even grunting or shouting, just "Null"... Imo, they should have reduced the amount of nulls, since as you saw in Ordinal Scale, a silent boss (well with a screech) getting demolished is still pretty epic.


Classic 'big 3 Shounen Staredown'
Kirito and Gabriel looks at each other blankly, faces change to anger, then they shout 'AHHH!' at each other for 3 seconds before starting to fight. Bit unnecessary at this stage in the fight.


Bit more 'Fighting'
The fight looked good. However, it was less of a fight and more of - Kirito gets ragdolled first half. - Gabriel gets ragdolled second half.




3 minute death scenes
If we go back to S1 and S2 or even Ordinal Scale. A lot of them get sliced in half, a few get stabbed, all of them 'die' in the virtual world. Oberon and Death Gun do no laugh maniacally and have a conversation after being sliced in half.

My biggest fault with this scene is the fact that they had the 'iconic ost' playing after Gabriel is sliced in half and the only thing on screen is a conversation at the peak of the battle music.


Worshipping Kirito
To be fair, I don't remember every detail from this scene and I wont go back to check. However, due to the length and the amount of characters shown just looking up and praying to the heavens for no reason was just weird. Lisbeth and Silica were fine. So was Klein. Sheyta and Iskahn were fine too, it felt more like a symbol of respect and not every character in their scene was being spirit bomb fuel. But I just don't understand why everyone at the academy started holding their hands together in prayer.

However, I can say this at the very least "Thank the fucking lords the goblins and ogres didn't hold hands and sing kumbayah."


Final Complaint, the Climax Zoom Out


This one actually made me sad. That climax would have been perfect, if this scene was just altered or removed. They wanted to portray the power of his sword swings, etc - but this sudden hyper zoom out of the final battle was unnecessary. Not like a character was launched, just in the middle of swinging, suddenly the perspective is super far away. Not to mention, both characters were covered in very rainbow-y incarnations so suddenly the screen is quite literally black and white with the exception of 2 colored slits.
Basically, it ruined the immersion for me, could have been done better so it wouldn't have.

Note: I'm not saying it's terrible. Just Unnecessary*****. For an SAO comparison, Look at this Ordinal Scale gif - Heavy / powerful strikes, zoom out, looks fine.







Everything they finally did right


Jesus the art, finally looks fucking GOOD, in a battle scene. They just made good decisions. Blue rose sword - has details even though it's blurred to be shown out of focus. The blood has details, while it's partially blurred to give depth perception. Kirito's eyes are not just 2 dots, his face has detail, his hair is shaded. Just this one scene, thank you for that.

They included the twins from the Tournament which they cut from Cour 1! Yay!

The Star Scene. The fact that they decided to have every single star in the night sky represent someone and have every single one of them move. I was genuinely surprised when the stars on screen peeled off and moved towards Kirito, since I thought for sure, they'd just keep the star background and then add in shooting stars on top of that. Just how the stars peeled away to expose the blank night sky. This is what an anime adaptation should do - show a picture, or a scene, that tells a thousand words. Can respect that.

Alice and Asuna running to the Altar. Zoomed off Scene. If you look at the spoiler image, you can actually see the white underneath Alice's dress armor. The movements weren't choppy and everything looked good in this scene, even though it was zoomed out, it has a point, it's necessary. It portrays the distance Alice and Asuna have left to the Altar, it shows how long and large this staircase actually is, it portrays a lot of things and it looks good.


Real World Scenes. Honestly, those were fucking great. The backgrounds were a bit lackluster, but the characters worked. There was no one looked better than the other. Both looked good, and there was some creativity and personality to those shots. Anyone notice the porn mag under Kleins Table? Or that he finally got his pizza delivered? Klein Finally Got His Pizza. After Many Many Years... He's rubbing the wrong arm. Eiji broke your other arm my dude. Also Klein thinks Ps>Xbox.

Jesus christ, I complain about a lot of things and I haven't praised it nearly as much. But,

It was a Great Episode
4.5/5 - Several scenes which looked quite bad, but were short and not extremely relevant. Everything that 'built up' or failed to do so to this ep, probably ruined it for a lot of people, but looking at this episode alone, I thought it was quite good.

I FINALLY REALIZED. Everyone's too busy with the subs to notice anything wrong with the art.



tl;dr, What am I doing with my life. Klein finally got his pizza. GGs

This season had index 3 level of bad adaptation. At least index 3 director messed up 10 volumes in 26 episodes. This director couldn't even adapt 1.8 volumes in 11 episodes. I guess our only consolation are the solid fights.
SAO PROGRESSIVE ANIME HYPE
Aug 30, 2020 12:47 AM

Offline
Jun 2016
749
biswa290701 said:
Inorichi said:
Ironically, the one episode with majority negative reaction is the one I thought was decent. I'm actually so relieved that Kirito vs Gabriel didn't look like a giant flaming pile of scoobydoo snacks (like PoH's fight). Jesus that was beyond bad. 0% fighting, 20% running, 20% decoy bamboozles, 60% shouting Ahh while trying to break each others swords with body weight.

Still can't stop myself from complaining about the few things, however, the damage in this episode isn't irreparable, so respect for that.

I have to ask though, how come nobody talks about the art? Is everyone else just munching away on snacks half paying attention?

First Scene



Almost Cringeworthy. I actually had to get up and prepare to be disappointed when they blasted the iconic ost with the most depressing backside I've ever seen. Still, it was only one scene, but definitely not the best way to start off the climax of the franchise.


Anything and Everything Zoomed Out




I genuinely can not understand how anyone thinks WOU P2 looks remotely good, with the exception of the 1 battle in this episode. The backgrounds look brilliant yes, (when the anime has a background other than red, red, red). But overall, I feel like the quality of these far off shots have been dropping with every episode.

I also don't understand why they feel the need to 'zoom' or show such a far off shot for scenes like Alice & Asuna running up stairs. Adds nothing, I'd much rather see Alice and Asuna's faces. Only explanation is the fact that it's significantly easier drawing tiny faceless and minimally detailed characters, than a close up detailed character in a run cycle. The far off Kirito pov backshot of Asuna and Alice looked fine, these two are exactly what I mean. The detailed background with Kirito and the flowers is almost funny. There's actually quite a few of these shots in every episode, so yeah...

Flowers have more details than the main characters face. Who would have thought.

Ninja Alice
Even as a light novel reader, I got lost when Alice shot a golden shuriken from her hand. A large golden star in the night sky would have been better imo. Was genuinely confused since it actually looks like a shuriken.

Rainbow superman Kirito attack
The generate all elements attack. It just did not look right. I can agree that it'd be a waste of staff to detail balls flying at the enemy, however, since they had 0 detail other than being balls of color, in the colors of the rainbow, in a rainbow arc, it literally felt like a powerrangers attack.



Genitalless, Legless Kirito

No specific complaints, I just personally thought it looked more stupid than horrifying with Kirito just floating there without the lower half of his body, and the scene was actually a lot longer than I expected. Kirito wasn't really in pain, nor did he seem to care too much, the longer you saw him floating without legs, it just felt more and more, well stupid.


NULL NULL NULL!!!!!!
Gabriels dialogue for the entire last half of the fight made no sense. He literally screams null while getting rag dolled. He had absolutely no other voice lines other than "Null" Not even grunting or shouting, just "Null"... Imo, they should have reduced the amount of nulls, since as you saw in Ordinal Scale, a silent boss (well with a screech) getting demolished is still pretty epic.


Classic 'big 3 Shounen Staredown'
Kirito and Gabriel looks at each other blankly, faces change to anger, then they shout 'AHHH!' at each other for 3 seconds before starting to fight. Bit unnecessary at this stage in the fight.


Bit more 'Fighting'
The fight looked good. However, it was less of a fight and more of - Kirito gets ragdolled first half. - Gabriel gets ragdolled second half.




3 minute death scenes
If we go back to S1 and S2 or even Ordinal Scale. A lot of them get sliced in half, a few get stabbed, all of them 'die' in the virtual world. Oberon and Death Gun do no laugh maniacally and have a conversation after being sliced in half.

My biggest fault with this scene is the fact that they had the 'iconic ost' playing after Gabriel is sliced in half and the only thing on screen is a conversation at the peak of the battle music.


Worshipping Kirito
To be fair, I don't remember every detail from this scene and I wont go back to check. However, due to the length and the amount of characters shown just looking up and praying to the heavens for no reason was just weird. Lisbeth and Silica were fine. So was Klein. Sheyta and Iskahn were fine too, it felt more like a symbol of respect and not every character in their scene was being spirit bomb fuel. But I just don't understand why everyone at the academy started holding their hands together in prayer.

However, I can say this at the very least "Thank the fucking lords the goblins and ogres didn't hold hands and sing kumbayah."


Final Complaint, the Climax Zoom Out


This one actually made me sad. That climax would have been perfect, if this scene was just altered or removed. They wanted to portray the power of his sword swings, etc - but this sudden hyper zoom out of the final battle was unnecessary. Not like a character was launched, just in the middle of swinging, suddenly the perspective is super far away. Not to mention, both characters were covered in very rainbow-y incarnations so suddenly the screen is quite literally black and white with the exception of 2 colored slits.
Basically, it ruined the immersion for me, could have been done better so it wouldn't have.

Note: I'm not saying it's terrible. Just Unnecessary*****. For an SAO comparison, Look at this Ordinal Scale gif - Heavy / powerful strikes, zoom out, looks fine.







Everything they finally did right


Jesus the art, finally looks fucking GOOD, in a battle scene. They just made good decisions. Blue rose sword - has details even though it's blurred to be shown out of focus. The blood has details, while it's partially blurred to give depth perception. Kirito's eyes are not just 2 dots, his face has detail, his hair is shaded. Just this one scene, thank you for that.

They included the twins from the Tournament which they cut from Cour 1! Yay!

The Star Scene. The fact that they decided to have every single star in the night sky represent someone and have every single one of them move. I was genuinely surprised when the stars on screen peeled off and moved towards Kirito, since I thought for sure, they'd just keep the star background and then add in shooting stars on top of that. Just how the stars peeled away to expose the blank night sky. This is what an anime adaptation should do - show a picture, or a scene, that tells a thousand words. Can respect that.

Alice and Asuna running to the Altar. Zoomed off Scene. If you look at the spoiler image, you can actually see the white underneath Alice's dress armor. The movements weren't choppy and everything looked good in this scene, even though it was zoomed out, it has a point, it's necessary. It portrays the distance Alice and Asuna have left to the Altar, it shows how long and large this staircase actually is, it portrays a lot of things and it looks good.


Real World Scenes. Honestly, those were fucking great. The backgrounds were a bit lackluster, but the characters worked. There was no one looked better than the other. Both looked good, and there was some creativity and personality to those shots. Anyone notice the porn mag under Kleins Table? Or that he finally got his pizza delivered? Klein Finally Got His Pizza. After Many Many Years... He's rubbing the wrong arm. Eiji broke your other arm my dude. Also Klein thinks Ps>Xbox.

Jesus christ, I complain about a lot of things and I haven't praised it nearly as much. But,

It was a Great Episode
4.5/5 - Several scenes which looked quite bad, but were short and not extremely relevant. Everything that 'built up' or failed to do so to this ep, probably ruined it for a lot of people, but looking at this episode alone, I thought it was quite good.

I FINALLY REALIZED. Everyone's too busy with the subs to notice anything wrong with the art.



tl;dr, What am I doing with my life. Klein finally got his pizza. GGs

This season had index 3 level of bad adaptation. At least index 3 director messed up 10 volumes in 26 episodes. This director couldn't even adapt 1.8 volumes in 11 episodes. I guess our only consolation are the solid fights.



LOL Index 3 maybe a bit over the top. Maybe you're right though. Hard to say tbh, since I never bothered finishing reading index and s3 was incomprehensible.
Aug 30, 2020 2:54 AM
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Jan 2019
5
Can someone help me understand one thing though... is Kirito still poisoned? Like lets say they survive the 200yrs in game and he wakes up, have they actually cured him or will he just wake up and die from poison? I feel like I've either missed this part of it hasn't been mentioned.
Aug 30, 2020 2:54 AM
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Jul 2019
1305
Okay did I miss something here? Like wtf is going on? Did they explain how anything works somewhere in this season? What's the point of Alicization and Eugeo's death if you're going god mode in the server. Battle looks cool but felt no substance. It's just some bullshit after bullshit. And you expect me to believe that Kirito and Asuna will stay there for 200 years when you showed me all this uncountable asspulls? I don't even know what I'm watching. This is actually bad.
Aug 30, 2020 3:07 AM

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Nov 2019
718
SomeGuyWithHair said:
Okay did I miss something here? Like wtf is going on? Did they explain how anything works somewhere in this season? What's the point of Alicization and Eugeo's death if you're going god mode in the server. Battle looks cool but felt no substance. It's just some bullshit after bullshit. And you expect me to believe that Kirito and Asuna will stay there for 200 years when you showed me all this uncountable asspulls? I don't even know what I'm watching. This is actually bad.

It's a horrible adaptation. And by horrible I mean it. This reddit post explains what's happening in this season more than what the anime could for 44 episodes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/iekoy8/sword_art_online_alicization_explaining_the/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
SAO PROGRESSIVE ANIME HYPE
Aug 30, 2020 3:33 AM
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Feb 2016
10
'with the power of friendship i defeated this villain!! and somehow i have the chance to fuck my girlfriend for 200 years' that's basically the episode(hey surprisingly it could be an interesting light novel title).
Aug 30, 2020 3:58 AM

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May 2009
517
Jie386 said:
Can someone help me understand one thing though... is Kirito still poisoned? Like lets say they survive the 200yrs in game and he wakes up, have they actually cured him or will he just wake up and die from poison? I feel like I've either missed this part of it hasn't been mentioned.


He was injected with succinylcholine, a muscle relacant with a very short half life. Like 5 minutes iirc. So it's been out of his system for a long while now. The problem was that prolonged cardiac arrest translates into hypoxia: not enough oxygen making it into body tissues and consequent cell death. He got lasting brain damage.

Now, brain damage is really hard to recover from but not impossible. Proper stimuli can lead to the remaining brain to take over tasks done previously by the dead parts and maybe neuron regeneration though this last one is veeeeeery slow. It might not be perfect but it sorta works, it works even better the younger you are. That was the purpose of putting him on the Underworld, stimuling his brain continuously for the equivalent of years of therapy to help heal his brain damage.
Aug 30, 2020 4:11 AM

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Aug 2020
20
Kirito vs Gabriel is one of the best fight scene in this season

Aug 30, 2020 4:13 AM
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Mar 2020
88
Nice we get to see that the whole allowances were put into animation so badly . Damn I was just pausing here and there especially the fight just so that my eyes could process it and save it perfectly . Hats off to the animators perfect probably much good. This episode was a blast
Aug 30, 2020 5:21 AM
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Jul 2020
514
YES I FREAKIN LOVE EUGEO YALL ARENT GIVING HIM HIS WELL EARNED RECOGNITION!!!

The guys on the outside "you have 10 minutes". Kirito "to bad. You're going to have to work with 19..sucks for you :)"

For some reason the guy with the green bowl cut so hot...

Question. When kirito's legs were cut off, was his pp also?? - a concerned weeb

Zuko was a lil annoying ngl.... "Subtilizer" Gabriel Miller just stfu and go back to GGO, no one cares about you.

I feel like there are so many emotions that they have all become emotionless.


I know I already mentioned it, but the bowl cut dude is really cute...


Why is this anime not considered a harem.
"I Love Kirito"
"Ilove him too"
Bruh did no one see that??


The ending.... i'm not crying you are :)
All works out in the end.

BUT.


BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All of kiritos friends and everyone else better not come back to the world somehow and live 200 years with him. THEY BETTER NOT!!!

But because this is sword art online i know they'll figure out a way to bring asuna and kirito back, but still...
:)
Stay Safe And Stay Hydrated. Water=Life Garbage Food= What we wish was life.
AryaleAug 30, 2020 5:27 AM
Aug 30, 2020 5:25 AM

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Jul 2015
12174
Chiibi said:
Piromysl said:


You mean those irrelevant characters shoehorned for no reason, except maybe Asuna who is no better written?

Anyway, if you refer to him having issues with killing few Laughing Coffin thugs, cannot be considered a "flaw", because it all comes down to him bring "too kind" or "too merciful", which is like the very basic Mary Sue trait.
For me, it was just him bring too whimpy and soft, because culling few murderers is nothing to be upset about end his simps having to go to such lengths to tell him that he did nothing wrong is laughable.


He's NOT 'merciful' at all; he killed three people. Plenty of shounen heroes suffer from that untaintable ' I must never kill under any circumstances ever 'purity' that kinda makes me wanna gag. He is not one of them.

How the fuk would you know 'that's nothing to be upset about' like did you kill three people yourself?

Uh, I doubt it. But people who HAVE killed IRL suffer from PTSD and Kirito suffers from it as well. It is a normal human reaction.

In fact, NOT suffering from it would be abnormal.

@Ventus_S

Really? "I'm too freaking lazy to type my own words so here's a youtube video to watch?"

I'm not clicking that, fool. :D You can shove that type of response up your butt!

Unlike you, I DO write things. This is why he isn't a Mary-Sue.

https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1809730


Just stop. This whole PTSD about "killing bunch of scum" was resolved back in the GGO arc and even Shion managed to go through it, while MC-kun is still salty for even not being able to save people, he wasn't even obliged to save nor anyone would expect him to.
That's the literally most basic Mary Sue trait.

And in your funny little thread you took examples literally only from Aincard arc.
It is good, don't get me wrong, but Aincard arc, which was like first 12 episodes of SAO is widely considered as very good, which is why it became mainstream on the first place and established pretty huge fanbase, because first impression is usually the most important.
Kirito went through character development, made few mistakes (Moonlit Black Cats was most notable one) from which he learned.

But After Aincard arc, all that was good went into standstill the bullshit and bad writing starts to hurt in the eyes with the beginning of "Big Bad forgetting why he trapped them".
Kirito even already established his harem, of irrelevant simps who will not contribute whatsoever to the story, but will be shoehorned for some reason into the story, which is just like... come on...
On top of that Asuna x Kirito ship is so flawless and boring, it feels like it was written by some Twilight fangirl on Tumblr.

FIrst half on Alicization was truly a breath of fresh air and seeing Kirito having to start from scratch and once again grow as a character was very exciting.
But now, SAO reclaimed it's throne as the "King of Trash".

I always compare SAO to Symphogear heavily, because they share the exact same problem.
While having stunning visuals, the writing is awful and Main Character is a complete Mary Sue.
Symphogear, however, cranks it up to the extreme.
Hibiki does not have a single flaw in the context of the story. She is amiable to the fault, self-sufficient, excels at everything, can easily cooperate with everyone, everyone likes her, always manages to get things both-ways.
So, if there is no room to grow as a character, the only way is to gain new powers and getting stronger, all of which she is being handed over with no training.
But Hibiki was a perfect character literally from the beginning. She is the same character at the beginning of the 1st season as at the ending of 5th, so the audience is very specific and niche.

That's about it.

Aug 30, 2020 5:30 AM
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Jul 2020
514
ultimatewarrior7 said:
Eugeo is the MVP of alicization


Yessirrrr. He's so epic, doesn't get enough attention :)
Aug 30, 2020 5:42 AM

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Nov 2019
718
Piromysl said:
Chiibi said:


He's NOT 'merciful' at all; he killed three people. Plenty of shounen heroes suffer from that untaintable ' I must never kill under any circumstances ever 'purity' that kinda makes me wanna gag. He is not one of them.

How the fuk would you know 'that's nothing to be upset about' like did you kill three people yourself?

Uh, I doubt it. But people who HAVE killed IRL suffer from PTSD and Kirito suffers from it as well. It is a normal human reaction.

In fact, NOT suffering from it would be abnormal.

@Ventus_S

Really? "I'm too freaking lazy to type my own words so here's a youtube video to watch?"

I'm not clicking that, fool. :D You can shove that type of response up your butt!

Unlike you, I DO write things. This is why he isn't a Mary-Sue.

https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=1809730

But After Aincard arc, all that was good went into standstill the bullshit and bad writing starts to hurt in the eyes with the beginning of "Big Bad forgetting why he trapped them".


Again this. Did you miss out his line what he said right after that? Why do people don't even try to analyse Kayaba's character and blindly believe some memes on the internet?

People seriously misinterpret his final scene in Aincrad. It's not that he "forgot" why he built SAO, but that he forgot the power of his dream, of living in the castle in the sky. The whole project was his single-minded quest to create a virtual world, to make it possible for people to really live a heroic fantasy not possible in the real world. Death was necessary to give the world weight, to force his players to "Live" in SAO and not simply beat it.

At some point he became so caught up in the minutae of both running Aincrad as administrator and the Knights of the Blood guild leader that he simply lost sight of the incredible evolution of his creation. He practically ignored how his mental health monitoring system had given rise to a sentient AI. He seemed to take little notice of the lively culture that developed within his world. Despite finally giving form to his dream, Kayaba ironically was one of the only players who never genuinely lived it, sticking to a role he had written for himself, the only player not fighting for his life and finding his role in the world of Aincrad.

It took him witnessing something "miraculous" to really accept that his world had taken root--not in the code, not in the machine, but in the hearts and minds of the players. He witnessed Kirito die by the laws of the game. Yet he fought on, not like a player in a game with hitpoints depleted, but as a real warrior with something to protect. It took his castle crumbling around him to finally accept that he had succeeded, if only for a moment, in truly creating a world. And it solidified his decision to surrender his consciousness to that world, come what may.



And regarding every other arc, they're good for their own reasons. In this last part of Alicization, it's an endgame kind of a thing in which everyone who Kirito helped came to his aid and helped him. Other than its just the conclusion of the arc. If you enjoyed part 1, then Alicization did its job. This part is just a messy war.

And regarding Kirito's regret, that'll never go. It's a part of his character. Kirito is an embodiment of regret.
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