In your opinion, which one did you like better, The Human Empire Arc (VOlumes 9-14), or the Underworld W*R Arc (volumes 15-18)? And what are their ups and downs? Tell me what you think. Please try to avoid dropping big spoiler(;
I Like both Arcs equally... but some volumes( 9, 11,15) are not as I've enjoyed as the other volumes since those volumes involve more development to the story unlike the others that generates hype :)
GangsterCat said: I don't even read 15~, they killed off actual good male character just to upgrade kirito's coolness with dual wield it kills the mood.
I know how you feel, GangsterCat On the other hand, I'm hoping he'd come back as a "Release Recollection" form. I haven't read the last Volume of Alicization yet. ;) And Actually, Kirito will be sad for a long time, and I don't think he'll do a bunch of dual-wielding until Volume 18. It's going to be some screen/page time for Asuna, Sinon, and Leafa! And maybe some Tiese and Ronie. ^v^
I'd say, almost everything up until the end of 16th volume was astonishingly good, but then...
Volume 17 was too painful to read (not in terms of its quality, but rather from the emotional standpoint), and I don't really agree with Kawahara's decision to allow the bad guys to do you-know-what. No, it wasn't exactly a bad move, but I'd gladly prefer another way of dealing with the situation. It's just... It has ruined something unique in this story.
But still, he HAD to do something to make the story look different from a typical fantasy book. In the end, it is SAO.
I couldn't bring myself to keep reading after volume 14, I didn't enjoy the Alicization arc as much as everything in volumes 1-8 to begin with, but stuff that happens in vol 14 made me cry out of anger, massive spoilers ahead, be warned:
1. First of all the premise:
- first goes the medical inaccuracy: brain gets damaged after around 5 minutes only if there's no blood flow to it, even during a cardiac arrest immediate CPR prevents this and is efficient for a long period of time, that's why it's so important to perform it, there was no chance for Kirito to sustain brain damage in the hospital
- then goes the quantum field pseudo-science, army wanting to use it for AI experiments would probably be quite low on the priority list since quantum entanglement and computing is way more important
- speaking of quantum computing, they had to be able to do just that to simulate that vast world of the Underworld at a rate of 5000 times the natural speed, no other kind of computing would be capable of doing such a thing, and with that power of calculation, bottom-up AI to use in warfare is pointless
- speaking of using the human-like AI in combat situations, what's the point? the point of AI in warfare is for it to be better than humans, more responsive to orders and quicker to react correctly, creating a human-like-being for military has no value whatsoever, humans are cheaper, especially since almost everything can be controlled long-distance. What about the robot prototype to be controlled by a fluctlight? How about letting it be controlled by a human using an amusphere? Isn't that easier?
The bottom-up AI in here is introduced only for the sake of metaphysical debate, when do we accept AI as being alive, is it ok to treat AI as just data if they understand and develop emotions? This in itself is fine, I had no qualms about it, it's an interesting topic in and of itself but didn't we go through that a bit already? Kirito treating NPC's like humans? Yui being essentially human enough to agree that she's alive? Silica's pet showing more emotions than technically possible in the game engine? We've been there before, why go all out on in this time?
2. Problems during the story:
- firstly: Eugeo, apart from the fact that his name is essentially Yu-Gi-Oh (try unseeng that now), he is just like Kirito but way more indecisive and shy, I know that some people like the guy, but I hate him for essentially being a copy of a character we already had with only a few things changed
- Kirito's development and lack of drive: in the original arc he was determined to finish the game and later also to let Asuna out of this death game, second arc the motivation changes to setting Asuna free and being with her again, GGO was less intense, but the stakes rose and his drive in here was to save Sinon and stop Death Gun, Excaliber arc had even less weight but drive was still there, get the sword, save the world. Alicization? Let's contact the outside and help this guy who looks like me but is blonde... Kirito had no drive for most of those volumes and finally when the stakes got high enough to matter and drive him, what do we get? Apparently Kirigaya now hates Kirito... The fuck, how? I understand not liking being called a hero when you're just a normal guy, but being able to save your friends when it matters is way more important in my opinion and I don't think Kazuto would think otherwise, especially since every time he has two swords on him he feels at ease for fucks sake! More on that later
- vague magical techniques and rules, truly idiotic game system: who the fuck allows players obtain admin privileges through leveling? that's one of the most retarded systems I've ever seen! Also somehow power of imagination is a thing in this world? As well as belief that simply something would happen? How the fuck does the system measure how likely are you to break the taboo and why if it can measure it, the knights we get to know wither actually committed a taboo or won the swordsmanship contest? Even if it can measure such a thing it's still useless!
- total lack of supervision and even periodic checks on the world! one person managed to infect the entire population of Underworld with a string of code to prevent them from breaking laws... and this was somehow not noticed? (I'm not even saying how ridiculous the idea itself is) they were wondering why people wouldn't kill each other yet they didn't check anything?
- this part I didn't read about directly because it's from further volumes, but apparently there is no way for RATH to estily log out players from this world, stop this world or change this world in any way even though they should have all the rights to do so? the super accounts are not actually super at all, just quite powerful characters can be produces from them instead of actual GMs which powers are endless within the world? who the fuck would make such a stupid system!
The suspension of disbelief was really fucking difficult for me the further I got in the story, mechanics in the world got only more and more contrived the more I read it and I was slowly getting frustrated. The only thing holding this together were the supporting characters, Alice, Cardinal, Bercuoli, Sertolina (sorry if misspelled any) they were all interesting characters who made it easier for me to read through this mess of a story, but then...
3. Volume 14 and the final fucking "battle":
On one side you have the naked Admin lady and her stupidly OP sword death-star-weak-point-like golem, on the other hand you have the Cardinal with the same powers as naked Admin, and 3 op characters with one broken crowd control power we know of and two of unknown broken powers. So what was the logical thing to do here? Obviously Cardinal let's herself be killed for no reason. WHAT THE FUCK? Kirito doesn't do anything about this either, they all just stand there and watch like idiots!
On one hand you have a possibility of victory, low as it might have been, on the other hand you have certain defeat to maybe fight another day. But this is the best possible situation to fight! They would never get better odds than now! But no... Reki decidec to kill off Cardinal (probably because he didn't know what to do with her if she stayed alive) and make Eugeo sacrifice himself to motivate Kirito to pull a Deus Ex Machina out of his ass. The thing is, they didn't need a deus ex machina like that! They could have just fought with the help of Cardinal! And they had better odds that way! And probably most importantly, who the fuck was this guy in Kirito's body? Definitely not the original Kirito or Kirigaya Kazuto, because both of them would try absolutely everything they had in their power even if they risked their lives to protect the people they cared about. Did Kirito do everything he could to save Cardinal? Nope, didn't even try to fight, let alone enhance armament or release recollection, neither did YuGiOh or Alice. Kirito is the kind of guy who will fight with all he can even if he's outmatched when the stakes are high, and now the stakes had been higher than ever in his career and he still watched as two of the people he cared about got killed. I think it is an enormous insult towards Kazuto's character. And I'm not saying this because I wanted for everyone to be magically saved by the legendary Kirito, screw that, if Reki wanted them dead he could have killed them off in a fierce battle! But this was so insulting towards the reader, towards Kirito and towards general reason that I almost have thrown my Kindle out the window...
TL:DR version for lazy people: I hate Alicization arc with my whole heart and now this takes a top spot at "fucked up continuations" edging ahead of Darker Than Black season 2... If I had to sum this up it would be: Newly Retarded Apparently Now Also Gutless Kirito goes on an adventure with his Spineless Blonde Clone called YuGiOh, to boldly plumb the new depths of stupidity in the most idiotically designed world ever created with the most contrived and pointless plot I've read or watched recently with a mindblowingly dumb culmination that made me scream form the sweet release of death... That about sums it up...
XDRage said: I couldn't bring myself to keep reading after volume 14, I didn't enjoy the Alicization arc as much as everything in volumes 1-8 to begin with, but stuff that happens in vol 14 made me cry out of anger, massive spoilers ahead, be warned:
1. First of all the premise:
- first goes the medical inaccuracy: brain gets damaged after around 5 minutes only if there's no blood flow to it, even during a cardiac arrest immediate CPR prevents this and is efficient for a long period of time, that's why it's so important to perform it, there was no chance for Kirito to sustain brain damage in the hospital
- then goes the quantum field pseudo-science, army wanting to use it for AI experiments would probably be quite low on the priority list since quantum entanglement and computing is way more important
- speaking of quantum computing, they had to be able to do just that to simulate that vast world of the Underworld at a rate of 5000 times the natural speed, no other kind of computing would be capable of doing such a thing, and with that power of calculation, bottom-up AI to use in warfare is pointless
- speaking of using the human-like AI in combat situations, what's the point? the point of AI in warfare is for it to be better than humans, more responsive to orders and quicker to react correctly, creating a human-like-being for military has no value whatsoever, humans are cheaper, especially since almost everything can be controlled long-distance. What about the robot prototype to be controlled by a fluctlight? How about letting it be controlled by a human using an amusphere? Isn't that easier?
The bottom-up AI in here is introduced only for the sake of metaphysical debate, when do we accept AI as being alive, is it ok to treat AI as just data if they understand and develop emotions? This in itself is fine, I had no qualms about it, it's an interesting topic in and of itself but didn't we go through that a bit already? Kirito treating NPC's like humans? Yui being essentially human enough to agree that she's alive? Silica's pet showing more emotions than technically possible in the game engine? We've been there before, why go all out on in this time?
2. Problems during the story:
- firstly: Eugeo, apart from the fact that his name is essentially Yu-Gi-Oh (try unseeng that now), he is just like Kirito but way more indecisive and shy, I know that some people like the guy, but I hate him for essentially being a copy of a character we already had with only a few things changed
- Kirito's development and lack of drive: in the original arc he was determined to finish the game and later also to let Asuna out of this death game, second arc the motivation changes to setting Asuna free and being with her again, GGO was less intense, but the stakes rose and his drive in here was to save Sinon and stop Death Gun, Excaliber arc had even less weight but drive was still there, get the sword, save the world. Alicization? Let's contact the outside and help this guy who looks like me but is blonde... Kirito had no drive for most of those volumes and finally when the stakes got high enough to matter and drive him, what do we get? Apparently Kirigaya now hates Kirito... The fuck, how? I understand not liking being called a hero when you're just a normal guy, but being able to save your friends when it matters is way more important in my opinion and I don't think Kazuto would think otherwise, especially since every time he has two swords on him he feels at ease for fucks sake! More on that later
- vague magical techniques and rules, truly idiotic game system: who the fuck allows players obtain admin privileges through leveling? that's one of the most retarded systems I've ever seen! Also somehow power of imagination is a thing in this world? As well as belief that simply something would happen? How the fuck does the system measure how likely are you to break the taboo and why if it can measure it, the knights we get to know wither actually committed a taboo or won the swordsmanship contest? Even if it can measure such a thing it's still useless!
- total lack of supervision and even periodic checks on the world! one person managed to infect the entire population of Underworld with a string of code to prevent them from breaking laws... and this was somehow not noticed? (I'm not even saying how ridiculous the idea itself is) they were wondering why people wouldn't kill each other yet they didn't check anything?
- this part I didn't read about directly because it's from further volumes, but apparently there is no way for RATH to estily log out players from this world, stop this world or change this world in any way even though they should have all the rights to do so? the super accounts are not actually super at all, just quite powerful characters can be produces from them instead of actual GMs which powers are endless within the world? who the fuck would make such a stupid system!
The suspension of disbelief was really fucking difficult for me the further I got in the story, mechanics in the world got only more and more contrived the more I read it and I was slowly getting frustrated. The only thing holding this together were the supporting characters, Alice, Cardinal, Bercuoli, Sertolina (sorry if misspelled any) they were all interesting characters who made it easier for me to read through this mess of a story, but then...
3. Volume 14 and the final fucking "battle":
On one side you have the naked Admin lady and her stupidly OP sword death-star-weak-point-like golem, on the other hand you have the Cardinal with the same powers as naked Admin, and 3 op characters with one broken crowd control power we know of and two of unknown broken powers. So what was the logical thing to do here? Obviously Cardinal let's herself be killed for no reason. WHAT THE FUCK? Kirito doesn't do anything about this either, they all just stand there and watch like idiots!
On one hand you have a possibility of victory, low as it might have been, on the other hand you have certain defeat to maybe fight another day. But this is the best possible situation to fight! They would never get better odds than now! But no... Reki decidec to kill off Cardinal (probably because he didn't know what to do with her if she stayed alive) and make Eugeo sacrifice himself to motivate Kirito to pull a Deus Ex Machina out of his ass. The thing is, they didn't need a deus ex machina like that! They could have just fought with the help of Cardinal! And they had better odds that way! And probably most importantly, who the fuck was this guy in Kirito's body? Definitely not the original Kirito or Kirigaya Kazuto, because both of them would try absolutely everything they had in their power even if they risked their lives to protect the people they cared about. Did Kirito do everything he could to save Cardinal? Nope, didn't even try to fight, let alone enhance armament or release recollection, neither did YuGiOh or Alice. Kirito is the kind of guy who will fight with all he can even if he's outmatched when the stakes are high, and now the stakes had been higher than ever in his career and he still watched as two of the people he cared about got killed. I think it is an enormous insult towards Kazuto's character. And I'm not saying this because I wanted for everyone to be magically saved by the legendary Kirito, screw that, if Reki wanted them dead he could have killed them off in a fierce battle! But this was so insulting towards the reader, towards Kirito and towards general reason that I almost have thrown my Kindle out the window...
TL:DR version for lazy people: I hate Alicization arc with my whole heart and now this takes a top spot at "fucked up continuations" edging ahead of Darker Than Black season 2... If I had to sum this up it would be: Newly Retarded Apparently Now Also Gutless Kirito goes on an adventure with his Spineless Blonde Clone called YuGiOh, to boldly plumb the new depths of stupidity in the most idiotically designed world ever created with the most contrived and pointless plot I've read or watched recently with a mindblowingly dumb culmination that made me scream form the sweet release of death... That about sums it up...
Wow... I'm impressed that you decided to write all this just for this one post!!! :)
I'm a fan, and I can't say that I agree with you, but I'm super glad you went all this way to look into depths on Sword Art Online, and spend 30 minutes on it.
I have just two things to say to you!
One, Eugeo is pronounced Ew-ji-o, with a "ji" that sounds like "genius" or "genie", and the "o" is just the plain "o" from the alphabet. On the other hand, Yu-gi-oh's "gi" is like "gi" for "guitar" and the "Yu" is like "hey you!"
But you probably knew that, right? (>v#)/
On the other hand, (Though you might not like it,) I can bet you a dime that his name comes from the Japanese word "Yujyo", which means "Friendship", whereas the word "Yugioh" is meant as "The king of games and play".
The other thing is, is that thank you for commenting on my post! But! You should be careful around people when you say things like this!
And thank you again! Goodbye! (#v#)/
Well I know quite a lot of people would disagree with me and I don't necessarily see a problem with that :P The fact that this novel filled me with emotions strong enough to make me this enraged only shows that it actually does something really well (for me it's creating attachment to characters in volumes 1-8). If it was just bland like a piece of cardboard people wouldn't care about it, definitely I wouldn't.
I think it's way more risky to actually just troll around and say "X is shit, Y is better", but I simply voiced out my issued with the arc, I ended up hating it even though I had high hopes for it. There's nothing wrong with voicing an honest opinion in my view, yes it is the internet and people like to conjure shitstorms out of nowhere, but that wasn't my aim at all.
When it comes you YuGiOh, it sounds the same for me because many English speakers mispronounce it, now that I recall it, I'm obviously in the wrong, even the main character there is called Yugi with a soft "g" not Yuji. But after speaking Eugeo's name outloud I couldn't "unhear" it anymore :P
Cheers and glad you liked the new arc ;) I wish I could have enjoyed it as well
XDRage said: Well I know quite a lot of people would disagree with me and I don't necessarily see a problem with that :P The fact that this novel filled me with emotions strong enough to make me this enraged only shows that it actually does something really well (for me it's creating attachment to characters in volumes 1-8). If it was just bland like a piece of cardboard people wouldn't care about it, definitely I wouldn't.
I think it's way more risky to actually just troll around and say "X is shit, Y is better", but I simply voiced out my issued with the arc, I ended up hating it even though I had high hopes for it. There's nothing wrong with voicing an honest opinion in my view, yes it is the internet and people like to conjure shitstorms out of nowhere, but that wasn't my aim at all.
When it comes you YuGiOh, it sounds the same for me because many English speakers mispronounce it, now that I recall it, I'm obviously in the wrong, even the main character there is called Yugi with a soft "g" not Yuji. But after speaking Eugeo's name outloud I couldn't "unhear" it anymore :P
Cheers and glad you liked the new arc ;) I wish I could have enjoyed it as well
Yeah, I guess you're right. I'd rather have someone explain their opinion more than just "A is sh*t, B is better" :)
I also agree (now) that we can voice our opinions the way we want to as well.
You sound like a pretty good person, despite your username. ;)
I really hope that you'll like the next arc, Unital Ring.
I really don't get, why people don't like the Alicization Arc. Sure, there are some plotholes (but they were there from the start) ... but guys .. that is the connection to Accel World ... as an Reiki Fan I am so hyped right now.
Pawana said: I really don't get, why people don't like the Alicization Arc. Sure, there are some plotholes (but they were there from the start) ... but guys .. that is the connection to Accel World ... as an Reiki Fan I am so hyped right now.
Alicization Arc will be awesome ;)
Uh-huh When I saw the word "Acceleration", it sent chills down my spine! Three things that Kawahara likes, are "Acceleration", "Memory", and "Artificial Intelligence". "Acceleration" comes out in all three of his works, Sword Art Online, Accel World, and the Isolator.... He also loves to bicycle. ;)
Silpher00 said: I dont remember which arc it is but my favourite is when Kirito said in the Admin tower:"...Release Recollection!"
oh yes, that was so cool. It was like, BLAAAAAAAAAASt!!!!! And everything was like BOoooooooooOOOM!!!!.........
............Yes, something like that!
That would be the Human Empire Arc, because everything Admin would be before Volume 15, which is the start of the UnderWorld War Arc. \(^0<)/\
In my opinion, I enjoyed Volumes 9 - 14 (Alicization Beginning to Alicization Uniting) more than Volumes 15 - 18 (Alicization Invading - Alicization Lasting) more. It was really because I liked the explanation of the Fluctlight theory and how it showed the bonding of Kirito and Eugeo. And of course, *cough cough*, the girls too. Seems like Kirito like his harem-building ability still carries through the Alicization Arc.
Ange
