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Toonami |Mar15| the smartest anime is back!

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Crocodile

Member
Any kind of villain can be compelling if they're written well from "could have been a good guy if circumstances were different" to "completely evil monster" and all other kinds of villains. You can think of memorable examples of all of them and you can think of many more failed examples. If you're ever planning to create a story for any format nailing your villain has to be the first thing you perfect as without a strong objective for the good guys to overcome the story won't have the right kind of impact it deserves.

Agreed in general. I'm just saying why I think many writers go with the "sympathetic/complex" villain angle.
 

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
think I might skip SAO 2 until I completely catch up. Not going to get there in time, have to work tomorrow
 

BatDan

Bane? Get them on board, I'll call it in.
think I might skip SAO 2 until I completely catch up. Not going to get there in time, have to work tomorrow

Word of warning:
A lot of people that liked the first half... did not like the second half of SAO Season 1.
Have fun!
 
oh god it gets even WORSE?

Laughing-Thunderbirds.gif
 

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
Sword Art Online Episode 15: Return

In which we see the aftermath and meet our new villain

So it has been two months since Kirito beat SAO. That girl who said goodbye before Kirito jumped into the game world in the first episode is back, thinking about the time he was in a coma while she practices with her kendo stick. Kirito says sup, wanna spar? And she's like uh okay whatever.

So Kirito's skills with the sword kind of translate into skills in the real world, but not really because aim assist and lock-on are off IRL so he gets conked on the head. Kirito and I guess his sister talk some more, then Kirito goes to visit Asuna in the hospital. Apparently she and about 300 other people never woke up from their comas. Theory is that Heathcliff (I can never remember his real name, same with Kirito) is still in the game running some other scheme.

So while Kirito is visiting her, her father comes in along with some other guy who is his partner's son or something. They chat a bit and there's some stuff about Asuna in her wedding dress that Kirito doesn't really follow, until the father leaves. Then the other guy, who I'm just going to call Adachi until I remember his real name, gets SUPER FUCKING CREEPY and starts touching all over Asuna and sniffing her hair and shit. Apparently Adachi is going to marry this comatose teenage girl, or rather he says her family is going to adopt him which is somehow the same thing because of course IT'S FUCKING ILLEGAL TO MARRY A COMATOSE TEENAGE GIRL.

Adachi's taunting Kirito the whole time, talking about how he's "owed" some shit because his company is keeping the server running and therefore keeping Asuna alive, and being an all-around asshole before he leaves - but not before he tells Kirito to GTFO forever, except he should totally come attend the wedding Adachi's going to have to this comatose teenage girl.

So Kirito goes home and his sister comforts him as he cries about this, while he's saying he didn't want to look like this in front of her etc. So she tucks him into bed, then she crawls up there next to him. At some point a flashback tells us that Kirito is actually her cousin and not her brother, which is apparently important because the next thing that happens is she ends up shedding a tear because "his heart belongs to her (Asuna)."

Um. Hold on. Wait. They're not saying she's got a crush on him, right? Are they really?

Whatever. Moving on, Kirito wakes SisCousin up (I'll get her name eventually) and she gets super embarrassed that she slept in there or something and runs out the room. Kirito decides she was right last night about whatever inspirational shit she said, but suddenly he gets an email.

It's from Agil, which is the black dude I guess, and he sends a SUPER COMPRESSED JPG of a girl who looks like Asuna walking around. DUN DUN DUUUUN!

Not sure what to think to be honest. The new creepy guy is super creepy, so congratulations on actually making me effectively dislike a character that you want me to dislike, but he's way too over the top. It's comical.

I am puzzled by this whole SisCousin thing. I don't have a good feeling.

Has anyone tried to go back into the game to see what's up with these 300 people? Does the server not keep logs of shit that happens or anything?
 

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
Sword Art Online Episode 16: Land of the Fairies

In which we're doing this all again, apparently

So Kirito walks into a bar, and Agil is there. They chat some and Agil tells Kirito about this new VR game called Alfheim Online. Why the shit anybody would jump into one of these after the last big VR hit literally killed thousands of people is beyond me, but whatever. Apparently everybody in this game plays as a fairy and you get to fly around some, and PKing is not only encouraged, it's allowed.

There's a world tree in the middle of the game continent, and nine races of fairies trying to be the first to get up it. The highest anyone has gotten was to one of the lower branches, where they took a screenshot. If you zoom and enhance, you see there's a birdcage where Asuna apparently is. Looks like Adachi McDouchebag, who by the way works for the company that runs Alfheim, is probably the one keeping Asuna in a cage. Kirito decides he's going to go into the game to see if he can get her out.

So after some silliness with SisCousin almost choking on some shit, Kirito prepares to go into the game world by asking his Nerve Gear to "help him one more time." Uh, bro, I'm pretty sure that helmet literally attempted to murder you the last time you had it on.

So whatever, he starts Alfheim Online and, despite fully remembering that Adachi knows he's THE Kirito, picks Kirito as his screenname and picks a race and appearance that looks as much like his SAO look as possible. I'm sure that's gonna work out just fine.

Oh wait, it looks like instead of just beginning the game in the starting village he's in free fall and there's lightning and portals opening up in the sky and shit, and then he falls face first into the ground.

so he gets up and checks the UI. Luckily he can totally log out if he wants to, so that's cool. He looks at his character sheet and somehow he still has pretty much all of his skills from SAO. Suuuure. All his items are screwed up though, except for one. It's Yui's Heart. He touches it.

Guess who's back! Yep it's the clingy little AI girl and soon we're knee deep in "Daddy"s. Oh joy.

So she does some exposition after examining the way the game works. Apparently Alfheim uses the same game and graphics engine as SAO, and the character save data is nearly identical. Since both games use Sword Engine 3 or whatever, Kirito conveniently can do everything he could in SAO except dual wield. Yui doesn't have her bullshit admin powers anymore, but she gets to be a tiny in-game helper like Navi from Ocarina of Time or whatever, so Kirito gets to hear "Hey! Listen! Daddy!" all the time now, which must be nice.

Then we have a tutorial section on how to fly in the game. No, literally Yui sits there and explains the flight controls for like a minute as Kirito uses his virtual controller. Then they're about to head for the nearest town when SUDDENLY A WAIFUCHALLENGER APPEARS!

There's this blonde fairy with her sidekick dude flying over the area and they get attacked by a bunch of guys. Everybody dies except Blondie and three guys who are menacing her, and she says "bring it on". There's a staredown sequence which hilariously goes on for too long, when suddenly Kirito lands on his face a few yards away. Ha ha I guess.

Kirito does his best impression of a smug badass (it's not great), and kills a dude super fast. Then he turns to the camera and smirks, "Who's next?"

So I guess Kirito gets to magically be a legendary badass in this game despite just starting because he can just import his character. Lame. Also his "child" is back so we get to hear her say daddy about a million times. Yaaay.
 

Raxus

Member
I will say this, at least the construction of the second part wasn't as bad as the first. I mean it was bad, but at least they managed to convey some sense of urgency.
Which is ironic since stakes are markedly lower with ding in the game being nearly inconsequential.
 
The best thing you can say about the ALO arc is that the plot moves in a linear direction and there is no weird timp skip shenanigans with side stories that have no impact.
 

Zonic

Gives all the fucks
Oh right, AoT reruns. Get to go to bed earlier now. Though now I have to keep myself awake while finding something to do at 2 AM while waiting for One Piece.

Hmm, Adult Swim still shows One Piece at 8:30....maybe it's being taken off next week?
 
Tonight at 1 AM. & then AoT is replacing DMWL at 3:30.

Edit: In fact, the new line-up.

Midnight: DBZ
12:30: Kill la Kill
1:00: SAO2
1:30: Inuyasha: Final Act
2:00: Naruto Shippuden
2:30: One Piece
3:00: Attack on Titan
There's only like four shows on there that I want to watch.
I'll probably just continue to only watch the first hour of the block.
 
I'm stuck in a hotel this weekend so I'm not sure if I'll be able to participate tonight. Hopefully my roommate falls asleep early so I can watch whatever I want...
 

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
Sword Art Online Episode 17: Captive Queen

In which everything gets just that much more uncomfortable

So Kirito saves the new girl, called Lifa, and she gets introduced to Yui. Lifa shows Kirito how to fly without the controller, and Kirito gets the hang of it really quickly. In fact, he's the only one she knows who can fly that fast. So Kirito crashes into the town of the green fairy people, not knowing how to land, and Lifa heals him. Kirito meets her sidekick guy, who has apparently respawned, and then he goes and has a drink with Lifa.

She tells him about the world tree. Apparently there's a fairy king at the top of the tree, and he has promised that whichever race of fairies reaches him first will get unlimited flight, as opposed to the five minute limit that everyone else has. There's a dome at the bottom of the tree where you could theoretically start an ascent, but there are NPC guardians there that haven't been beaten in the year since the game started.

Kirito wonders if maybe the races have to work together to get past them, but Lifa says it's never going to happen because who's going to help some other race get the reward? (I guess there's no such thing as alts in virtual reality.) Kirito talks about how he doesn't have time to wait before getting to the top of the tree and says he's going to set out alone. Lifa thinks that's crazy and does the blushing thing as she asks him to meet her there tomorrow and she'll take him. She logs out and we see that Lifa is actually SisCousin!

Kirito goes to stay the night at the inn, and Yui asks to crawl in bed with Daddy before he promises they're going to reunite their family and falls asleep.

Meanwhile, in a big birdcage at the world tree, Creepy Guy comes in and taunts Asuna. He says he's tired of waiting for her to come around and threatens to rape her. he starts fondling her and messing with her clothes, then goes haha just kidding, I don't need to, you'll totally love me anyway. Then he tells her about his grand plan.

Apparently you could theoretically use the Nerve Gear to alter people's memories and stuff, and since his company ran the SAO servers he managed to capture 300 or so guinea pigs as they logged off from the game. He's going to perfect the process, then sell everything to an American company; Asuna says her father wouldn't allow it and Creepy Guy says it's a secret, duh. He threatens to alter her memories too, then he leaves. Asuna collapses and cries "Kirito, please come save me."

I don't think I like where this is going.
 
Man God was smart by becoming the non-canon member he has the ability to say whatever crazy shit he wants and people can't be sure if he's being serious or playing up his non-canon side.
 

Man God

Non-Canon Member
I'm serious. Of all the things that bug people about season one of SAO that's not one that bugged me. People died. They killed monsters and took their time trapped in this virtual world.

Also answer me this; do you really want an SAO anime that's ten times as long and shows what happened on every floor? No, you do not.
 
I'm serious. Of all the things that bug people about season one of SAO that's not one that bugged me. People died. They killed monsters and took their time trapped in this virtual world.

Also answer me this; do you really want an SAO anime that's ten times as long and shows what happened on every floor? No, you do not.

No, but I do want the side stories to build to anything relevant. Half of the harem girls introduced in those side episodes don't become relevant again until
the finale of s1
. You could cut entire episodes from the first arc of SAO and nothing of note would be lost.
 
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