First Impressions / Sword Art Online

「魔王復活」 (Maou Fukkatsu)
“The Devil’s Comeback”

Boy, it feels like things are about to reach a climax sooner than we thought.

General Impressions

With the second Squad Jam well underway, I would by lying if I said I wasn’t a little surprised by what’s happened thus far. Besides a ton of teams getting knocked out one after another (which from a game perspective isn’t too farfetched), who would have thought that Pito would be nearly knocked out by a headshot straight through the eyehole? All things considered, I think it would have been pretty interesting if Pito had been knocked out since it would have put everything into a rather interesting state. Not only would LLENN be in a rather interesting scenario with her only reason for participating gone, but you have to wonder what kind of crazy setup Pito must be running in the real world to keep her going with such an insane amount of trauma hitting her all at once. At this point though, I think it’s pretty clear where the story is going and it looks like it’s going to be a Pito versus the world kind of scenario until all that’s left is her and LLENN. Which all things considered doesn’t sound like a bad place to be in.

At this point though I feel like there isn’t really all that much to talk about since we’re waiting for all the conflicts to be resolved. Pito’s team has essentially been wiped out with M most likely sacrificing himself to be a shield for her, LLENN and Fuka are out nearly out of smokes to use against Pito (but they probably don’t even need it at this point), the Amazons are down to only a few members, and all the other teams have been knocked out.

That said, if I were to comment about a cool moment from this week’s episode, there’s no way I couldn’t touch on Team Amazons versus M earlier in the episode. Something about two veteran teams taking on one another is cool, but when one of the teams goes in with an insane strategy that push the rules to their boundary, that’s when you know you’re about to witness something cool. For a close second, I thought it was nice of the show to throw us a bone or two when they mentioned Sinon and Kirito and the weapon they’re both known for using.

All in all not too bad of an episode especially when you consider that it was mostly used as a setup for things to come. Luckily, Pito seems to have fully recovered and looks ready to take out anyone in her way to have her destined battle with LLENN. Anyways, I’ll catch you guys next week. See you then!

 

Preview

22 Comments

  4. https://randomc.net/image/Sword%20Art%20Online%20Alternative%20Gun%20Gale%20Online/Sword%20Art%20Online%20Alternative%20Gun%20Gale%20Online%20-%2010%20-%20Large%2017.jpg
    Man every time they do this I really want them to make that infamous fused bullet that they found at Gallipoli.

    https://randomc.net/image/Sword%20Art%20Online%20Alternative%20Gun%20Gale%20Online/Sword%20Art%20Online%20Alternative%20Gun%20Gale%20Online%20-%2010%20-%20Large%2006.jpg
    “Don’t do it Anakin. I have the high ground”

    https://randomc.net/image/Sword%20Art%20Online%20Alternative%20Gun%20Gale%20Online/Sword%20Art%20Online%20Alternative%20Gun%20Gale%20Online%20-%2010%20-%20Large%2039.jpg
    “Lord Vader, Inquisitor Pito is here to carry out your command.”

    Man this was damn entertaining to watch.

    I’d really want to see a smack down between Alter gang and Original gang. i’d like to see the original casts get their face smacked into the dirt real bad and LLENN trouncing Asuna so bad that Mace Kirito begs Inquisitor Pito for mercy

    Henrietta Brix
    Reply

  5. What make Alternative so good for me is how it actually entertain as an Online game!
    a lot of player teams duke it out with a lot of memorable one among them
    ( not just NPC team a b c that exist for MC to look cool )

    Mick
    Reply

  6. “but you have to wonder what kind of crazy setup Pito must be running in the real world to keep her going with such an insane amount of trauma hitting her all at once”

    The trauma from the shot she took wouldn’t knock her out, after all that’s just part of the game. What did knock her out was the hysterics after she got shot.

    The setup that’s kept her in the game is your standard microwave death machine strapped to her head. After the SAO incident all amuspheres were designed to log people out if their biometrics went beyond certain levels, but as someone who almost got stuck in SAO Pito managed to hold onto her original nervegear which lacks that safety feature. So when she started freaking out about being so close to death she simply passed out from the excitement and there just wasn’t any safety feature to kick her from the game.

    qwert
    Reply

  7. Major props to Fuka for just coming out and telling Eva that they’ve got a crazy situation on their hands, instead of dancing around the issue or making things more complicated by shutting them out. I kinda wished LLENN had done this even before SJ2 started, but did she really want to put that much pressure on her friends? Now though, with things going into a downward spiral I think it was the right call on Fuka’s part.

    Aex
    Reply

    1. Karen as the more mature of the group doesn’t want a bunch of high school girls (the Amazons) to get involved in the trouble of life-or-death situation (of someone unrelated to them).

      SMinstrel
      Reply

    1. That PTRD-41… it can’t manage 40mm regular tank plating, but it’s somehow blowing off starship armour… though since it’s literally knocking them off, maybe M probably just did a not too good of a job on the joints.

      Aizen
      Reply

      1. It’s not breaking the armor per se. It’s the spalling effect, the impact of the round hitting the outisde face of the armor plate causes little bits and pieces of the armor on the inside face to break off at high speeds and hit whoever is behind – in this case, M. It is lethal in real life.

        Okabe_Rintarou
        Reply

  9. This level of jobbing should be something even for the goddamned sao derivative. And the bitch just has to be have over the top theatrics, because how else could animoo show a disturbed character, right?

    URGH
    Reply

  10. Good episode, slightly lacking animation quality in places. Honestly, I’m with Pito and probably it’s 50-50 in battle royale type games in terms of the type of people you encounter. I had someone in Fortnite randomly walk up and climb on my shopping cart and start dancing. After a moment of hesitation, we went on a killing spree until I knocked them off accidentally and they shotgunned me in the face.

    It’s just how it goes. Battle Royale games are fun and unpredictable because of people like Pito. There are no friends here, only blood.

    Ameri
    Reply

  11. okay
    M might have formidable shield but Amazon team has tank-busting gun capable of killing panzer IV (hello, girls ind panzer!)
    and the girls devised fiendishly rules-abusive impenetrable shield fashioned out of one of their own bodies…
    “over my dead body” anyone?
    then Pito’s abusive behavior bites her back when the green-haired girl almost knocks her out…
    and it seems Pito is using Nerve Gear, possibly with death mechanism still intact. So if she dies here, she dies IRL.
    I would not be much worried about her dying since I agree with the Greenhair – she’s vermin to be cleansed. But LLENN cares about her so I give her a pass…
    Though LLENN needs to be careful not to accidentally kill Pito IRL. That would probably crush her…
    One big mention to the hired guns of the PM4 – they really did their job slowing down MMTM until Pito woke up…
    Now we have amazing 4-sides melee of PM4 (now reduced to Pito), MMTM (or what has remained of them), LLENN (Fuka would be of not much use in closed rooms with grenades…) and what remains of Amazons.

    ewok40k
    Reply

    1. The death mechanism is only a SAO thing. The Nervegear is capable of doing it but GGO has no programming to tell it to. If the Nervegear did it on its own, people would’ve had their brains fried pre-SAO incident.

      JHN
      Reply

      2. @ewok40k

        Same company produced both yeah. But SAO was in Beta for a time and users had to own it to play(well duh lol). I don’t think they ever said how long SAO was in Beta for, only that players like Kirito were invited to join it.

        I think collectively these headsets all are part of the “fulldive” system.

        Lyfe
        Reply

  12. I am kind of surprised they would let a Nerve-gear connect to the network. It is routine to block older OS versions from networks if they cannot be made secure, old stuff like Win XP and Mac OS 10.6. Pito must have used some kind of hacked adapter kit.

    psyche101
    Reply

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