First Impressions / Sword Art Online

「覚醒」 ( Kakusei )
“Awakening”

Of course, the first thing Kirito does upon returning is to singlehandedly obliterate 20000 enemy players who had outnumbered and brutally slaughtered his Japanese compatriots.

Kirito settles the score with PoH

But I must digress. The Blue Rose Sword is fully restored – after being imbued with the remaining fragment of Eugeo’s fluctlight. It was one heck of an emotional return, and pretty unexpected – overwhelming Kirito with a surge of emotion and spurring giving him the conviction required to release recollection. Which painlessly freezes the invading Chinese/Korean players as well as logging them out. Using this nifty solution, Kirito eliminates the hate and suffering, thereby taking away the source of PoH’s power and actually converts it into life essence – which is the source of the night sky sword’s powers.

After which he proceeds to thump the ever living shit out of PoH. To begin with, PoH makes a fair point. No matter how many times Kirito takes him down in the virtual world, it’s not like he’s actually died in real life. He can come back and try over and over again – the scary reality when faced by obsessive types like him. Even if you got legal authorities involved, there’s a limit to how much they can restrict a relentless stalker. Not to mention if you don’t know who the perpetrator actually is, given the anonymity of the online world, you might never actually be able to find any kind of proper solution.

However, I think this is the end of the line for PoH. At first, I thought Kirito turning PoH into a sentient tree was simply his idea of a joke. Only Vassago’s allies on the Ocean Turtle have essentially doomed him. He’s logged into the STL, won’t get automatically logged out since it’s not one of the ones in Roppongi, and time acceleration has been turned up to a point where if he can’t log out, he will experience 200 years of time in the Underworld. And there’s no way for people to externally log him out – since it will damage his soul. So yeah. Can’t imagine spending 200 years in a state of sensory deprivation. But I think most people would probably choose death over going through that experience.

Time Accleration and its Implications

However, this is also a pretty dire situation for Kirito and Asuna. Since they’re also logged in through STLs on the Ocean Turtle, they are also at risk of being confined to the Underworld for 200 years. If they can’t rescue Alice in time, or are taken down by Subtilizer, then they’ll be faced with that dreaded outcome. And while Kirito might have mastered Incarnation, Subtilizer himself has exhibited some equally overpowered skills – and what looks to be an ability to directly manipulate other people’s souls. Which I can’t see Kirito winning from what little we’ve seen so far. And that’s why you won’t see me complaining about Kirito being unfairly overpowered. For once, I’m delighted to say Sword Art Online has provided an extremely fascinating villain that has matched if not surpassed his calibre. It would certainly be fascinating to see Kirito lose, because if he loses he probably doesn’t die. But the consequence would be extremely dire. So I would argue the stakes are pretty high – since he’s not protected by plot armour per se. But finally, this long awaited fixture has arrived. The Black Marksman vs The Black Swordsman. Who will prevail?

Anyway, that’s about everything I wanted to discuss. As always, thanks for reading this post. See you all next week when Kirito finally takes on Subtilizer mano a mano.

15 Comments

  4. > Of course, the first thing Kirito does upon returning is to singlehandedly obliterate 20000
    > enemy players who had outnumbered and brutally slaughtered his Japanese compatriots.

    So that’s what happened. I must have blinked that second. What a great show this is.

    And now, nobody has to worry about those multiple, looming existential threats. Whew. But from a viewer’s perspective, how will they possibly maintain any tension or drama?

    Mockman
    Reply

    1. This is also a pretty dire situation for Kirito and Asuna. Since they’re also logged in through STLs on the Ocean Turtle, they are also at risk of being confined to the Underworld for 200 years as a result of the time acceleration being at 50 million if they don’t make it out in the next 10 minutes. If they can’t rescue Alice in time, or are taken down by Subtilizer, then they’ll presumably be faced with that dreaded outcome.

      And while Kirito might have mastered Incarnation (think of the Underworld as a collective dream and Incarnation as being a person’s capacity to be lucid during said dream), Subtilizer himself has exhibited some equally overpowered skills – in addition to his insanely formidable shooting skills, looks to be an ability that directly manipulates other people’s souls. Which I can’t see Kirito winning against from what little we’ve seen so far.

      And that’s why you won’t see me complaining about Kirito being unfairly overpowered. For once, I’m delighted to say Sword Art Online has provided an extremely fascinating villain that has matched if not outright surpassed his calibre. It would certainly be fascinating to see Kirito lose, because if he loses he probably doesn’t die. But the consequence would be extremely dire. So I would argue the stakes are pretty high – since he’s not protected by plot armour per se.

      Zaiden
      Reply

      1. He’s always protected by plot armour. Is what you describe really much different from the finale against Heathcliff in season one (well, multiple moments during that storyline).

        Subtitlizer may be well-suited to confront Kirito and could end up being a good villain. I hope so. However, that’s that and this is this.

        My problem with this episode is that it gives lie to pretty much all of the pain, suffering and dread that’s occurred this season.

        I could go on for a while about the most perfect waifu’s waves of despair, PoH’s confession, multiple damn foreigner invasions, Yuuki’s heartwrenching return and 360 degrees of Traumarama and more, except I’d exhaust myself (and that’s just the one prior episode).

        You covered it succinctly near the end of your ep17 commentary:

        > Alicization will have too much explaining to do if
        > Kirito singlehandedly Jesus the whole thing.

        On another note, Asuna’s winged gatotsu looked pretty good in Ep18, even if she doesn’t have a real sword to deliver it with. Too bad her outfit didn’t have shinsengumi colouring.

        https://randomc.net/image/Sword%20Art%20Online/Sword%20Art%20Online%20Alicization%20WoU%20-%2018%20-%20Large%2013.jpg

        Mockman
        Reply

  6. I don’t think the issue with POH turning a tree was the fact that he can’t log out due to the acceleration.
    I think it was probably something not explained well in the anime, but Kirito seems pretty sure that he would have issue logging out regardless.
    Maybe he knew that turning him into a tree would screw up his fluctlight bad even if there wasn’t any acceleration, because If I recall he didn’t know about that yet.
    Other than this part, I found the fight pretty boring.

    chris
    Reply

    1. Their fight was pretty pedestrian. But I appreciated the semantic values from having Eugeo and Yuuki re-appear in spirit to spur on their friends. These two have really been transformative characters in terms of development for Kirito and Asuna. The series really would have been a lot worse and generic without their inclusion.

      Zaiden
      Reply

  9. Arguably PoH was a racist serial killer. Even with a Spanish mother & Japanese father his intense hatred of Japanese folk made him log into a death game just to murder people based on their race.

    As the episode explained, he logged into Aincrad after the brown stuff hit the fan.

    Lyfe
    Reply

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