Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online – 04

「デスゲーム」 (Desu Geemu)
“Death Game”

Even though each episode has been pretty good, this week’s episode (for me) went straight to the top.

General Impressions

With a good chunk of character introductions out of the way and a clear expositional foundation for our characters to stand on, this week’s episode felt like an early payoff for whatever is to come. Between nonstop gunfights and a huge backstab attempt gone wrong, where do I even begin?

Let’s kick things off in reverse order and talk about M completely losing his mind at the end of the episode. Between revealing just what he meant by being a huge chicken (unless it was REALLY convincing acting) and him trying to take LLENN out after reading a secret letter, I was really shocked that the story would try and throw something like this at us. Because after everything that’s occurred up to this point, it feels kind of ridiculous to see the brilliant strategist M try and turn on his only partner. Not only does it destroy everything the two have built up thus far, it’s a freaking cardinal sin to PK your teammate when there isn’t a funny/stupid reason behind it. God the more I think about it, the more it gets me worked up. That said, if there was one good (interesting?) thing about all that happened, it’d have to be M’s sudden character change when LLENN had the P-Chan’s barrel against his neck. Seeing how it wouldn’t be too difficult to picture M as someone who has military training, it’d be pretty interesting if he was some kind of veteran who had his PTSD triggered.

Moving back to the actual issue at hand, was I the only one who was surprised about how quickly the other teams were whittled down? As a big GGO event, I thought that we’d get to see more of the fighting between teams! That said, it looks like things are about to get pretty hectic with only one team standing in-between LLENN and M winning the whole thing. Minus the whole fact that M tried killing his own partner, that other team looks like it’s full of pretty formidable foes. Hopefully, we’ll get to see an awesome action packed battle with LLENN and M somehow overcoming some pretty terrible odds.

All-in-all, a pretty damn good episode. With the story moving along quite quickly and Squad Jam down to its final two teams, I’m really curious about where the story is going to go afterwards. Luckily, next week’s episode title sounds like something big is about to go down.

See you guys then!